Far too easy. Although, I do understand what Telltale has tried to do by dumbing down the adventure genre with BTTF because it's their first mainstream title (in order to appease the adventure newbies) but I still think that they've underestimated their audience.
There was just no need to provide so many (intrusive) hints for such a no-brainer game. Of course, the beauty of episodic content is that Telltale can react to the overwhelming comments of 'too easy' by making later episodes harder. Either way, I have faith that the difficulty will improve as the season moves forward.
I voted "a little, I had to think here and there" as there was one moment in which I was stuck: the scene on top of the rotunda with Tannen shouting at you from below. I honestly had no idea what I needed to do there. Other than that moment, I never needed to consult the walkthrough. In fact, not once did I use the hint system.
Far too easy. Although, I do understand what Telltale has tried to do by dumbing down the adventure genre with BTTF because it's their first mainstream title (in order to appease the adventure newbies) but I still think that they've underestimated their audience.
There was just no need to provide so many (intrusive) hints for such a no-brainer game. Of course, the beauty of episodic content is that Telltale can react to the overwhelming comments of 'too easy' by making later episodes harder. Either way, I have faith that the difficulty will improve as the season moves forward.
I quote everything. Even considering that this is a much more mainstream game compared to their previous adventures, I still don't think that the average gamer enjoys a game that lasts two hours and basically consists in an interactive cutscene.
I really hope that this first episode has to be considered like an "introduction" to the rest of the game. Like Mightypirate wrote in another forum, the whole episode seems to be short and easy only in function of the ending: when YOU KNOW WHAT happens in the last cutscene, TellTale seemed to tell us "there are a lot of things that you missed in this episode, things you didn't know you modified. Still, look at what you've done!".
In conclusion, I trust TellTale, they never disappointed me so far! I hope next episodes will be harder, though (or if not harder, at least longer).
I found it a bit raildoad-y, more like a railshooter, just with pretty easy puzzles instead of shooting. Part 2 should in my opinion be at least 2-3 times as long, and be a good bit more challenging too. TTG have shown that they can do decent puzzles in the Sam&Max series, and that's also what I expected.
BTTF is also pretty short on relevant dialogue. There's close to no discovery, just "find the right option", which adds to the feeling of having played an extended intro.
All in all, nice bone, but little meat on this one.
In my opinion it's "A little, I had to think here and there"...the only point i was stuck was
when i had to hit the pipe
to get the bowl with "special soup"....well i was there for about 2 hours, then i noticed the pipe and so....
however for this first episode i think it's quite easy and a bit short...however i love what they did..it's amazing to have a game about BTTF like this!!!
Great telltale!!!
I don't get why people are complaining. It's episode 1 of a game designed for non-adventure gamers. Yes, it may be easy to you, but there's four episodes left for the difficulty to ramp up.
In my opinion it's "A little, I had to think here and there"...the only point i was stuck was when i had to
hit the pipe to get the bowl with "special soup"
....well i was there for about 2 hours, then i noticed the pipe and so....
I clicked the
pipe
, even tried to use the same item that Marty uses in the animation, but it didn't work until Cueball did it after 10 minutes of idling around and having only "no s***" moments with the hints.
Not only to easy, but it was to short, i didn feel like you very doing that much at all. Again more locations would have helped and ofc more NPCs. But hopefully that will come.
One of the cool things about Tales of Monkey Island was that i had for the most part a fairly large amount of places with alot of characters moving around.
A game should always be to hard. Because thats why you have the hint system. Else it makes no sense to have the hint system. Im not even that good at Puzzles in general and found Sam & Max, Tales of monkey island pretty hard at times, cruised through BTTF E1 in like 2hours.
A game should always be to hard. Because thats why you have the hint system. Else it makes no sense to have the hint system. Im not even that good at Puzzles in general and found Sam & Max, Tales of monkey island pretty hard at times, cruised through BTTF E1 in like 2hours.
Some puzzles in these games took a while, but they were all relatively easy to figure out compared to the original full length games in the 90s imo
Some puzzles in these games took a while, but they were all relatively easy to figure out compared to the original full length games in the 90s imo
And all the 90s puzzles are NOTHING compared to at least the Ifnkovhgroghprm puzzle. And no, I will NEVER stop using it as an example. And none 90s adventure game is as difficult as the 80s Gold Rush! Though, there were pure text adventure games were you could die just by going in a direction twice.
PS. Though I like old games very much, many of them (or their aspects) are overrated due to the Nostalgia factor. TellTale games being easy has nothing to do with the 80s-90s games being hard. Besides the way most of those games were harder (dead ends, ridiculous puzzle solutions, sudden deaths; though I'm not against deaths in adventure games in general) does not, in my opinion, make them better or make me want to return that kind of stuff. I agree that some aspects could/should be borrowed from the old games, but really, no more than that.
The difficulty of the actual puzzles was fine. (for the first episode)
But two puzzles is hardly enough for a game.
What do you regard as the 'two puzzles'? There were definitely more than two.
Sure, during the main part of the game (Act 3), there were two concurrent goals you could do in either order (and most TTG games do 3 goals in Act 2 and 3 goals in Act 3) but each goal required solving a number of smaller puzzles, as usual.
My analysis of goal/puzzle breakdown - I've probably missed some too:
Prologue (Marty's Dream): No puzzles/goals
Act 1 (Doc's Lab):
Goal: Get Doc's notebook off Biff (one puzzle to solve)
Act 2 (Delorean / Edna's)
Goal: Find out the date when Doc is in trouble
Puzzles: Use the shoe to find Edna, Find the right date using binoculars & newspapers
Act 3 (1931, Town Square)
Goal 1: Get young Emmett to help you (one puzzle)
Then, two at once:
Goal 2a: Deliver Arthur McFly his subpoena (multiple puzzles - steal hat, find Arthur, Record Kid Tannen)
Goal 2b: Get alcohol for the drill (multiple puzzles - soup kitchen, plus talking to Edna. Ok so the second part is easy)
Act 4 (Emmett's Lab)
Goal: Create the fuel (not much to think about, but need to keep up and not make mistakes)
Act 5 (The Police Van chase)
Goal: Save Doc! (one puzzle with multiple parts)
Generally speaking, the number of puzzles and structure of the game was different to what we normally see in TTG's adventure games, and probably this structure (and how far the plot progressed) made the game feel shorter than normal as well. There weren't many "use item A (from location A) in location B" puzzles, a lot were limited to one place, or dialogue with one character (and dialogue puzzles are fine by me).
I'm assuming the difficulty was toned down to bring in the non-Adventure gamers, but it'll probably get more difficult as the season progresses.
PS. Though I like old games very much, many of them (or their aspects) are overrated due to the Nostalgia factor. TellTale games being easy has nothing to do with the 80s-90s games being hard. Besides the way most of those games were harder (dead ends, ridiculous puzzle solutions, sudden deaths; though I'm not against deaths in adventure games in general) does not, in my opinion, make them better or make me want to return that kind of stuff. I agree that some aspects could/should be borrowed from the old games, but really, no more than that.
Jeez, I was just saying they were harder.
Some people here have said that if they compiled all of the episodes of one of TellTale's episodic games that it would play just like a full length adventure game, but it wouldn't. It would play much quicker and feel much more linear. You could beat them within a day, while with the games from the 90s you would get stuck on puzzles and be forced to come back to them later.
I'm thinking of the Monkey Island games compared with Tales of Monkey Island.....
What do you regard as the 'two puzzles'? There were definitely more than two.
Sure, during the main part of the game (Act 3), there were two concurrent goals you could do in either order (and most TTG games do 3 goals in Act 2 and 3 goals in Act 3) but each goal required solving a number of smaller puzzles, as usual.
My analysis of goal/puzzle breakdown - I've probably missed some too:
Prologue (Marty's Dream): No puzzles/goals
Act 1 (Doc's Lab):
Goal: Get Doc's notebook off Biff (one puzzle to solve)
Act 2 (Delorean / Edna's)
Goal: Find out the date when Doc is in trouble
Puzzles: Use the shoe to find Edna, Find the right date using binoculars & newspapers
Act 3 (1931, Town Square)
Goal 1: Get young Emmett to help you (one puzzle)
Then, two at once:
Goal 2a: Deliver Arthur McFly his subpoena (multiple puzzles - steal hat, find Arthur, Record Kid Tannen)
Goal 2b: Get alcohol for the drill (multiple puzzles - soup kitchen, plus talking to Edna. Ok so the second part is easy)
Act 4 (Emmett's Lab)
Goal: Create the fuel (not much to think about, but need to keep up and not make mistakes)
Act 5 (The Police Van chase)
Goal: Save Doc! (one puzzle with multiple parts)
....
For something to be a puzzle I need more than a round peg and one round hole.
If there is only one course of action possible it can't be a puzzle.
So the fist puzzle would be finding out the date..as that actually requires to do more than a single click(and is not in the tutorial where the game screams at you what to do)
The second one is getting the alcohol.
And that was it.
Everything else was too obvious because you couldn't do anything else or you were constantly told what to do.
With some good will, someone could claim Act 5 would also qualify as a puzzle.
And yes Act 4 isn#t a puzzle, it's trying to click on the objects you are told to click on.
Nice exercise for a trained monkey, but not a puzzle.
And yes Act 4 isn#t a puzzle, it's trying to click on the objects you are told to click on.
Nice exercise for a trained monkey, but not a puzzle.
It's a puzzle inasmuch as you have to think about which of the objects in the room you need to click based on the clue Emmett is giving you. If you think the clues are too easy, fine, but it's not like he's just yelling out the exact name of the object.
The puzzles were just dumb. This was really highlighted in the "give the sapina to Grandpa McFly" quest. I mean, what was that about? Why not just post it through his letterbox? Why not just get the police down there to beat his door down and shove the sapina up the pathetic dweeb's *ahem* in-tray? At least make it feel like there's a point to the obstacles being there...
The puzzles were just dumb. This was really highlighted in the "give the sapina to Grandpa McFly" quest. I mean, what was that about? Why not just post it through his letterbox? Why not just get the police down there to beat his door down and shove the sapina up the pathetic dweeb's rectal passage? At least make it feel like there's a point to the obstacles being there...
Um, dog, welcome to adventure gaming yo. Some milestones of this genre requires you to insult people to get the upper hand in sword battles or replace the bust of some country star with an eggplant replica of his head in order to get his toupee.
The puzzles were just dumb. This was really highlighted in the "give the sapina to Grandpa McFly" quest. I mean, what was that about? Why not just post it through his letterbox? Why not just get the police down there to beat his door down and shove the sapina up the pathetic dweeb's rectal passage? At least make it feel like there's a point to the obstacles being there...
As a "Seasoned Adventurer" and TTG fan, the puzzles were far too easy for my personal tastes but I did think they suited the urgency of the BttF franchise.
I thoroughly enjoyed my 2.5hrs with the game and, for the money, I still think its good value.
I'd be more interested if this poll was purely for Adventure game virgins and/or TTG newbies - maybe the puzzle difficulty was more appropriate for them.
I thought the puzzles were a nice introduction for newcomers, because face it, many players will be new to Telltale and their style of adventure games and will need an episode or two to adjust to it.
That said stuff that needs players to wait for the game to catch up (like waiting for the game to get the alcohol in the soup kitchen) wont win over new fans. I do hope stuff like that isn't present in later episodes.
I'm no law expert, but I'm pretty sure in most jurisdictions, subpoenas need to be served in person.
I'm not American so forgive me for not knowing this; but as I highlighted in my self-quote I already suggested that maybe it's the job of the police, not some time-travelling teenager and his nerdy scientist sidekick, to hand out subpoenas in the sleepy town of Hill Valley?
In any case, "serving in person" surely counts as getting someone to open their window and yelling "hey here's a subpoena". If said person refuses to come downstairs and accept it, aren't they committing an offense? As a clerk of the court, surely Doc Brown has a little more recourse to deal with this situation than enlisting the help of McFly to get himself nearly beaten up by Tannen?
Um, dog, welcome to adventure gaming yo. Some milestones of this genre requires you to insult people to get the upper hand in sword battles or replace the bust of some country star with an eggplant replica of his head in order to get his toupee.
...Ok kid, I've been playing adventure games since the days of text adventures, so I've seen plenty of this crap before. Doesn't stop it being utterly crap when a puzzle makes no sense and is totally pointless. This is exactly the kind of reason why the adventure game genre "died" in the first place. I was under the impression that Telltale were trying to do something about this by creating logical puzzles and scenarios that make sense. I'm making a point about the retardation to absurdity of the puzzles in their latest series. This has nothing to do with any game that has been made before; it's a simple point about a problem I have with a specific game. Do you want me to start going through my list of grievances with Sierra games or shall I stay on-topic?
I thought the puzzles were a nice introduction for newcomers, because face it, many players will be new to Telltale and their style of adventure games and will need an episode or two to adjust to it.
I don't really get this. People are used to puzzles in games. Yes, even console users. Plus the myriad of online Flash-based games like hidden object quests and so forth. This game's puzzles were apparently aimed at two-year-olds or people who'd never seen a computer before. And this is without even the hint system or the fact that walkthroughs are available if all else fails. How stupid do they really think the average BttF fan is?
...Ok kid, I've been playing adventure games since the days of text adventures, so I've seen plenty of this crap before. Doesn't stop it being utterly crap when a puzzle makes no sense and is totally pointless. This is exactly the kind of reason why the adventure game genre "died" in the first place. I was under the impression that Telltale were trying to do something about this by creating logical puzzles and scenarios that make sense. I'm making a point about the retardation to absurdity of the puzzles in their latest series. This has nothing to do with any game that has been made before; it's a simple point about a problem I have with a specific game. Do you want me to start going through my list of grievances with Sierra games or shall I stay on-topic?
Well, I'm just baffled at the fact that you say it's unneededly absurd. It has to be absurd. When it was a movie title they tried their best to keep it in the limitations of a movie, and now it's an adventure game and they have to add some step-by-step puzzles such as this. If anything, I wouldn't pick on THAT particular puzzle and complain about Kid Tannen chase scenes instead. They serve no gameplay purpose, they're watch and pass, and storywise it also does not make sense that they let Marty escape twice (not to mention they also don't track down Emmett even when he helped Marty steal the hat, but he's Judge Brown's son and all so...) although Marty used almost identical paths for his runaways.
Well, I'm just baffled at the fact that you say it's unneededly absurd. It has to be absurd. When it was a movie title they tried their best to keep it in the limitations of a movie, and now it's an adventure game and they have to add some step-by-step puzzles such as this. If anything, I wouldn't pick on THAT particular puzzle and complain about Kid Tannen chase scenes instead. They serve no gameplay purpose, they're watch and pass, and storywise it also does not make sense that they let Marty escape twice (not to mention they also don't track down Emmett even when he helped Marty steal the hat, but he's Judge Brown's son and all so...) although Marty used almost identical paths for his runaways.
My original post said something like "this absurdity is particularly shown by the subpoena puzzle". So yes I was using that puzzle as an example, and I stated this. I could, if you like, go through how ridiculous each one of the puzzles were;
- Old ma Strickland's house. Now she's an annoying character. But the whole thing about the kettle and the gas, I mean what old lady is that bad at making tea? Anyway, once she'd told you she lost the shoe the same day the speakeasy burnt down, everything else was entirely redundant. The shop over the road would have the date of the fire. The library would have microfiche archives of newspapers. Not to say how ridiculous it was that Einstein happened to take the shoe of the one person who'd have those huge stacks of newspapers; who would happen to keep the other shoe all those years and not either throw it away or buy a replacement; who would happen (for no explicable reason) to live in the same house as Tannen HQ or whatever it was supposed to be; who would happen to invite the person who turned up years later into her house and then basically ignore him as he wandered around tinkering with her radiator despite the fact she'd already told him he was a hooligan/slacker. Oh yeah, minor inconsistency; if that flat is opposite the speakeasy in 1985, why is the speakeasy instead on the market square in the past? And finally, what was wrong with the "last visited" date on the Delorean that necessitated this whole bizarre ordeal in the first place?
- Shoe shine. "Can I have a peanut?" that was so hard. Hey, let's steal snacks from local mafia/gangster/mobster of a tiny little town and just hope he doesn't see us again and doesn't, like, have a gun next time... And that's all to get a guy's hat so we can track him down instead of, uh I dunno, just using a phone book? Or even reading the address on the subpoena? Since when were the courts in the habit of issuing subpoenas the day they need to be served? Couldn't they just wait for him to show up at the soup kitchen the next day since he seems to frequent it and it's like opposite the court house?
- Finding alcohol. How original, what - we're in prohibition America and we have to find alcohol? Whoever thought of that gem? What a surprise, it's in Tannen's soup kitchen, well I'd never have thought of that. And you're telling me that a kitchen is unable to cook soup by itself and needs to have it brought in in barrels? Nice cover. At least McFly's around because it seems the entire constabulary of Hill Valley are too busy locking up old people who happen to fall over near exploding buildings instead of actually looking for criminals. Prohibition sounds pretty fun if it was that easy to get around the law.
- Brewing fuel. This was quite an entertaining sequence but would have been a whole lot more interesting if there were more than just 4 options to click on. Once the first 1/4 of the fuel was filled I'd already figured out all the speech and it was just a case of doing it *slightly* faster each time, more like Dance Dance Revolution than an actual puzzle game. Maybe they could have made the whole contraption change a bit with each stage just to mix things up a bit.
- Road sequence. The only part of this that was even a "puzzle" was in noticing there was an aerial on top of the van. Apart from that it was like, "ooh toolbox. I wonder if I should click on it? Oh, a tyre iron ... now what on earth would I use a tyre iron on? Nnnnnnnggghh...." Apparently Kid Tannen only ever looks straight ahead when he's driving and also has cotton wool in his ears. How did he not notice me take the aerial? Just what the hell was Biff doing driving that truck anyway? In this case, it actually made no sense that the timeline changed. Nothing I or Emmet had done could have made Biff suddenly change his mind about the way he was going to deal with Doc. Why did he have it in for Doc anyway, I assume that the mystery burning down of the Speakeasy was something to do with Tannen in the first place, didn't really make any sense that he'd need to kill poor Doc Brown.
I could carry on. But I guess you probably don't want me to. So to save you from that tl;dr rant, I decided to just pick on one puzzle that for me had the most obvious absurdities to point out.
I've used the word "puzzle" several times in this post, but that's only because I don't have a better word. They were really little more than "click to continue" type scenarios. Someone else described it as, "put round peg in round hole", when there are only round pegs and holes. I'd go further; there weren't even any pegs to find, all I had to do was click on the hole and the game magically filled it for me.
Considering the average age of an original Back to the Future fan is probably 30-odd, why are they targetting this game at around the foetal stage of development?
Okay, look. Adventure games in general and their puzzles are going to be slightly far fetched at times, but that's no reason to go bashing on this particular one.
I've played many an adventure game in my day, as well as all of Telltale's adventure games except for Bone, and I think they really did a pretty good job here. Sure the puzzles were easy, but when there are old school adventure gamers who are used to excrutiatingly hard puzzles whose solutions make no sense, and newcomers to the genre who don't have the patience to try using absolutely everything on absolutely everything else and thus get bored quickly, where must the line be drawn? Yeah this episode was easy, but come on now, really.
Haters gonna hate, sure. But you don't have to go picking apart the puzzles and say that they are ridiculous, thereby also insinuating that no other adventure game has ever had silly puzzles before.
I could pick apart any of the Monkey Island games, the King's Quest games, Sam & Max, or a number of other games... but I won't. I love these games. So I'd appreciate it if you would tone it down a bit.
My original post said something like "this absurdity is particularly shown by the subpoena puzzle". So yes I was using that puzzle as an example, and I stated this. I could, if you like, go through how ridiculous each one of the puzzles were;
- Old ma Strickland's house. Now she's an annoying character. But the whole thing about the kettle and the gas, I mean what old lady is that bad at making tea? Anyway, once she'd told you she lost the shoe the same day the speakeasy burnt down, everything else was entirely redundant. The shop over the road would have the date of the fire. The library would have microfiche archives of newspapers. Not to say how ridiculous it was that Einstein happened to take the shoe of the one person who'd have those huge stacks of newspapers; who would happen to keep the other shoe all those years and not either throw it away or buy a replacement; who would happen (for no explicable reason) to live in the same house as Tannen HQ or whatever it was supposed to be; who would happen to invite the person who turned up years later into her house and then basically ignore him as he wandered around tinkering with her radiator despite the fact she'd already told him he was a hooligan/slacker. Oh yeah, minor inconsistency; if that flat is opposite the speakeasy in 1985, why is the speakeasy instead on the market square in the past? And finally, what was wrong with the "last visited" date on the Delorean that necessitated this whole bizarre ordeal in the first place?
- Shoe shine. "Can I have a peanut?" that was so hard. Hey, let's steal snacks from local mafia/gangster/mobster of a tiny little town and just hope he doesn't see us again and doesn't, like, have a gun next time... And that's all to get a guy's hat so we can track him down instead of, uh I dunno, just using a phone book? Or even reading the address on the subpoena? Since when were the courts in the habit of issuing subpoenas the day they need to be served? Couldn't they just wait for him to show up at the soup kitchen the next day since he seems to frequent it and it's like opposite the court house?
- Finding alcohol. How original, what - we're in prohibition America and we have to find alcohol? Whoever thought of that gem? What a surprise, it's in Tannen's soup kitchen, well I'd never have thought of that. And you're telling me that a kitchen is unable to cook soup by itself and needs to have it brought in in barrels? Nice cover. At least McFly's around because it seems the entire constabulary of Hill Valley are too busy locking up old people who happen to fall over near exploding buildings instead of actually looking for criminals. Prohibition sounds pretty fun if it was that easy to get around the law.
- Brewing fuel. This was quite an entertaining sequence but would have been a whole lot more interesting if there were more than just 4 options to click on. Once the first 1/4 of the fuel was filled I'd already figured out all the speech and it was just a case of doing it *slightly* faster each time, more like Dance Dance Revolution than an actual puzzle game. Maybe they could have made the whole contraption change a bit with each stage just to mix things up a bit.
- Road sequence. The only part of this that was even a "puzzle" was in noticing there was an aerial on top of the van. Apart from that it was like, "ooh toolbox. I wonder if I should click on it? Oh, a tyre iron ... now what on earth would I use a tyre iron on? Nnnnnnnggghh...." Apparently Kid Tannen only ever looks straight ahead when he's driving and also has cotton wool in his ears. How did he not notice me take the aerial? Just what the hell was Biff doing driving that truck anyway? In this case, it actually made no sense that the timeline changed. Nothing I or Emmet had done could have made Biff suddenly change his mind about the way he was going to deal with Doc. Why did he have it in for Doc anyway, I assume that the mystery burning down of the Speakeasy was something to do with Tannen in the first place, didn't really make any sense that he'd need to kill poor Doc Brown.
I could carry on. But I guess you probably don't want me to. So to save you from that tl;dr rant, I decided to just pick on one puzzle that for me had the most obvious absurdities to point out.
I've used the word "puzzle" several times in this post, but that's only because I don't have a better word. They were really little more than "click to continue" type scenarios. Someone else described it as, "put round peg in round hole", when there are only round pegs and holes. I'd go further; there weren't even any pegs to find, all I had to do was click on the hole and the game magically filled it for me.
Considering the average age of an original Back to the Future fan is probably 30-odd, why are they targetting this game at around the foetal stage of development?
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Ok, it was easy and some puzzles may seem "stupid", but I don't think anyone complained about turning down a cascade with a monkey during Monkey Island 2! Yes, that game was much more non-sense oriented, but also BTTF is overall a fantascientific-action-COMEDY. So, if we want to complain about everything, let's go on, but I don't think those would be constructive complainings.
I still think puzzles were too easy, but, man, come on...
Haters gonna hate, sure. But you don't have to go picking apart the puzzles and say that they are ridiculous, thereby also insinuating that no other adventure game has ever had silly puzzles before.
I don't see how I'm remotely insinuating that. It's just that in these enlightened days, we expect a bit better, especially from a company with Telltale's experieence.
Sure, there's a line. I just feel this game crossed it way too far in the direction of "dumb" to the point where every single "puzzle" just felt like a way to delay the action until I clicked on the right bit of the screen.
I've also played a huge number of adventure games over the years and there's not much worse than overly difficult and obscure puzzles; but one thing that is worse is puzzles that are WAY too easy. Basically it might as well not be a game; it's just a fancy automata starring Christopher Lloyd and Michael J Fox-ish. Actually really hard puzzles aren't anything like as bad these days, since we have the internet and it's easy to look up hints and walkthroughs if we get stuck.
And no, I don't have to "go picking apart the puzzles and say that they are ridiculous". But then, I don't have to do anything, which would include writing this reply, and yet I choose to. Maybe it's because I'm just bored. Maybe it's because I feel kind of insulted and/or ripped off and I just wanted to vent. That, unfortunately, is the nature of the internet, that we have this kind of direct action-response scenario where it's very easy to come straight back and tell people what you think. Pointing out that I don't have to participate is kind of stupid since, well, I already am doing.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Ok, it was easy and some puzzles may seem "stupid", but I don't think anyone complained about turning down a cascade with a monkey during Monkey Island 2! Yes, that game was much more non-sense oriented, but also BTTF is overall a fantascientific-action-COMEDY. So, if we want to complain about everything, let's go on, but I don't think those would be constructive complainings.
I still think puzzles were too easy, but, man, come on...
Yeah, that was one of the more absurd puzzles in MI2 and I seem to remember getting stuck there for a while. I think you'll find that people have complained at some length about that puzzle so your point kind of totally falls apart right there.
Further: everyone seems to be getting really worked up that I took the game apart piece by piece. Yet that was a response to people saying "hey man why are you picking on that one poor puzzle, don't you know puzzles have feelings too?" So I said, "well here's me picking on ALL the puzzles if that makes you happy". So stop crying just because I'm bashing a game, is there really anything you WOULD be happy with me writing, since I personally experienced quite a lot of problems with this game? Yes I also found it a vagely entertaining experience on occasion, but since this thread is titled "Was episode 1 too easy" why are people surprised to see a discussion of exactly why someone thinks it was too easy? Seriously, grow a pair, this is the internet, you are liable to read opinions you don't agree with.
And I am liable to say that in my opinion you're being too harsh.
And "grow a pair, this is the internet" would be a great movie line
LOL I think I know the film: Back to the Internet Part II -- "Trolls? Where we're going, we don't feed trolls!"
...But seriously, I didn't mean to be harsh. Someone was asking why I picked on just that one puzzle. I answered by showing what would happen if I picked on all the puzzles. And it proved my point, there was a reason why I only commented on one puzzle originally, because going through all the puzzles was way over the top. That was my point, but it got lost inside a rant Anyway I can't be bothered to edit down my post and it is a fairly constructive breakdown of a lot of the game design problems, even if a bit unneccessary.
Might I say, though, that I was disappointed when I realized that there is no item-combining ability in this game.
It's kind of a blessing since the inventory UI is so horrific it would be hopelessly irritating to have to use it to combine stuff. Telltale seem to enjoy making us perform as many clicks as necessary to achieve inventory results, going directly against the #1 UI design principle of "less clicks the better". The inventory screen kind of resembles some sort of electric torture chamber so perhaps this was intentional?
Comments
There was just no need to provide so many (intrusive) hints for such a no-brainer game. Of course, the beauty of episodic content is that Telltale can react to the overwhelming comments of 'too easy' by making later episodes harder. Either way, I have faith that the difficulty will improve as the season moves forward.
I really hope that this first episode has to be considered like an "introduction" to the rest of the game. Like Mightypirate wrote in another forum, the whole episode seems to be short and easy only in function of the ending: when YOU KNOW WHAT happens in the last cutscene, TellTale seemed to tell us "there are a lot of things that you missed in this episode, things you didn't know you modified. Still, look at what you've done!".
In conclusion, I trust TellTale, they never disappointed me so far! I hope next episodes will be harder, though (or if not harder, at least longer).
BTTF is also pretty short on relevant dialogue. There's close to no discovery, just "find the right option", which adds to the feeling of having played an extended intro.
All in all, nice bone, but little meat on this one.
however for this first episode i think it's quite easy and a bit short...however i love what they did..it's amazing to have a game about BTTF like this!!!
Great telltale!!!
lol.
lol.
lol.
But two puzzles is hardly enough for a game.
It was more a movie with annoying interruptions.
So I hope they either increase the amount of puzzles in the future episode...or include an option to just watch the movie
Not me and I suspect not many others overall.
Not me.
man drowning.
man drowning.
man drowning.
I clicked the
(and would you please spoilerize your post too?
oops, sorry! already done
One of the cool things about Tales of Monkey Island was that i had for the most part a fairly large amount of places with alot of characters moving around.
A game should always be to hard. Because thats why you have the hint system. Else it makes no sense to have the hint system. Im not even that good at Puzzles in general and found Sam & Max, Tales of monkey island pretty hard at times, cruised through BTTF E1 in like 2hours.
Some puzzles in these games took a while, but they were all relatively easy to figure out compared to the original full length games in the 90s imo
And all the 90s puzzles are NOTHING compared to at least the Ifnkovhgroghprm puzzle. And no, I will NEVER stop using it as an example.
PS. Though I like old games very much, many of them (or their aspects) are overrated due to the Nostalgia factor. TellTale games being easy has nothing to do with the 80s-90s games being hard. Besides the way most of those games were harder (dead ends, ridiculous puzzle solutions, sudden deaths; though I'm not against deaths in adventure games in general) does not, in my opinion, make them better or make me want to return that kind of stuff. I agree that some aspects could/should be borrowed from the old games, but really, no more than that.
What do you regard as the 'two puzzles'? There were definitely more than two.
Sure, during the main part of the game (Act 3), there were two concurrent goals you could do in either order (and most TTG games do 3 goals in Act 2 and 3 goals in Act 3) but each goal required solving a number of smaller puzzles, as usual.
My analysis of goal/puzzle breakdown - I've probably missed some too:
Act 1 (Doc's Lab):
Goal: Get Doc's notebook off Biff (one puzzle to solve)
Act 2 (Delorean / Edna's)
Goal: Find out the date when Doc is in trouble
Puzzles: Use the shoe to find Edna, Find the right date using binoculars & newspapers
Act 3 (1931, Town Square)
Goal 1: Get young Emmett to help you (one puzzle)
Then, two at once:
Goal 2a: Deliver Arthur McFly his subpoena (multiple puzzles - steal hat, find Arthur, Record Kid Tannen)
Goal 2b: Get alcohol for the drill (multiple puzzles - soup kitchen, plus talking to Edna. Ok so the second part is easy)
Act 4 (Emmett's Lab)
Goal: Create the fuel (not much to think about, but need to keep up and not make mistakes)
Act 5 (The Police Van chase)
Goal: Save Doc! (one puzzle with multiple parts)
Generally speaking, the number of puzzles and structure of the game was different to what we normally see in TTG's adventure games, and probably this structure (and how far the plot progressed) made the game feel shorter than normal as well. There weren't many "use item A (from location A) in location B" puzzles, a lot were limited to one place, or dialogue with one character (and dialogue puzzles are fine by me).
I'm assuming the difficulty was toned down to bring in the non-Adventure gamers, but it'll probably get more difficult as the season progresses.
Jeez, I was just saying they were harder.
Some people here have said that if they compiled all of the episodes of one of TellTale's episodic games that it would play just like a full length adventure game, but it wouldn't. It would play much quicker and feel much more linear. You could beat them within a day, while with the games from the 90s you would get stuck on puzzles and be forced to come back to them later.
I'm thinking of the Monkey Island games compared with Tales of Monkey Island.....
For something to be a puzzle I need more than a round peg and one round hole.
If there is only one course of action possible it can't be a puzzle.
So the fist puzzle would be finding out the date..as that actually requires to do more than a single click(and is not in the tutorial where the game screams at you what to do)
The second one is getting the alcohol.
And that was it.
Everything else was too obvious because you couldn't do anything else or you were constantly told what to do.
With some good will, someone could claim Act 5 would also qualify as a puzzle.
And yes Act 4 isn#t a puzzle, it's trying to click on the objects you are told to click on.
Nice exercise for a trained monkey, but not a puzzle.
I'm no law expert, but I'm pretty sure in most jurisdictions, subpoenas need to be served in person.
Um, dog, welcome to adventure gaming yo. Some milestones of this genre requires you to insult people to get the upper hand in sword battles or replace the bust of some country star with an eggplant replica of his head in order to get his toupee.
dude.
I thoroughly enjoyed my 2.5hrs with the game and, for the money, I still think its good value.
I'd be more interested if this poll was purely for Adventure game virgins and/or TTG newbies - maybe the puzzle difficulty was more appropriate for them.
That said stuff that needs players to wait for the game to catch up (like waiting for the game to get the alcohol in the soup kitchen) wont win over new fans. I do hope stuff like that isn't present in later episodes.
I'm not American so forgive me for not knowing this; but as I highlighted in my self-quote I already suggested that maybe it's the job of the police, not some time-travelling teenager and his nerdy scientist sidekick, to hand out subpoenas in the sleepy town of Hill Valley?
In any case, "serving in person" surely counts as getting someone to open their window and yelling "hey here's a subpoena". If said person refuses to come downstairs and accept it, aren't they committing an offense? As a clerk of the court, surely Doc Brown has a little more recourse to deal with this situation than enlisting the help of McFly to get himself nearly beaten up by Tannen?
...Ok kid, I've been playing adventure games since the days of text adventures, so I've seen plenty of this crap before. Doesn't stop it being utterly crap when a puzzle makes no sense and is totally pointless. This is exactly the kind of reason why the adventure game genre "died" in the first place. I was under the impression that Telltale were trying to do something about this by creating logical puzzles and scenarios that make sense. I'm making a point about the retardation to absurdity of the puzzles in their latest series. This has nothing to do with any game that has been made before; it's a simple point about a problem I have with a specific game. Do you want me to start going through my list of grievances with Sierra games or shall I stay on-topic?
I don't really get this. People are used to puzzles in games. Yes, even console users. Plus the myriad of online Flash-based games like hidden object quests and so forth. This game's puzzles were apparently aimed at two-year-olds or people who'd never seen a computer before. And this is without even the hint system or the fact that walkthroughs are available if all else fails. How stupid do they really think the average BttF fan is?
Well, I'm just baffled at the fact that you say it's unneededly absurd. It has to be absurd. When it was a movie title they tried their best to keep it in the limitations of a movie, and now it's an adventure game and they have to add some step-by-step puzzles such as this. If anything, I wouldn't pick on THAT particular puzzle and complain about Kid Tannen chase scenes instead. They serve no gameplay purpose, they're watch and pass, and storywise it also does not make sense that they let Marty escape twice (not to mention they also don't track down Emmett even when he helped Marty steal the hat, but he's Judge Brown's son and all so...) although Marty used almost identical paths for his runaways.
My original post said something like "this absurdity is particularly shown by the subpoena puzzle". So yes I was using that puzzle as an example, and I stated this. I could, if you like, go through how ridiculous each one of the puzzles were;
- Shoe shine. "Can I have a peanut?" that was so hard. Hey, let's steal snacks from local mafia/gangster/mobster of a tiny little town and just hope he doesn't see us again and doesn't, like, have a gun next time... And that's all to get a guy's hat so we can track him down instead of, uh I dunno, just using a phone book? Or even reading the address on the subpoena? Since when were the courts in the habit of issuing subpoenas the day they need to be served? Couldn't they just wait for him to show up at the soup kitchen the next day since he seems to frequent it and it's like opposite the court house?
- Finding alcohol. How original, what - we're in prohibition America and we have to find alcohol? Whoever thought of that gem? What a surprise, it's in Tannen's soup kitchen, well I'd never have thought of that. And you're telling me that a kitchen is unable to cook soup by itself and needs to have it brought in in barrels? Nice cover. At least McFly's around because it seems the entire constabulary of Hill Valley are too busy locking up old people who happen to fall over near exploding buildings instead of actually looking for criminals. Prohibition sounds pretty fun if it was that easy to get around the law.
- Brewing fuel. This was quite an entertaining sequence but would have been a whole lot more interesting if there were more than just 4 options to click on. Once the first 1/4 of the fuel was filled I'd already figured out all the speech and it was just a case of doing it *slightly* faster each time, more like Dance Dance Revolution than an actual puzzle game. Maybe they could have made the whole contraption change a bit with each stage just to mix things up a bit.
- Road sequence. The only part of this that was even a "puzzle" was in noticing there was an aerial on top of the van. Apart from that it was like, "ooh toolbox. I wonder if I should click on it? Oh, a tyre iron ... now what on earth would I use a tyre iron on? Nnnnnnnggghh...." Apparently Kid Tannen only ever looks straight ahead when he's driving and also has cotton wool in his ears. How did he not notice me take the aerial? Just what the hell was Biff doing driving that truck anyway? In this case, it actually made no sense that the timeline changed. Nothing I or Emmet had done could have made Biff suddenly change his mind about the way he was going to deal with Doc. Why did he have it in for Doc anyway, I assume that the mystery burning down of the Speakeasy was something to do with Tannen in the first place, didn't really make any sense that he'd need to kill poor Doc Brown.
I could carry on. But I guess you probably don't want me to. So to save you from that tl;dr rant, I decided to just pick on one puzzle that for me had the most obvious absurdities to point out.
I've used the word "puzzle" several times in this post, but that's only because I don't have a better word. They were really little more than "click to continue" type scenarios. Someone else described it as, "put round peg in round hole", when there are only round pegs and holes. I'd go further; there weren't even any pegs to find, all I had to do was click on the hole and the game magically filled it for me.
Considering the average age of an original Back to the Future fan is probably 30-odd, why are they targetting this game at around the foetal stage of development?
I've played many an adventure game in my day, as well as all of Telltale's adventure games except for Bone, and I think they really did a pretty good job here. Sure the puzzles were easy, but when there are old school adventure gamers who are used to excrutiatingly hard puzzles whose solutions make no sense, and newcomers to the genre who don't have the patience to try using absolutely everything on absolutely everything else and thus get bored quickly, where must the line be drawn? Yeah this episode was easy, but come on now, really.
Haters gonna hate, sure. But you don't have to go picking apart the puzzles and say that they are ridiculous, thereby also insinuating that no other adventure game has ever had silly puzzles before.
I could pick apart any of the Monkey Island games, the King's Quest games, Sam & Max, or a number of other games... but I won't. I love these games. So I'd appreciate it if you would tone it down a bit.
Sheesh.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Ok, it was easy and some puzzles may seem "stupid", but I don't think anyone complained about turning down a cascade with a monkey during Monkey Island 2! Yes, that game was much more non-sense oriented, but also BTTF is overall a fantascientific-action-COMEDY. So, if we want to complain about everything, let's go on, but I don't think those would be constructive complainings.
I still think puzzles were too easy, but, man, come on...
I don't see how I'm remotely insinuating that. It's just that in these enlightened days, we expect a bit better, especially from a company with Telltale's experieence.
Sure, there's a line. I just feel this game crossed it way too far in the direction of "dumb" to the point where every single "puzzle" just felt like a way to delay the action until I clicked on the right bit of the screen.
I've also played a huge number of adventure games over the years and there's not much worse than overly difficult and obscure puzzles; but one thing that is worse is puzzles that are WAY too easy. Basically it might as well not be a game; it's just a fancy automata starring Christopher Lloyd and Michael J Fox-ish. Actually really hard puzzles aren't anything like as bad these days, since we have the internet and it's easy to look up hints and walkthroughs if we get stuck.
And no, I don't have to "go picking apart the puzzles and say that they are ridiculous". But then, I don't have to do anything, which would include writing this reply, and yet I choose to. Maybe it's because I'm just bored. Maybe it's because I feel kind of insulted and/or ripped off and I just wanted to vent. That, unfortunately, is the nature of the internet, that we have this kind of direct action-response scenario where it's very easy to come straight back and tell people what you think. Pointing out that I don't have to participate is kind of stupid since, well, I already am doing.
Yeah, that was one of the more absurd puzzles in MI2 and I seem to remember getting stuck there for a while. I think you'll find that people have complained at some length about that puzzle so your point kind of totally falls apart right there.
Further: everyone seems to be getting really worked up that I took the game apart piece by piece. Yet that was a response to people saying "hey man why are you picking on that one poor puzzle, don't you know puzzles have feelings too?" So I said, "well here's me picking on ALL the puzzles if that makes you happy". So stop crying just because I'm bashing a game, is there really anything you WOULD be happy with me writing, since I personally experienced quite a lot of problems with this game? Yes I also found it a vagely entertaining experience on occasion, but since this thread is titled "Was episode 1 too easy" why are people surprised to see a discussion of exactly why someone thinks it was too easy? Seriously, grow a pair, this is the internet, you are liable to read opinions you don't agree with.
And "grow a pair, this is the internet" would be a great movie line
LOL
...But seriously, I didn't mean to be harsh. Someone was asking why I picked on just that one puzzle. I answered by showing what would happen if I picked on all the puzzles. And it proved my point, there was a reason why I only commented on one puzzle originally, because going through all the puzzles was way over the top. That was my point, but it got lost inside a rant
It's kind of a blessing since the inventory UI is so horrific it would be hopelessly irritating to have to use it to combine stuff. Telltale seem to enjoy making us perform as many clicks as necessary to achieve inventory results, going directly against the #1 UI design principle of "less clicks the better". The inventory screen kind of resembles some sort of electric torture chamber so perhaps this was intentional?