So, it's christmas then right? And being that I'm an overly verbose Doctor Who fanboy with far too much time on my hands there's only one logical thing that I'm gonna be writing about today.
Part 4 of the adventure games.
I WOULD be doing a review of the christmas special, but I want to watch it through again before doing so and it wasn't yet on iplayer last time I checked. However the final installment of the adventure games has been available for a few days now, only I hadn't gotten around to playing it yet. Something to do with the ridiculous amount of grinding I've been doing on Devil Summoner. But this morning I finally managed to play through.
These games have certainly been an interesting experiment. Had they decided to charge for them I have no doubt I would have bought them, though perhaps not in as timely a manner as I've aquired them thus far. They're not bad games by any means. However neither are they, in all honesty, the most shining examples of the art ever commited to disk. They're a fun enough diversion for an evening, which seems to be about right for this whole episodic thing. Replay value I'm not sure of yet. I can't say I've felt particularly motivated to replay the others thus far, though I do think it would be interesting to work through them now we've got the whole lot and see how things progress. Or not.
See, the question you might well ask about this fourth installment is "what does this add to the series?" and the answer is, basically, more of the same. It's not really a dramatic departure in any way. There's a few puzzles, a bit of exploration, a bit of stealth. Fairly basic stuff that was established in part 1. Not exactly "hardcore" but then why should it be? It works well enough, suits the tone of the show and is simple enough for the younger ones to play without getting annhiliated. Not that it's THAT easy. I still died plenty of times.
The big thing this time of course is the return of the Vashta Nerada. As a monster they do seem to be one that would suit the game environment. And they're used reasonably well as you might imagine they would be. In addition the odd lumbering suit coming to get you (Barbera) there's a bit of light based running around puzzles.
Kind of.
See, whilst the whole keep out of the shadows OR DIE thing works very well I must confess that a lot of the time the shadowy realm of death parts didn't look particularly dark. At all. It's hardly Fury From The Deep bright, but I do think they could have upped the contrast a bit, which would add to the atmosphere as well as making things a bit more obvious. Though it's always possible this is just my crappy display. Who knows? My impression is that the Vashta Nerada could have been utilised slightly better.
Whilst I don't think the game is particularly longer than any of the others it does manage to FEEL bigger. This is due in a large part to the glass corridors of the sea base. At the start there is an awful lot of running down corridors as a giant mutant alien shark harrases you, which certainly adds to the feel of the available square footage. But it's really being able to see the base sprawling around you (as well as said shark swimming around) that gives a feel of openess. Contrast this with the view out of the windows in City Of The Daleks, which was a matt job painted on the inside of a bubble, and you've got a much less claustrophobic feel. Even though you're trapped in a base at the bottom of the ocean.
Story wise things are okay I suppose, though there is a bit of rather jarring jumping around in one or two places that really disturb the flow of things. There's bad stuff happening, everbodies getting eaten. save the day, defeat the bad guys, back home on time for tea.
It's also here that I've finally pinpointed one of the main problems with these games. See, whilst the voice recording seems well and good there's always been something that felt a little off with dialogue. After watching a few episodes of the series in close conjunction I've finally realised that, quite simply, it's just that a large part of matt Smiths performance is very physical. The way he moves is just not something that you really capture in a game like this. Frankly I doubt you could capture it even with a huge budget "proper" AAA game on whatever overpriced console happens to be flavour of the week right now.
Overall there's really not much I can say. If you liked the other chapters then you'll probably like this one too. If you didn't then I don't think there's anything on offer here that'll change your mind. Considering that all 4 games are available free I don't think there's really much to complain about. Whilst not perfect these have, I think, certainly been a shot in the right direction and have proven the viability of Doctor Who based games. What will be particularly interesting is to compare them to the new Wii game and see which comes out best.
But that is a job for the new year I think.
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