4 episodes. Written by: Oli Smith. Produced by: Glen Parry, Simon Bailey, Howard Neumark. Released by: Asylum Entertainment. Platform: Nintendo DS.
THE PLOT:
The Doctor and Amy materialize on Earth in the distant future - just before the Lucy Gray, the humans' final evacuation ship, leaves the dying planet. The evacuation is not going smoothly. Many of the ship's key components are not working, leaving it up to the Doctor and Amy to make repairs ahead of a planet-wide extinction level event.
The situation is further complicated when the Doctor goes back to the TARDIS... only to discover that it was mistaken for stray metal and made a part of the Lucy Gray!
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| Amy's worries prove to be all too justified... |
CHARACTERS:
Then-current stars Matt Smith and Karen Gillan lent their voices to this and several other attempts at Doctor Who games made during their tenure. Unfortunately, voice work is limited to a handful of scenes portrayed through still frames; and while the two actors do their best, there is a distinct sense that they are sight reading lines that were just handed to them (which is probably not far from the truth). Smith comes off better than Gillan, likely in part because the Doctor's character is at least recognizable while Amy is reduced to "generic companion" status.
GAMEPLAY:
Doctor Who attempts to be Professor Layton, with dubious results.
Gameplay consists of two phases. Most of the time, players navigate through a series of still screens, selecting arrows to move from one location to the next and selecting people and objects to unlock dialogue, add items to inventory, and advance the story.
The rest of the time, players will solve basic logic puzzles. The Doctor's and Amy's quest to assist the Lucy Gray will see them: determining a correct answer based on a set of conditions; assembling circuits like miniature jigsaw puzzles; or finding safe pathways around enemy patrols. Basically, Professor Layton... if that series had an easy mode, and if it lacked any significant variety in the types of puzzles.
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| Puzzles that just might be a slight challenge for a six-year-old. |
THOUGHTS:
In 2010, at the height of Doctor Who's popularity, Nintendo signed a £10 million contract with the BBC to bring the franchise to games consoles. This resulted in exactly two titles, both developed by Asylum Entertainment: the Wii game, Return to Earth, and the DS title, Evacuation Earth.
Evacuation Earth is largely regarded as the better of the two titles... which is enough to make me morbidly curious about its Wii companion, because Evacuation Earth is absolutely not a good game!
The initial scenario is promising, with the adventure/puzzle format proving a decent fit for Doctor Who. For the first part of the game, story progression works pretty well: Chapter One sees the Doctor and Amy trying to find the TARDIS, while Chapter Two sees them putting forth a stronger effort to help the Lucy Gray.
The storytelling starts to go awry in Chapter Three. First one old enemy is brought into the tale, but they provide very little excitement or even complication. The Doctor and Amy get captured; but after they solve a few puzzles, they escape and resolve this underdeveloped subplot in a single cutscene. Which leaves Chapter Four to start a new crisis by wheeling out the Daleks, strictly so that the game developers can justify sticking the metal pepperpots on the cover.
If Chapter Three was underdeveloped, this final chapter is positively anemic. From here, there are only a few puzzles that are all reskins of previous ones, and the already-thin storytelling devolves into a series of "...and then this happens!" Several of the exploration panels look like slight rearrangements of each other. Really, this entire (very short) piece screams that the developers ran out of time, or money, or both!
Oh, and the puzzles? I spotted two with obvious logic errors, including one "find the conditions" puzzle in which it's impossible to find the right answer if you actually match all of the stated conditions. Professor Layton would never approve.
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| The Daleks show up to exterminate any lingering entertainment value... |
OVERALL:
The best I can say for Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth is that it's relatively painless. It's a clear reskin of the much better Professor Layton series, but that format is a decent fit for this franchise, the initial parts of the game are reasonably diverting, and it's short enough to play through in a couple of sittings.
Unfortunately, the storytelling starts out weak and gets worse as it goes. The second half is rushed and haphazardly plotted, and the final chapter is downright poor pretty much from top to bottom.
If a game of this type interests you... just play any of the Layton games instead. You'll get better characters, better stories, better artwork, better puzzles... and really, a just plain better overall experience.
Overall Rating: 3/10.
Set During: Series Five
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