What I Played Today: January 15

Back to the Future: The Game, Red Dead Redemption

I finished the first chapter of Back to the Future Game, in which some antics happen. I liked it, it distills a lot of the wackiness of the original movies into a final sequence that's really fun, although some of the in-jokes were just too obvious and didn’t really need to be there. Yes, we know it’s Back to the Future, but you don’t have to keep recreating the exact same scenes. History does not repeat itself in such a contrived fashion. Every single Tannen does not need to drive into manure.

My favorite part was probably when you had to run the experiment while young Doc was offscreen encoding instructions in an argument he was having. It was fast-paced and clever, if a bit long. I’m also glad that most of the puzzles came together in my mind eventually but not immediately, and when I was completely at a loss of what to do, Marty happened to say the one thing that got the ball rolling in my head.

I also ended up reading the walkthrough after I was done, just to remember what I had done up to that point, and wound up looking at the comments and laughing. Some people are just such massive jerks and dummies, like the guy who was so mad about the final scene that he stopped playing before the very last decision because it was just too silly for him. He even used the term “jumped the shark,” which means exactly nothing. This is the first chapter of the game! You can just say you don’t think the game is good if that what’s you’re trying to say. There’s also a guy who didn’t understand the $25 was for the entire game and thought he was being asked to pay for each individual chapter. And the idiot who asked where one can download the game…on the website for the game.

Also been getting into Red Dead Redemption again, I’m finally out of Mexico, and even though it’s strongly implied I still have a lot to do, the game sets you up two or three missions in a row in which you get a lot done in the context of your goal. Considering you’ve been dicking around fighting a war that isn’t yours for 20 missions before that, it’s really weird that so much happens in those last two Mexico missions.