Tag: doctor who

Never mind Avengers: Infinity War – meet Doctor Who: Infinity

by Tom Buxton, posted in Videos

They say time waits for no man, but that knowledge hasn’t stopped followers of the BBC’s longest-running drama Doctor Who from getting mighty impatient for new content.

With two months already having passed since the TV sci-fi saga’s tenth season reached its denouement, and only a single Christmas special due to air between now and the Jodie Whittaker-starring Season 11 next autumn, fans are craving other outlets through which to explore time and space.

Enter Tiny Rebel Games, who – off the back of their 2013 gem-crunching puzzle strategy effort Doctor Who: Legacy – intend to provide a worthy stop-gap gaming experience to tide starving Whovians for the next 12 months…

Takeaways:

  • Titled Doctor Who: Infinity, the UK development studio’s second ever mobile outing will – like Legacy – take the form of a RPG puzzle entry focused on the “match three gems” gameplay of its predecessor.
  • Tiny Rebel won’t say much on the core narrative driving Infinity, save for assembling a team of Doctors and companions from throughout the show’s 52-year-history to plough through “comic-book style puzzle adventures” galore.
  • Don’t expect a direct follow-up to Legacy‘s disparate story arcs exploring the various eras of Who either. Executive producer Susan Cummings says “this isn’t a sequel” so much as a “new platform for delivery of stories written by well-known Doctor Who writers”.
  • Speaking of which, expect for Infinity to debut with a Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) adventure penned by regular Who novelist and audio scribe George Mann in the form of The Dalek Invasion of Time, also featuring art by Mike Collins and an appearance by the character’s long-time frenemy Missy too.

Intrigued yet? Join the club – while we’re longing for a licensed Who video game to grace consoles soon (despite the struggles involved, which we’ve listed here), for now any new forays into the series’ vast mythology are welcome, particularly in the midst of its hefty TV hiatus.

Look for Doctor Who: Infinity to get a “soft launch” for a select band of players in Spring 2018, with a full-scale release for mobile devices and PCs on iTunes, Google Play and other digital stories following swiftly thereafter.

In the meantime, be sure to let us know your thoughts on the project’s comic-book-inspired premise in the comments below…

Viewpoint: 5 Reasons Why A Doctor Who Game Can’t Work

by Tom Buxton, posted in Viewpoints

I present to you 5 reasons why a Doctor Who game can’t work. (Believe me, I would really want it to).

THE CHARACTERS: Any fan of Who will be able to safely say that one of the show’s most impressive traits that has secured its place in television history for forty-eight years now is its character drama.

When the programme returned in 2005, it placed a central focus on the life of Rose Tyler, a teenage shop worker who found herself caught up in the life of a time-travelling alien. We followed Rose and the Doctor over the course of thirteen episodes, witnessing the tragic destruction of the planet Earth, the invasion of London by the Slitheen, the horrifying effects of the return of a lone Dalek on the Time Lord and ultimately his startling regeneration prompted by love and loyalty from his most devoted companion. More than ever before in the ‘classic era’, Russell T Davies placed a distinct focus on the companion and each of the emotional ramifications of these ground-breaking events on her, something which made for brilliant television seven years back and still rings true with Steven Moffat’s interpretation today.

Now, unless game developers have plentiful cut scenes to the point of Metal Gear Solid, Doctor Who video games are going to have to tone down the focus on the emotions and actions of the protagonists to the point that much of the heart of the show may be removed in the process, thus possibly leaving us with a dull imitation of the programme rather than a realistic depiction.

THE VISUALS: A simple one to explain, really: until BBC Worldwide actually invests some proper time and cash into making the graphics of a Doctor Who video game look as if they were intended for a current-generation console release rather than for the PlayStation 2 or GameCube in 2004, we’re never going to be able to be totally satisfied with the results of the final product. We had the atrocious 2010 frankenstein creature that was Return To Earth for the Nintendo Wii, and the hideously retro style of the Layton-alike DS effort Evacuation Earth. We need a modern game with modern graphics.

THE MYSTERY: Ever since An Unearthly Child kicked off the show’s extraterresterial and time-shifting exploits with its romp to the age of cavemen in 1963, fans have been constantly amazed at what the BBC can achieve in terms of Who’s special effects budget and rendering of alien worlds and past/future timelines. As soon as you move into the video games industry, then, you’re given an obligation to try and match that sense of wonder and mystery that comes every time the Doctor and his companion step outside the TARDIS doors, an obligation which BBC Worldwide ignored as they brought us spaceship corridors, junkyards which are hugely reminiscent of Earth’s and other lifeless environments.

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Eternity Clock at least used multiple time periods and incarnations of London (as well as Storm Cage, an alien prison), a more daring set of locations than any past endeavour by developers, yet that was still fairly lacking in ambition on SuperMassive’s part. Nothing will surprise me quite as much as the show can when I walk out of those blue police box doors, and that that will always be the case in Doctor Who video games.

THE SCRIPT: Once again, this comes down to the format of the episodes in their modern day context, but to an extent it relates back to the ’63-’89 era too. If you go back and look at any single story of Who, I guarantee that you’ll be able to find some great one-liners that come back to haunt the characters later (“It is returning…it is returning through the dark…and then, oh but then…he will knock four times…”), romantic or family-based heart-warming dialogue to bring the audience together in joy or laughter (“I’ll suffer if I have to kill you.” “More than the entire universe?” “Yes.”

The grand extent of the humour in Return To Earth was the Cyber-Men demanding an AI be converted, only for her to keep retaliating with “But I do not want to be converted”. Really?

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THE PLOT RESOLUTIONS: How can you ever top the huge cliffhangers the show has in video game? It’s in moments like these where Doctor Who shines totally as a television show, and which convince me that there is no way of accurately portraying the drama in a gameplay-focused product without losing a whole heap of what makes it great along the way.

What are your thoughts reader, can there ever be a good Doctor Who game?