While the majority of my gaming time has been spent playing Team Fortress 2, it has been mostly trading and pursuing hats.

I got the free first episode of Back to the Future: the Game.  As far as adventure games go, it's nothing special.  The puzzles are pretty simple, not meaning they are always easy to solve, but with such a limited number of objects and locations, you don't have to do a lot of searching or thinking.  You spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with those objects you do have.  Also, even if you do get stuck there is a generous hint system, to help you on your way (or you can not take any hints and just work it out for yourself).

The game is composed of 5 monthly episodes.  Each story takes about 5 hours, so that makes for a decent amount of game play for $25. This game is only available from Steam and that means it can only be download.  I was a bit worried about buying my first game that didn't come with a hard copy, as I always think I will replay my games later on, but in the case of adventure games (especially simple ones), there is no replay value, because once you know what you have to do, there is no challenge.  These are thinking games, and reaction time and such is not a factor.  If you already know the answer, the game has nothing left to offer you.

With all that being said, the game does represent the franchise pretty well. Christopher Lloyd reprises his role of Doc Brown and  AJ LoCascio does a good job of capturing the feel of Marty McFly.  It has the original music from the film and of course the Delorean is used through out the story.  We also get a glimpse into the early days of Doc Brown.  You can kind of think of this as Back to the Future 4, and I feel it is better than Back to the Future 3, or perhaps it should be considered on par with the Back to the Future cartoon show (when is that going to get released on DVD?).  I found the cartoony look of the characters to be appealing, though Doc Brown looks a bit scary, especially in the promotional art I have seen.  It seems in the game they have elected to have Doc Brown age more like the real world Christopher Lloyd has, which seems a bit odd to me, as I though Doc Brown was supposed be rather old in 1985 (the setting of the original film) so I didn't feel he would change much from that look.

 This game is only available from Steam and that means it can only be download.