Okay, I wrote a blog about Back to the Future - The Game... which I enjoyed... mostly... but I had three serious problems with it - one in particular which I ended up ranting for like two pages about instead and decided to just sum things up on the game real quick and hit you with a *****fest.

Item #1) Game Difficulty - Jbul actually summed up my thoughts on this in general, I'll spare you my thoughts on the industry at large, but this game. Jesus, this game - not only does it want to hold your hand, it wants to bring flowers to your window at night, serenade you and ultimately marry you. It's borderline harassment. I am the type of gamer who sets the difficulty to 11. (points if you get the reference) I say crank it up and strap in. It makes things more interesting in my opinion. If I want an easy game, I'll play an easy game. Hence, I played the point and click adventure game "Back to the Future". However, even with the easy games, particularly when it's wall to wall puzzles - I don't want to hold hands with the game, just shut up and let me work it out myself. Even after I turned all the hints and popups off, the hints stay on in the first area, saying "Have you looked at [this item] yet!?" It did this while I was clicking on all the hot spots in the room, just seeing and hearing Marty's reactions and exploring... the game seemed to take this as me being lost and confused, with no clue what to do and therefore began offering me obvious tidbits I didn't need or want... Like the fat kid in high school who would offer the hot girl some of his french fries in the hope they would then bond and become inseparable as their love blossomed into whatever the hell kids think love is these days. bah.

Item #2) Game Content - when I say content here, I have to clarify that I am speaking about episode one only, and specifically, the amount of time it took me to complete it. I will say that my expectations were ridiculously high on this point, but only in hindsight. Originally I thought I was being quite generous. I figured the 'episode' would last somewhere between 5 and 10 hours. I thought, surely, this episode will carry me to March, then I can start on the second episode, and by the time I finish that, episode 3 will be out and I'll never even notice the blanks in between. Two hours. I played for an hour last night, went to bed, woke up, went to work, came home, played for another hour and then I had completed episode one, and I was taking my time. I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong - but on the list of things I could complete in two hours, a video game hasn't been on that list in years. My top 3 spots aren't even appropriate for this site, but number 4 is power drinking, so whatever escalates from there. I mean, I get that it's just *AN* episode, but... two hours followed by a month of nothing? C'mon.** I would still recommend this game to fans, if this tiny part is an indication of the quality - then fans will not be disappointed. The movement system takes some getting used to, and there are a few syncing issues, but other than that everything is pretty solid. Personally, I'll be waiting until it's all available at once.

**fortunately, I got this episode for free from Telltalegames.com episode 1 is free if you register - so nothing lost.**

Item #3) EPISODIC GAMING - I despise this business model. These games have guaranteed releases each month for their various episodes, which says "the game is completed" to me. It also says "...but you can only have a little bit of it at a time" and ".... you have to pay for it all now"

Just for fun, let's put that all together, shall we?

"Our game is completed... but you can only have a little bit of it at a time.... but we'll take all your money upfront."

At first glance, it's not that bad of an idea - I can almost see the appeal, pay now, and then get a new section of the game every month! Yay! It's like a monthly pre-paid xmas!!! Or a book club, maybe? Like maybe if you get one book, and then they send you one page at a time... something like that. It takes a special kind of person to enjoy that sort of thing I guess. However, I am not that person - I look at it this way: if each episode is roughly two hours of content - that's 10 hours total spaced out over 5 or 6 months. Once again, that is 10 out of some 3,650+ hours - and thinking about it like that, personally, I would rather just have the whole game all at once, play it over the course of a week or two and be done with it... Nevermind that I'd be paying 25 bucks for a 10 hour game, assuming that is roughly the length. I can't see the benefit of these tiny, spaced out releases over a complete release when your customer is paying 100% upfront. Especially given the A.D.D. riddled minds of many gamers today - I don't even HAVE an attention span problem and I can tell you I am not going to remember month to month what is going on, especially on time frames so small. Perhaps if the number of episodes were reduced, and the sections of game were combined into more substantial pieces, maybe halves. I could handle that as long as there wasn't too much time between the two. Maybe I just have no patience and I'm whining for the sake of making noise - but I really do find this model to be obnoxious, the price is relatively small, but so is the game, too small to justify its total release being strung out over the course of 5 months, potentially more since the final episode doesn't have a date next to it. More than that though, this broken up delivery can detract from the overall story, imagine if the new Batman movies, instead of being released as self contained narratives with a beginning and end, were released in 10 minute clips each month over the course of a year, you pay the 15 bucks or whatever for your ticket up front, and each month you can watch another 10 minutes. Wouldn't that be annoying? I defy anyone to go to the theater the 3 or 4 times it would take just to get through the opening act of 'Begins' - god knows I would be bored senseless.


OR WOULD I??

Stay tuned to find out next month for Episodic Gaming, Episode 2!