The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

And rolling right on into Back to the Future Episode 3: Citizen Brown.

I dug this one.

While the idea that most of the nation would be normal while Hill Valley is turned into a police state powered by Doc Brown’s ideas is a bit far-fetched, there’s no doubt it’s super-cool. Having Marty deal with completely alien versions of his family, girlfriend, and so on is also just a fantastic premise for puzzles and dialog in the game. I’m there.

I do have to say, though, that the number of “markers of the timeline” Marty is carrying around with him at this point is getting pretty ridiculous. He has 2 newspapers and 2 photographs, and that is the vast majority of his inventory for most of the game. How many of these things is he going to have by the end of the season? I know that’s all part of how Back to the Future shows this stuff off, but seriously, they are the vast majority of his inventory. It makes it hard to do interesting puzzles when you only have one inventory item that isn’t one of these space-fillers.

Anyway, the only real issue I had with this episode was not being able to see the puzzle pieces. Maybe I get what I wish for, where I was like “Man, these puzzles are so puzzles!” last time around, but I just completely failed to find the components to two of the big puzzles in the episode. Once I knew, for example, that you could interact with the statue in the park, it was immediately obvious what I needed to do, but I had no idea I could do anything but look at the thing. At least the goals and hints this time actually stayed focused on things that I hadn’t already done, which helped with these blind spots of mine.

The part I found most hilarious in the episode was Marty attempting to explain why all the time travel was a force for good in the world. He was having a difficult time explaining why going back to assure his family’s success while fucking over the Tannens as being a force for anything but his own personal gain. It was a very nice reference to the sort of “plot hole-ness” of the films while not totally breaking character or turning to the camera and winking at the audience. I liked that very much.

Anyway, the next episode set-up has me a bit worried that it’s going to be almost a reprise of the second episode. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I mean, I trust Telltale, of course, but they do make mistakes. I suppose we’ll see what happens when I actually get to playing it.