This episodic adventure series has been quite a ride so far, with all sorts of great plot twists as Marty McFly tries to once again set history right only to be foiled by unintended consequences and having the odds stacked against him. Double Visions does a wonderful job of taking the story thus far and moving it in an interesting direction, one that should set the stage for an excellent finale. While Marty struggles to deal with the oppression in ’dystopian 1986’, he may find both aid and trouble from unexpected angles and find himself in stranger places still.
Like most of the previous episodes, Double Visions is a little short and can be completed in about two to three hours even if you explore as much as you can. And as before, this episode mostly gets by on the strength of its characters; how they interact with one another, what story they tell together, with great music and voice work bringing it all to life. Using point-and-click adventure game mechanics to solve Marty’s problems also remains a natural fit, and the general ’feel’ of Back to the Future is definitely here.
Discussing the plot in any detail is of course problematic, since the story is the whole reason you play an adventure game or episode thereof; spoilers ruin it. Instead of discussing specific events, it suffices to say that Double Vision’s plot is quite an active one with many events going on, and tons of characters to meet. The episodes focusing on this have been among the best in the series, and Double Vision’s mix of bringing some plot threads to reasonable conclusions and adding interesting twists to others gives it the strongest story of the episodes thus far.
Unfortunately, even as Double Visions embraces the series’ strengths it also carries on with the same weaknesses in puzzle design and quality assurance checks. A few lines of dialog and certain animations are clearly missing, resulting in you missing out on certain plot points (though they seem to be fairly minor; most of the story made sense to me despite the omissions) and having characters occasionally do things that make no physical sense such as reaching for an object that is clearly not anywhere near there; they just grasp at empty air. More damning is that a few puzzles require you to repeat a solution, as often as four or five times in a single location. It should be clear the player has figured out the puzzle, so forcing them to keep repeating the solution is silly; just get on with the game! There is even one instance where the game’s ’goals text’ tells you to have Marty pursue tasks he can’t even begin to attempt yet; you actually have to go elsewhere and do something completely unrelated to your declared goal.
The end result is that Back to the Future Episode 4: Double Visions has a dual nature. It tells a great story that really moves the season’s plot along, and asks some really interesting questions about the ethics of just restoring one ’correct’ timeline while trying to negate others; this has after all been the premise of most Back to the Future plots, but what are the real implications? On the other hand it is a terrible game, with wildly varying puzzle quality (some are very good, others wear out their welcome almost immediately) and QA failures that are starting to become a little too common. Yet the story is more than good enough that you’ll gladly suffer through these issues and it properly sets the stage for the final episode; it’s definitely worth your time.
