The Doctor Who Adventure Games

Today was the launch of Doctor Who series 9 but I won't give any spoilers in case you missed it. As always I was left wanting more Doctor Who action beyond the episode, and also grumbling to myself about the stuff that contradicted the classic era! But then I remembered 2010 and the launch of the BBC's Doctor Who Adventure games and then a thought hit me: what happened to them?

The first game launched in this series was City of the Daleks which I greatly enjoyed. The games weren't that hard but they were a love letter to the Doctor Who universe filled with Easter Eggs, many of which pointing towards the classic years with Varga plants from Mission to the Unknown (the prelude to the Dalek's master Plan - the 12 part epic from 1965-1966!) and and a Kontron Crystal from the Sixth Doctor's Timelash. But aside from the nods back to the early days this game was incredible, my advice is to get it from the BBC's Doctor Who website rather than pay £2.50 for it on Steam! Next came Blood of the Cybermen which was sort of the obligatory ice levels in games, I played the opening mission of this one but then I experienced a weird glitch. Near one of the buildings where you fight the first Cyberman there was a mound of snow and I managed to fall through it and then through the map. I basically became a ghost, able to walk through walls and into the research station. It made avoiding Cybermen easier but I couldn't interact with anything and I couldn't fix the game even by reinstalling it.

The last three games I haven't played, the next game was TARDIS where the player can fly the TARDIS as Amy and save the Doctor from suffocating in space! Next comes Shadows of the Vashta Nerada in which the Doctor and Amy must duke it out with the Vashta nerada on Christmas Eve. This ended series 1 and mere months later series 2 launched with The Gunpowder Plot which featured Rory as well as the Sontarans. By the title you may be able to guess that the TARDIS crew may be meeting Guy Fawkes somewhere in the game, maybe as he plans to blow up Parliament...

So what happened to the rest of series 2? This was about the time when the team who made these games were moving on to make the PS3 title Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock, which if I'm perfectly honest was not as good as the adventure games. This game was more of a 2.5D side scroller rather than a 3D puzzle solving platformer. Doctor Who has rarely seen a good console release, I enjoyed Return to Earth on the Wii but then the game glitched out completely and now the Doctor and Amy keep crouching and walking around on their own. I have zero control over them but it can be fun to watch. The PS2 had Top Trumps: Doctor Who, it was fun but hardly challenging. Then we can delve way back to the archives of systems such as the BBC Micro but we'll save that for a later date. The Adventure Games were probably the best example of a Doctor Who game, it's just a shame they abandoned the project to make the jump to the console market but we can still enjoy the games on the BBC website and save our £2.50s until Steam's summer sales!

#DoctorWho #BBC