So Telltale's Back to the Future has been one of those that I've started a lot but never finished. Which is odd, because it's not actually that long. Maybe I kept playing the demo over and over again (having forgotten that I didn't like it).

Having now completed Episode One... eh... it's OK. What puts me off are the amount of invisible walls and the time it seems to take to get from where I am to where I need to go.... it took me quite a while to discover the run button.

Maybe the story just didn't grab me enough in this one.

There aren't too many puzzles in this one, much of the game seems to be 'remember how to get to this place?' (which my almost 5 year old daughter couldn't).

On the positive side, all of the exits are clearly signposted as such, though they don't indicate where they lead (with signposts)

There's a nice mini game where it asks you maths problems which was nice.

Not the best Humoungus game we've played so far, possibly the worst?

Played through with my daughter. We took rather too much time as we missed getting one of the items from the vending machine and she insisted that we absolutely did get them all. We had an entire chain worked out, but couldn't do the first part because of that.

She complained that it wasn't as much fun as Spy Fox 1, but I think that's just because she doesn't remember Spy Fox 1 as much. She's now insisting that we replay that one, but I might just let her tackle that one by herself and see how good her inventory puzzle adventure game skills have progressed

For some reason I never played this, confusing it with Beneath a Steel Sky and thinking I'd already started but never finished it.

The story is interesting, though I'm a little confused on the setting, it seems almost post apocalyptic but there are still corporations, so clearly not everything has gone to do the dogs.

I didn't feel like there were too many moon logic puzzles, but some were more frustrating than they needed to be. There were a few where I was doing the right thing at the wrong time or didn't realise a gameplay aspect.

But I think I really have two bug bears and both are about the ending where it (a) goes too quickly and (b) has fail states. It really felt like it kind of plods along and then the finale goes wooooosh.

But at the same time you've got this whole section where there are multiple things that you have to do which are mostly on a timer and it kind of felt like I was in a game of Dragon's Lair. It's nice that the game doesn't overly set you back when you fail during this section, but it was kind of frustrating to hear the same lines multiple times.

Anyway, it was a good time, though shorter than I expected and I don't think I'll be back again. Glad it was on Game Pass and it finally pushed me to play it.

Started playing this before the pandemic in Feb where holding hands and having people come around unexpectedly was a great thing.

And finished it as we were going into our second lockdown and it felt a little weird and strange. Though maybe it gives some hope that after any crisis people can still find each other and bring out the best in each other.

There's not much gameplay here and like Katamari it's mostly about the joy and humour of objects.

In this one you start of as a cube (who has a top hat) and you do things in order to bring more living objects back. Each object that comes back is presented with a fanfare and a "Welcome back ". You can switch between objects as some objects have special abilities.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's very laid back.

The game presents you with a final decision at the end and it's possibly the most thoughtful decision I've seen in a game in a while (which is odd, given the laid back and playful nature of the rest of the game).

I'm not sure how much of a difference the decision makes, but it's still nice that it was there.

This is a fine game of returning home after dropping out of college and discovering that your home town isn't they way you remembered it. The conversations that Mae has with Gregg and Bea are nicely written (much better than Life is Strange) and the activities that they go on are varied and interesting.

I found myself going to visit every character I could and checking in all the little things. Bouncing around with Mae was quite entertaining and when you aren't allowed to jump and run around like a goof, it changes the mood drastically.

I really wish the controls were different for the bass sections, I can't get a handle on 4 strings on an xbox controller using the ABXY buttons. I have a bad habit of messing up the middle ones.

The dream sequences started of intersting, but I wish they were more different to each other. At a point I was disinterested in going to sleep, which I'm not sure if that was the intention or not.

I wasn't as taken with the mystery, maybe because it kicks in so late or maybe because I just enjoyed the small town stuff so much. Ended up with a Bea ending as I felt like she was a better influence on Mae than Gregg. Still I hung out with both almost equally so not sure if what I did or said during the activities impacted on the ending.

Anyway, good game, recommended.

If you were to describe what The Artful Escape was to it's basic units, you'd say it's a Simon Says broken up by basic forgiving platforming and dialogue choices that have no impact to the gameplay.

But... this is a game where style trumps substance. The story is about finding ones true self and moving out from under the shadow of a relative and what your expected to be. And it looks and sounds cool while doing it.

Could you get the same experience watching a Let's Play of this game... maybe? But you get to personalise your character at a points in the game and it's certainly fun to do that and be telling your story rather than someone elses. Plus it's very cool to do a running double jump off a ciff and boost with a chord and land on a slope while shredding. In the end your just holding the X button while you run a lot, but it's just very cool.

It doesn't overstay it's welcome and the Simon Says portions don't require you to remember (as you can do them at the same time as they're presented if you wish). And it's on Game Pass, so....

Haven't really played Minecraft, so can't really compare to that, but I enjoyed the story mode, while some of the villagers can be annoying, helping them with their problems and growing the towns was entertaining.

The boss battles were... less than stellar. From a storyline point of view, the game deals with what does it mean to be a hero and should fate always direct your life or can you build a different future to the one that has been laid out for you.

I didn't do most of the challenges (bit cruel not indicating what they are during the worlds) and I'm not sure that I'll be in a hurry to try and do them.

It'd be nice if the freeplay mode didn't have the need to eat, it might be good for the daughter. I'll probably play it just to try and build a lovely town, but not sure how much of it I'll end up playing.

I didn't really enjoy this one. The opening soured me from the get go. The main character doesn't feel like they have anything positive features and all his dialogue just grates. It's like if you took any of the charm of Indiana Jones you'd be left with Joe King.

When Faye and Sparky join things don't really improve. Faye is just annoyed at him constantly and Sparky is just moppy. Once in the jungle I started to find myself annoyed at the games design instead of just the story...

At one point you get a banana. This banana is at a dead end, the furthest point at the crash site. Once you use the banana it will respawn at this point. You can use the banana fairly early on by giving it to the gorilla (and I think you don't need to but they game will take it from you).

You'll need to use the banana (and hence come back to the furthest spot in the crash site multiple times.

And there are just screens that just have one object or puzzle and you'll find once picked up/solved you'll just be walking through empty screens. And he doesn't walk that fast either.

So when I wasn't annoyed by the story, I was bored by the emptiness.

And there's times when I got majorly stuck, though I did go through most dialogue trees just for the sake of doing so, so some puzzles that relied on that I was fine with.

I think my biggest beef was that it wasn't all that funny. You could tell it wanted to be funny, but it didn't land with me.

And it felt quite cobbled together like there's the point where Faye and you nemesis (I can't recall his name) rescue you from the jail. They tell you you'll need to go to the Valley of the Mists and that they need to get back before the Dr realises they're gone. Why can't they take Joe? Because he's been carrying around a rocket pack and a comic book explaining how it's used for nearly the whole game and the game really wants you to see the cut scene.

Eh, while I'm still complaining... there's a brontosorus blocking the path. It's huge! Why can't he just go between the legs!

And in the final face off with the Dr why is the Princess (who is a captive of the Dr) wielding a knife? And how did Sparky get there? Infuriating


But I get it. It was made by a bunch of guys in Queensland who loved Lucasfilm games and it shows, but it didn't gel with me sadly.

I really like the games that Wadjet develop more than the games they publish. This one sort of mixes up Blackwell with Maniac Mansion. At the start of the game you get to pick which character to play as (from a police officer, a barista and a DJ). I picked the police officer and during the game there were specific interactions which were for that character.

The game takes a lot of the spooky elements from the Blackwell series (and there are a few call backs to it), though isn't just limited to the dead this time.

Instead you end up joining the secret supernatural police (not affiliated with the police though) who have been protecting New York. I've been enjoying the Peter Grant series of books of late, so this fit nicely into that.

The game is split into episodes, each episode being dealing with a specific person or group of people but tying into an overarching story (hmmm.... also very Blackwell). And during each episode you decide which two partners will accompany you. How you solve the episode is dependent on this and some characters seem to open up about their lives depending on what's going on the episode. There seems to be at least one episode where the game seems to need three partners though and so it does a little awkward thing where one of the partners says "oh I have an appointment that I need to go to, I'll get so-and-so to come" but generally all of the episodes seem to be able to be done with any two.

The issue though is that you get to see the bits of the puzzle that can be solved with other characters and it can sometimes throw you "if only I had so-and-so, I'd be able to get past this easier". The partners you're with are in your inventory (as well as physically walking around) which is a bit strange.

Sometimes getting your partners to do things that you want isn't always obvious. Normally you select them from the inventory and click on the thing you want them to interact with. At one point I wanted one of the characters to give an item to an npc. To do so need to give the item to my partner and they just knew what I wanted.

That said there's often very few items to deal with so the puzzles aren't overly complicated. There's quite a few password/keypad puzzles. There's nothing that is going to have you pulling your hair out.

The partners also occasionally talk to each other unprompted. Annoyingly though if you change screens or interact with anything they'll stop their conversation and not pick it up again. So you're often waiting for them to finish before doing anything.


At the end of each episode your faced with a choice of how to deal with the supernatural entity. The final episode seems to rely on what choices you made, but it seems to have some flexibility if you choose wrong a couple of times. I'm not sure if you can end up not being able to finish the game though. And there's a couple of different endings depending on how you deal with the final entity. Had a few reloads on that one before I figured out the best way of dealing with it.

The story is quite good and there's a nice twist near the end.

So I played once through this and I don't really have the motivation to play through it again. There's a lot of things I like about the game, the art style is great, the special powers are delightful and I like the concept of the game aligning to your play style.

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But I found the story and the setting a little flat. It seemed to be looking to ask big questions about AI and humanity but I don't feel like the questions where as big as it thinks they are, nor do I feel like the game has any opinions about what the answers could be.

I really liked their previous game (Kathy Rain), but this one just left me cold. I hope that they do another game like this with a story that really grabs me.