Nukezilla Review: Doctor Who: The Adventure Games – City of the Daleks

As both a loyal Doctor Who fan and gamer, I felt it my duty to give the recently released game adaptation of the new-look series a go. With the Eleventh Doctor well-established (and being portrayed rather brilliantly by Matt Smith, might I add), the BBC have felt that now would be a good time to tackle the problem of transitioning the television show into an action-adventure game.

A problem, you ask? Surely the structure of the television show and the show aesthetic would make for a great videogame? That would certainly be good reasoning, but the problem isn’t so much with the actual transition but with the genre of game being made. How do you make an action-adventure game with a protagonist who doesn’t use weapons?

Enter Doctor Who: The Adventure Games – a free-to-play action-adventure series that uses the “action” element quite loosely. Your enemies can kill you but to beat them you must solve puzzles and complete objectives to trigger cutscenes which deal with the enemies you face. There’s no firing up of the Jammie Dodgers, oh no. You get the trusty sonic screwdriver and the Doctor’s mind as weapons – The Adventure Games is really a puzzle/action-adventure with the action bit in spirit.

City of the Daleks is the first of four adventures within the series – the other three are on the way so for now you’ll have to live with just stopping the Daleks. It won’t take you very long to do so, mind: less than 90 minutes after booting the game up and the credits were rolling. While the game is a free “episode”, I was expecting a bit more content – that being said, the game is directed to almost simulate the 45 minute television show and even though you’re playing the game, the attention to detail put into simulating the TV experience makes the short experience more rewarding.

In this outing the Doctor and Amy have travelled back to 1963 – they are in London, but it seems the Daleks have altered time and taken over the world. Only one human is alive now and after seeing her evade a Dalek attack, the Doctor and Amy pursue her to find out why and how events in time have been altered. The familiar witty humour and British charm the TV show has is on display in the game; the scriptwriting is just as good here as its televisual counterpart.

Both Matt Smith and Karen Gillan lend their voices to the game which makes things more engaging – the set-up of the game is so that you can instantly connect with the characters like you do with the show. The game even goes as far as show the characters’ mannerisms (although with the graphical quality being held back by its free-to-play ethos this isn’t as apparent as you may envisage).

It’s all well and good having the game play out like the show, but how does it actually play? Quite well actually: you control the Doctor (and Amy later on) using either the directional buttons or the standard WASD movement. You can interact with items and objects within the game – when prompted on-screen you left-click to get information, pick up a key item or a collectible or engage a cutscene. The collectibles are more of a fan-targeted thing: the collectible section of the game will pan over the series and it’s pretty much the game’s way of getting you to play the episodes more than once. Found all the collectibles? No? Have another go, then.

The movement of the characters and the click-to-interact control can be just a tad sticky but in the grand scheme of things I’m picking at an insignificant problem. I didn’t really have any problem when playing the game: whether that’s because the game was generally quite fluid or because the catering of the game aiming at a wider audience dims the difficulty, I have yet to decide.

When you’re not avoiding Dalek detection as you progress through the game you partake in puzzle solving: different challenges such as connecting wires without crossing them or moving a component around an electrical circuit maze without touching the sides are fairly simple challenges to complete. For your average gamer, you should have minimal trouble finishing the puzzles in the game.

In fact, you should have no real trouble at any point in the game: avoiding the Daleks is just a case of “if you enter their sight path, you die” and avoiding the other enemy featuring is just a case of dodging their attack. The Adventure Games won’t offer gamers any real challenge so if you’re not a fan of Doctor Who this isn’t the game for you. This is definitely a game designed to cater more to the fans and casual gamers.

The Adventure Games is bite-size, but considering it’s free and the set-up of the game is very much like the television show, you can’t really go wrong… if you’re a fan of the show, that is. The Adventure Games is definitely for Doctor Who fans and if you are one of them, you won’t be disappointed.