Doctor Who: The Adventure Games – City of the Daleks

Free downloadable games rarely look so good.

So, today marks the release of the first in the Doctor Who: The Adventure Games series, named City of the Daleks.  Funded by BBC license fees, available for free download (in the UK), executive produced by Steven Moffat and Charles Cecil, developed by Sumo Digital… everything sounds brilliant on paper.  Unfortunately, the reality isn’t quite what one would hope.

I should probably mention before I go any further that I have only experienced the game running under Wine 1.2 on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.  A few of the negative points that follow, particularly those regarding bugs and glitches, may not be valid when running the game “properly”, but it’s difficult for me to say.

The Good

• The storyline is typical of Moffat’s new Doctor, exploring some of the more interesting possibilities of time travel.
• It’s a point-n’-click adventure, which is a sensible choice for a Doctor Who game.
• Rotoscoping Smith and Gillan has resulted in characters that move semi-realistically.
• There are a number of real-world and Doctor Who facts strewn through the game as collectables.
• It’s free, and the storyline is presumably canon.

The Bad

• The textures are a little ropey in places.
• The lip sync is just awful.
• The vocals are pretty poor.  Though Smith and Gillan have done an alright job, the voices and characters just seem… disjointed.
• The controls are mostly mouse-based which makes the camera very difficult to, well, control.
• The gameplay isn’t really anything special.

I understand that the game is supposed to be accessible to gamers of all ages.  I also appreciate that the game’s target audience are all considerably younger than me.  But I don’t think that’s any excuse for repetitive gameplay, “puzzles” that don’t require any real thought or out-of-place minigames.  The vast majority of the game consists of pointing the Sonic Screwdriver at things and stealthily avoiding Dalek’s vision cones; the rest sees the Doctor dragging small circles through a laser maze or hacking into computers by symbol matching.

That being said, hardcore Doctor Who fans will no doubt see the series through to completion regardless.  Sure, the game isn’t fantastic… but it does present an opportunity to spend a few more hours with Amy and the Doctor.  If we’re lucky, this first game is simply supposed to serve as an introduction — I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the next three will grow progressively harder.

(At the time of writing, the game is only available for Windows machines, but the game runs perfectly well under Wine. it wouldn’t surprise me if Mac users unwilling to wait for the official port were able to do the same under Darwine. UK readers can grab themselves a copy at the BBC website — the rest of you will just have to wait.)