Doctor Who: The Adventure Games is a strange beast indeed. Before we can move forward with this review, we need a bit of back story, no not on Doctor Who, I’m sure you all know that’s the show where Captain Picard pilots the Battlestar Galactica to protect Babylon 5, but you need to understand where this game came from.
Doctor Who: The Adventure Games was a series of episodic third-person adventure games, based on the long running BBC television series Doctor Who and was developed by Sumo Digital exclusively for the PC with UK fans being the only ones who had access to the episodes. Charles Cecil served as executive producer and worked alongside Sean Millard and Will Tarratt on the design. The game, or episodes, were successful enough to call for a release via Steam that dropped March 18 2014
So, does the game hold up? Well, yes and no. I know, I know what the hell does that mean I hear you scream. As a series of Doctor Who episodes, the game succeeds and provides a lot of nice fan service, but as an adventure game it falls well below the standards we have come to expect. Controls are clunky, levels are small, cramped and don’t allow for much adventuring and the bland, lifeless character animations make the already mediocre voice acting from the cast (I don’t expect Matt Smith to be doing any radio plays in the future) feel even less impressive.
Matt Smith (The 11th Doctor, or is he the 12th… Who the hell knows at this point) moves around the screen like a tank, which is strange because when you begin to move him in any direction, your feet scoot around like the Roadrunner for a split second, and when you come to a stop your soles seem to covered in copious amounts of custard. I can’t help but think that if The Doctor slowed down and just walked to and fro, we would have a much better game. Trying to line up with an in-game item can be as difficult as running barefoot across an ice rink; needless to say the controls in the game are poor even by early adventure game standards. The camera is assigned to the mouse and jitters around like it’s been attached to an epileptic otter. If I didn’t have a high-end gaming mouse plugged in that allowed me to adjust the sensitivity on the fly, I fear the game would have been near unplayable. You will also revisit the same areas again and again, albeit in “different” (imagine me doing air quotes as you read that) time periods. Look, I get that in the old Doctor Who every alien planet was shot in some quarry out back, but this is a game that originally came out in 2011, and with a property like Doctor Who should have a little more variety in its levels.
All enemies, whether they be Daleks , Varga Plants, Cybermen, etc all require the same basic tactic. You wait for them to not see you, then walk on past close enough to reenact the clay molding scene from Ghost. If any enemy does manage to catch you inside their Metal Gear Solid 1 cone field of vision you are killed instantly; Well, the game does allow for the same yellow alert phase from MGS 1, but more often than not you will just be exterminated (see what I did there).
The game does get a little better as the episodes progress, almost as if the developers were starting to figure out how to make all the separate pieces work together. The story-lines are your average Doctor Who fare, picking the very best, and most notable of the Doctors enemies to prod out before us. The voice acting as well improves slightly as the cast starts to get more into their characters, Karen Gillan stands out as doing a pretty good job alongside the utterly bland voice over given by Matt Smith.
There is one way Doctor Who: The Adventure Games is better than say, the Last of Us, hold on let me explain before you furiously type away your angry comments. Amy is a far better companion (chuckle, chuckle) than Ellie ever was. For one, you are required to keep her safe as enemies can see her, and attack. At least in this respect Amy is a better handled character, unlike Ellie who is only there to move the plot forward while ten clickers play musical chairs around her. We aren’t talking about RE 4 levels of escort here as Amy does have this fondness for walking right in front of enemies whenever she damn well pleases.
The game is broken up into episodes which were released over the period of a year, on the BBC website, before being stopped in favor of creating a PS3 game. Oh, you don’t remember The Eternity Clock on PS3? Don’t worry, the people who made it don’t remember it either. What we end up getting are five separate episodes, built like an episode of the series ,with intro and credits, that run about the length of a standard television episode if you don’t faff about. If you take your time looking for collectibles, stop to go out and grab some food, work on your tax return, you can find yourself spending around two hours at most per episode. In total, you will have around ten hours or less of gameplay, which would be okay if not for the $20 they are asking for a game that was once free, and came out over two years ago.
But not everything is all bad, the collectibles are really fun, and are some of the best I’ve seen in a game in a long time. You can find a ton of Doctor Who icons scattered throughout each level, and each resembles a trading card when collected. You get a really nice still from the history of past Doctors and the series villains, as well as some nice trivia about the show. Fun Fact: Did you know The Sixth Doctor has been the only Doctor to date who managed to fix the TARDIS’s chameleon circuit? The ability to take control of another character is nice diversion, even if all the characters play the same, but let’s be serious here, all we want is to play as the Doctor, running around sticking a Sonic Screwdriver into everyone’s faces.
This is strictly a game for the huge Doctor Who fan as gameplay wise, I would list is more as baby’s first adventure game. If you aren’t into the series, or are looking for a great adventure game, then you will want to look elsewhere. It’s a shame that a game released for free, episodically in the UK, costs everyone else $20, especially when Steam is inundated with great games for far less. If this had come out at under a fiver, I think it would be an excellent buy for casual game fans, but as it is, only fans of the series will enjoy it.
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