It's hard to put this nicely, but having played a significant portion of its open beta, I can tell you now that if its developers hope it to be a good time-filler for fans waiting for the show's return this Autumn, then Doctor Who: Worlds In Time needs work. If this was just a problem with the visual style (it's not- I love it, and I'm sure the kid audience this is targeted at will too), SEGA could easily go about fixing any glitches, but at its heart my core problem with the game is this: it's not a fun game to play. The story moments, where the Doctor guides you to new worlds to find fragments of time which need to be put back into place to fix the Vortex, are packed with all of the charm and humour that the Matt Smith era of the show possesses, with some genuinely laugh-out loud lines that could have come straight out of Smith's mouth in an episode, but once you're outside the doors of the TARDIS, it becomes a tiresome chore to interact with characters, to do puzzles for sonic screwdriver work and battles, to do...well, anything really. The bugs I was encountering at countless stages in my gameplay experience were irksome to say the least, near game-breaking stuff that will infuriate any gamer fans hoping for the ultimate Who video game, simply because this is about as far from it as we've ever come (bar the atrocious Wii effort Return to Earth, which didn't even try to look better than a PSOne title). If the developer can make it so some of the disjointed puzzles are easier to work, and so that the teamwork amongst players is more fluent and productive, there's actually a lot of potential here for a great kids MMORPG, but until then you should stick well clear of Doctor Who: Worlds In Time, because in its current state it really doesn't seem to be worth playing.
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Sunday, 1 January 2012
WORLD EXCLUSIVE Doctor Who: Worlds In Time Impressions
It's hard to put this nicely, but having played a significant portion of its open beta, I can tell you now that if its developers hope it to be a good time-filler for fans waiting for the show's return this Autumn, then Doctor Who: Worlds In Time needs work. If this was just a problem with the visual style (it's not- I love it, and I'm sure the kid audience this is targeted at will too), SEGA could easily go about fixing any glitches, but at its heart my core problem with the game is this: it's not a fun game to play. The story moments, where the Doctor guides you to new worlds to find fragments of time which need to be put back into place to fix the Vortex, are packed with all of the charm and humour that the Matt Smith era of the show possesses, with some genuinely laugh-out loud lines that could have come straight out of Smith's mouth in an episode, but once you're outside the doors of the TARDIS, it becomes a tiresome chore to interact with characters, to do puzzles for sonic screwdriver work and battles, to do...well, anything really. The bugs I was encountering at countless stages in my gameplay experience were irksome to say the least, near game-breaking stuff that will infuriate any gamer fans hoping for the ultimate Who video game, simply because this is about as far from it as we've ever come (bar the atrocious Wii effort Return to Earth, which didn't even try to look better than a PSOne title). If the developer can make it so some of the disjointed puzzles are easier to work, and so that the teamwork amongst players is more fluent and productive, there's actually a lot of potential here for a great kids MMORPG, but until then you should stick well clear of Doctor Who: Worlds In Time, because in its current state it really doesn't seem to be worth playing.
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