Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

I started into the second episode of Back to the Future with a giddy sense of excitement.  The first one hit me with a solid blast of nostalgia from my childhood.  Marty McFly and the rest of the Back to the Future gang were an integral part of my teen years at the movies, and Episode One of the series did everything right to keep up the memory of the movies.  The second episode, “Get Tannen”, is not a bad episode, but with the nostalgia kick gone after the first one, the flaws of the series start to stand out like a sore thumb.

As stated before, it is not that Get Tannen is a bad series.  In continues to bring us the recurring cast that we are oh so familiar with, while adding several new ones that are fun and add some new twists to the plot.  We continue our story through 1931, now finding out that we might have missed a thing or two in correcting the timeline from the first game.  Marty is now phasing in and out of time, and it will take us making sure that we stop his grandfather’s murder to set things back to normal.

While the story is fun, and even has us revisiting 1986, if only for a few minutes to realize that our trip to 1931 screwed something up, the other component that makes up a solid adventure game are puzzles and here is where the wheels come off the wagon.  I kind of got the hint that after the first title in the series, we would not see any “create a mustache from cat hair, a coat hanger and some scotch tape” puzzles, but it seems that they were extremely simplified in this new episode.  Many of the puzzles will never hold you back that long, and the game provides way too many subtle hints as to what you need to do next.  I understand that with a mass media property like this, you need to open up the difficulty to the casual gamer crowd, but it leaves the game without any real substance.  Most gamers can cruise control their way through the puzzles and will feel shortchanged at the lack of substance in the difficulty.

It is nice that Hill Valley in 1931 still looks nice, but it also feels tired at this point.  I understand that the Telltale modus operandi is to use assets to their fullest potential, but it feels like lazy design.  There are so many directions we could have gone, but nope, back to 1931 we go.  It just feels like with a time machine, you have so many places and options you can go.  Of course, the harder issue is coming up with a story that involves a relative, a descendant of Biff and some form of conflict.  I didn’t mind revisiting some old favorites in this second episode, but the third title has to deliver something new if it is going to continue catch the attention of gamers.

And it is not as if Get Tannen is a bad game.  The characters are fun, the voice work is noticeably improved for a lot of the secondary players, and I genuinely enjoy the environments, even if they are reused.  But with puzzles that take little to no effort to solve, you have a game that is a cakewalk to finish, and leaves you wanting so much more.  Back to the Future Episode Two: Get Tannen gets 2.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Check out Back to the Future Episode Two and other PC  reviews at Test Freaks.