PC

  News 
  Reviews
  Previews
  Hardware
  Interviews
  All Features

Areas

  3DS
  Android
  iPad
  iPhone
  Mac
  PC
  PlayStation 3
  PlayStation 4
  Switch
  Vita
  Wii U
  Xbox 360
  Xbox One
  Media
  Archives
  Search
  Contests

 

Back to the Future The Game: Episode 4: Double Visions

Score: 90%
ESRB: Not Rated
Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
Media: Download/1
Players: 1
Genre: Adventure

Graphics & Sound:

Back to the Future The Game: Episode 4: Double Visions keeps the momentum of the past three episodes up as Marty's latest adventure lands him in a correctional facility of an alternate Hill Valley where Emmett Brown has socially engineered the town into something out of an George Orwell novel.

Double Visions keeps up the game's unique portrayal of the Back to the Future characters with their slightly stylized proportions that are still easily recognizable from the films. The game also continues to show the classic locations of Hill Valley in some interesting lights as we return to the super-clean town that belongs to Citizen Brown, as well as the 1930's version of the city - this time a few months later with a festival in full swing. While we have seen both times before, there are enough changes to make the trip worthwhile.

Similar to the graphics, the game's audio continues to be a big part of making Double Visions feel like a true BttF title. Between Christopher Lloyd's continued reprisal of his role, AJ LoCascio's ability to sound just like a young Michael J. Fox, and the classic theme song permeating the game world, everything sounds just right.


Gameplay:

In the previous episode, Marty had returned to 1986 only to find that his interference caused Emmett to fall for Edna Strickland and what resulted was a town that used the Doc's scientific prowess to put the town under Edna's thumb. When Marty finally convinced Citizen Brown that this wasn't how things were supposed to be, he turned his back on his wife and consequently ended up becoming the next participant in his own "Citizen Plus" program, one designed to completely remap a person's personality.

That's where Back to the Future The Game: Episode 4: Double Visions kicks off. Doc is strapped to a table being worked on while Marty is in a cell waiting for his own treatment. As you might expect, the first order of business is to escape from the clinic. After that, Doc needs to figure out how to fix the DeLorean and then the two of you can go back in time to get young Emmett back on track.

Of course, none of it is as easy as it sounds. Between having to distract the young Edna while you work on young Emmett's focus and the older Brown starting to develop a few problems with his own timeline being erased, Double Visions does a lot in order to set up the season's last episode, OUTATIME.


Difficulty:

Back to the Future The Game: Episode 4: Double Visions's puzzles were pretty middle of the road. While there was a good bit of content to be had and plenty of obstacles to overcome, none ever felt super challenging. I pretty much knew exactly how to take down every challenge the game posed to me and never felt stumped by any part of the game.

There is one puzzle that took me quite a bit of time to get through, but that was mostly due to the fact that it was simply a lengthy process that, if not done just right, would cause the wrong end result and you have to start over again. Thankfully, this particular series of steps could be stopped at any point in the process and started over again, so if you realized that you had made a mistake, you wouldn't have to finish going through the motions before correcting your problem.


Game Mechanics:

Much like the game's graphics and audio, Back to the Future The Game: Episode 4: Double Visions' mechanics follow suit from the previous episodes. Everything from the story that should cause Doc's fearful paradoxes (but for some reason don't) to the amusing puzzles that, especially this time around, can possibly lead to characters running into earlier versions of themselves just screams Back to the Future.

Double Visions is an enjoyable game, and but it is definately not something that can be played and fully understood in a vacuum. Put simply, you need both a familiarity with the films and the previous three episodes in order to understand all of the references and even to solve some of the puzzle presented to you. Then again, I doubt many people would be interested in Double Visions that weren't already at least somewhat familiar with the earlier episodes.


-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

Minimum System Requirements:



XP / Vista / Windows 7, 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent, 2 GB RAM, ATI or Nvidia card w/ 256 MB RAM Video Card, Direct X 9.0c, Audio card required
 

Test System:



Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel i7 X980 3.33GHz, 12 GB RAM, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c

Related Links:



iPad MetalStorm: Online Windows Snark Busters: All Revved Up

 
Game Vortex :: PSIllustrated