Worth it?
I generally appreciate Telltale's previous efforts, I'd probably give the Sam and Max series as a whole a 7.8, Telltale's Monkey Island a 6.5, and Strong Bad a 6 - they've all been worth playing, modestly to very enjoyable, and I'd say that the Sam and Max seasons were worth buying at full price, whereas I'm glad I got Strong Bad on the cheap, and I'd probably only pay $25 for a second season of Monkey Island based on how I felt about the first.
However, I came into each of the above series with a history with their pre-Telltale incarnations, and I liked them all before Telltale was even founded. This time around, I've never had that much enthusiasm for Back to the Future as a series - the movies are alright, but I wouldn't consider myself a fan. So would it be worth a quarter of a Benjamin to pick up the season, or would I be better off giving it a pass or waiting until it comes on sale?
However, I came into each of the above series with a history with their pre-Telltale incarnations, and I liked them all before Telltale was even founded. This time around, I've never had that much enthusiasm for Back to the Future as a series - the movies are alright, but I wouldn't consider myself a fan. So would it be worth a quarter of a Benjamin to pick up the season, or would I be better off giving it a pass or waiting until it comes on sale?
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Comments
I personally wish I didn't own it at this point. The first two episodes have been a completely scenic railroad trip through a somewhat weak facsimile of the Back to the Future films with a story that has great ideas but horrendous execution. I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy, it's one of the worst things I've picked up this year, and I'd hesitate to even call it a "game" at all. But hey, you don't have to take anyone's word for it. Play the first episode. The second is more of the same.
Beside of this it raises the question how effective it would be to boycott such products in order to forward better communication and a change. As TT is a money driven company this only would be effective if a large degree agrees on such a thing which again is something i doubt will happen. In the end, theoretically spoken, -10% adventure gamers, +30% licence fans doesn't look so bad.
If you want to know what's going on then you can just watch a youtube playthrough video as well. By stopping the video from time to time you can also think about certain solutions and turn this into a video(game) again or you just sit back and enjoy the show. The less there is to play the more this doesn't bother.
As the first episode is available for free you could give it a try on your own and later on compare it to reviews of the other episodes. Or maybe you want to buy it for a reduced price afterwards. There are quite some options but sadly none of them improve the product.
FatDragon, since you're not a fan of the series I think you can skip out on Back to the Future. I'm not a huge fan of the series either. I do like the movies but I wouldn't call myself a fan. I did play the Back to the Future games first ep. and it's alright and I will be playing the next eps as well when they get to the PSN. But i think you have to be a Back to the Future fan to really enjoy it.
Uhm, i stated my opinion regarding to the question which was asked in the thread?
Doesn't getting some critical words even from users like Silverwolfpet ring some bells?
No, I know. I wasn't calling into question the fact that people, including die-hard fans of our stuff, don't like everything about every product we release (the teams damn well try to make them perfect though).
That wasn't my implication at all (the go-away if you don't like it strategy), and apologize if it came across as anything more than a query. I was trying to gain some insight on the sometimes not constructive, and verbally cruel/harsh criticism from you guys that kind of take away from the otherwise pleasant tone of our forums. We absolutely want to hear/read/see feedback on our products, and totally appreciate it.
The go away thing was directed at ragdoll556.
I honestly think TT are slipping in quality and need to be told. I played the first ep and Im sorry to say, I though it was really bad. From the way the lines were delivered to the animation.
I just want to see the studio make great games but I think TT are going backwards and need to be told.
If you are a BTT fan, then get the game, the story is great for any BTTF fan.
If you are an adventure gamer, then Id wait. This game is VERY easy.
I personally like this, but I beat it in a day which takes away some of the appeal, sure I do have Machinarium on me for a challange(which I also reccomend) but I loved Sam and Max Season 2s difficulty a lot and would love it if telltale would do more games with that difficulty.
So on reccomendation, if you are a BTTF fan, get it, if you are an adventure gamer, wait until it is cheaper or something, if you are neither, then why are you even here?
But yes best thing to do is play the free game. Im glad I did because now Im sure I don't want to buy it.
either you're exaggerating or you must have some serious problems. it's not perfect and yes, it's way too easy (for experienced adventure gamers), but its far away from being THAT bad.
"i wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy", lol, what are you doing when you're playing a REAL bad game (because of whatever reason)? jump out the window? kill a kitten?
The game doesnt live up to the movies obviously, but this is more BTTF story.
More Marty and Doc adventures.
I would think BTTF fans would be thrilled there.
So I still keep my point, a BTTF fan should get this.
Good point. That's why I was looking forword to BTTF in the first place. But a bad game is a bad game and as such I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
I dont call it bad, I call it easy.
Not all easy games are bad and vice versa(although super meatboy sells due to its difficulty)
Bad compared to other TTG games. You have to admit theres so much TTG could have done better. Its a real shame because I was really excited about it before it came out
Ok that I admit, it is the worst of telltales in terms of gameplay(poker night in terms of glitches)
but it still is a good game, just EASY
Worst in terms of gameplay, and poker night is in the same sentence as that? I personally abhorred poker night - it felt like it took them ages to finally release it, and when it came out, it was a total disappointment - just a boring Texas Hold 'Em poker simulator with a few dozen uninspired lines by each of four characters ripped from other series. No variation on the gameplay or anything - if I were creating a poker game with zany characters I would not only allow players to change the variables in the basic hold 'em game, but I would smash in so many variants of poker, from the familiar to the unusual to the downright bizarre, both so it would hold the player's attention for more than five minutes and so the comic possibilities of the characters could be fully explored. Once all of the groundwork for a game like that is laid, adding in new variants of poker wouldn't have taken that much more work. Even if it bumped it up to the $10 price range, it would have been a good poker game with a lot of variety for $10, rather than a poor one with no variety for $5, and I'd say that would have been worth the trade-off.
But enough ranting about Poker Night...
Thanks to everybody for the input on BttF - it's sad to hear, but it kind've confirms what I already expected... I've downloaded the first episode and I'll give it a run-through, but I'm not expecting to make a purchase...
To the folks at Telltale, if any of you are reading this: you've got what it takes to make terrific games. Now the hard part is going out and doing it. Taking steps backwards like Poker Night and apparently BttF is a good way to obsolescence, and if Telltale folds, the Point-and-click adventure genre will have been dealt a terrible blow.
First of all, I find Back to the Future interesting in a way. Look at a game like Big Rigs. People liked to talk about it in its time because it was so horrendously broken that it provided a baseline of awful that simply didn't exist.
Now, Back to the Future comes out. It's bad. But it's not just bad, it's bad in a way that's obviously intentional. It's broken in such a beautifully methodical way. Looking at the thing, taking it apart scene by scene. It's FASCINATING how terrible it is. The main enjoyment I've gotten is in trying to figure out HOW broken it is, HOW counter-intuitive and stupid I would have to be for the design to feel like something even remotely resembling even one of the weaker brain-teasers in a book of puzzles. I'm looking at a game with:
-Controls that, in the last episode, consistently had me walk into the center courtyard because the cinematic camera angles wouldn't let me click directly on the building with Doc's room in it.
-A hint button taking up a huge portion of the screen, when it would take an absolute dullard to even require the hint button once.
-"Brain teasers" that not only are simple, but WANT to be solved and gotten over with so you can see the next cutscene, because the game YELLS THE ANSWER at the player after a SINGLE FAILURE, with hints and goals turned all the way off!
-Pride in its story and plot, but that renders some of the biggest and most dramatic scenes in the last installment entirely irrelevant by the start of the next one!
I'm looking at a game that would have actually been better as a long cutscene, because player interaction is clunky and completely unimportant. And all this, all this horrendous, poor design, but with a moderately good budget and some good superficial elements(voice acting, character-to-character dialog outside of context, music, artistic direction, etc), and it's praised.
I'm dumbfounded by this thing. I'm fascinated by it. It's one of the worst things I've picked up in my life but I can't look away because it's simply amazing from the point of view is "How can this be so bad? How do people enjoy this?" I feel like I have to confront people with the idea that it's bad at all, because this game is a phenomenon that I can't understand.
Hell, I might have even given up, but then there's the fact that this is the company working on King's Quest. With THAT news, I feel I have to stay. I'm one of the legacy members from when the company actually catered to fans of the adventure genre, when they actually tried making adventure games. The point of view that this is not okay obviously needs to be expressed, because maybe(and I'm being an optimist here), someone will take note and not create something like this for the King's Quest series. Maybe someone in there will see that this is not universally okay, that this is not how a certain audience wants their games, and hopefully the way they'll see it is that the audience that is already inclined toward King's Quest is not the sort that would enjoy Telltale's Back to the Future game, but in Daventry. Early quotes are already painful, with "Accessibility to a wide range of players" and "playing for the home team" making me extremely wary. I could deal with the one bad place being Back to the Future, but Telltale holds some of my favorite licenses in a vice-like grip(Sam and Max, Monkey Island, King's Quest, The Walking Dead, Fables), and I feel like they intend to do this to all of them. I feel like I, the adventure fan,l was exploited for early start-up capital so that Telltale could then turn around, stab me in the back, and begin a crusade against every single intellectual property that has ever given me a genuine moment of joy or an impression of genuine intellectual and emotional depth. I feel exploited by a company that used to be a shining beacon of hope in the industry, and they're forcing themselves to remain relevant in my life through the use and abuse of franchises and properties which I hold dear for a variety of reasons, oftentimes reasons that are entirely counter to what Telltale intends for them. Furthermore, I'm here because I actually like and enjoy a few of the people here, and it's the only place I really have a chance to talk to them. I'm trying my best to add these people to contact lists outside the forum, because I entirely expect myself to completely burn out at one point soon and just leave, but many don't openly share their IM contact names or whatever and so I need to make sure I get everybody before I go. Still, the few bits of intelligent discussion I might get out of it are some of the few bits of enjoyment I can wring out of these games, even if I have to utilize my complete disdain for them to do so.
I don't know what you mean by a "real" bad game. Perhaps one that is crippled on a technical level? Perhaps one like Big Rigs, which has levels you can't play, AI that won't race against you(so the race is slightly harder than the Back to the Future games), a lack of many crucial elements, etc?
Back to the Future is a bad game in the worst way. It is a bad game in that the direction from the start was bad. They didn't execute an even passable idea badly, they intended to make a game for Dave Grossman's Mother-in-Law, and her only, because she's some mass-market hit that(and I'm not joking or exaggerating the assumption here), if she likes it, every single human being on the Earth will. A game built specifically for people who do not play, have no desire to play, and without outside influence would never play video games. That is a basic goal so flawed, the game is broken before you even start to talk about basic framework. That is broken on such a fundamental level, that yes, even the most nicely-executed attempt(with excellent superficial elements like CG models, effects, animation, music, sound effects, voice acting, script, etc) would be a contender for worst game of the year. I haven't played every bad title released in 2010 or 2011, granted, but so far I have yet to try to play something that is even remotely close to emulating how terrible the Back to the Future games are. I'm to the point where I dread playing the next episode in the series. I absolutely hate the games and I hate that I was even indirectly involved in funding and rewarding this behavior on the part of the developers.
So no, I don't think there is an "actually bad game" that I could point to that is potentially worse, because most aren't broken before you even get out the gate. Bad games generally break at SOME point during development.
Okay, see, THIS point of view is fascinating to me. What are, if you could try to break it down, the core elements of a good game? What is it about games that are this easy that can justify their existence as something interactive? What are good games made of?
To be fair, they never marketed it as anything else. They made it clear from the start that the only reason to buy the game is if you want to hear bickering between Max, Strong Bad, The Heavy, and Tycho.
Similarly, the only reason to buy BTTF is if you want to experience a new story about Marty, Doc, the McFlys, the Tannens, the Stricklands, and Hill Valley.
Im a little complicated on my gaming.
I do think telltale can do better, but I still like it.
I do see games for more than gameplay, and Im more or less playing this for the story.
To be honest I hate the fact that telltale have made this so dang easy, but I just love the story to the point that I still call it a good game.
Kingdom Hearts would have probably bored me to tears if it wasnt for the story that I love so much.
I feel if a game either has a really good gameplay, or a really good story and I like either, Im sold.
EDIT:I also still must say, that when it comes for story and gameplay, I always chose telltale as the latter with games like sbcg4ap, with TDP being the first of their games where the story caught me along with the gameplay, here it really is just the story where I am playing this game for.
That is exactly what I was looking for. I guess sometimes its frustrating to see folks just say things like "this game is full of design flaws" or "this game sucks" but then when you ask what the flaws are, or why the game sucks, it's often just a "it just sucks" response.
Seriously, I appreciate you (and others) fleshing out the concerns you have, and that's what I'm here for, to pass those concerns on here!
Is this your entire job, or do you actually work on the games?
Im the community manager, so I work on marketing efforts, PR, blogs, stuff like that. I do not actually make video games.
So in a way more advertising, and keeping the forums updated.
Sure.
But, for a telltale adventure game, our bar is raised so high that it does indeed seem to be bad.
Am I dissapointed at the two episodes that have been released? Sure, for most of the reasons Dashing has pointed out.
Easy games can be good, even great, games. But games that hold your hand throughout the entire thing can get a little frustrating. I still have hope that the rest of the season will show great things, great puzzles even. I do trust TT with this.
Really? I personally couldn't wrap my head around the story of Kingdom Hearts (the first one was total cheese, but the best in the bunch), and I only really played it for the gameplay. I might just be the minority in this. Man, why does kingdom hearts always gets brought up?
Have you read the Chapter 2 Gameplay Discussion thread prior? I was under the impression that many people had been stating their reasons why they disliked the game this entire time.
Or do they check it out themselves?
People who don't play video games covers a large percentage of the Back to the Future fanbase. It was a marketing decision, one you don't agree with, but it made sense for this particular property, and for a lot of people, it seemed to work. I wouldn't call BTTF "broken" for drawing in their audience with easier puzzles any more than I'd call a children's book broken for drawing in their audience with pictures. (Not to say I'm claiming that BTTF fans are children, just that many of them are newcomers to the medium, just like children are newcomers to books.)
Now, I have many of the same complaints you do about the gameplay. I'd love to play a game that challenged me a more, and frankly I'm shocked at how many people claimed Episode One challenged them. But these complaints don't bother me as much as they bother you, because I've always followed Telltale for the characters, humor, and story far more than for the gameplay. I've played each episode of Sam and Max seasons one and two at least twice, and I barely remember any of the puzzles when I'm not playing them, but the jokes and characters always stick with me. Even if BTTF continues to have overly-simple gameplay, I'm still excited to see what happens to my all-time favorite film characters.
I don't think either one of our opinions is wrong; we're just looking for different things from the game. But I think we can agree that, whether or not this direction works for BTTF, it's NOT the right direction for King's Quest, and I hope Telltale's treating their large new inventory of properties as an opportunity to try things out in several different directions, including a more challenging direction for KQ.
Both actually. A lot of the folks that actually work on our games are regular posters here.
Well I was lucky enough to be able to follow the story from the begining, so while newcomers have to get through all the backstory to play, I was able to just startup and play.
The only game I never got at launch was the first game.
Which begs the question of why someone would want to make a video game for people who don't play video games?
Hey, I played the game from the very beginning as well.
Every gamer has to start somewhere. Why would baby's book authors write a book for people who can't read? Why would Why would JJ Abrams make a Star Trek movie for people who don't like Star Trek? :P