Doctor Who: The Adventure Games

[Forbin]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/news/bulletin_100408_01/adventure_game

First episode will be in a couple weeks. I hope it's not the typical terrible licensed game. Of all intellectual properties, I can't think of another more suitable for a point and click adventure.

[lobotomy42]

I'll hit it.

[elmuerte]

I don't know. Just point the sonic screwdriver at anything (except wood apparently) and it does what you want it to do.

[Forbin]

lol, yeah I guess it may come down to that.

[Forbin]

This video made me go from interested to fearful of this game. They seem to be obsessed with minutia that's been common in game development for 15 years. They didn't show anything unique about the game or their processes, maybe the team that edited together the bit was just completely clueless. Yeah it's really interesting, you've got a model and a texture, and you're going to animate it... Oh wait a second, you've got objects in the world the characters are going to interact with? USP

God I hope it's not terrible.

[brkl]

They've got Charles Cecil involved, which could be good news. I love Beneath a Steel Sky and Broken Sword, but those were a long time ago.

[lobotomy42]

Do you watch Doctor Who Confidential normally? They focus on the same trivial shit when they talk about the episodes. Often they just have the director, writer and stars sit there and recount the plot of the episode you've just watched, with the most superficial, blatantly promotional commentary imaginable. ("Did you think that was exciting? Just wait till you see what happens NEXT week!")

Eurogamer has a hands-on:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/dr-who-the-adventure-games-city-of-the-daleks-hands-on

[Forbin]

It looks like they made the wrong kind of adventure game. Curse that infinitely ambiguous term.

[elmuerte]

  Forbin said:

Oh... that sounds awful.

[DanJW]

The animation looks really shit. 10 years out of date. Rotoscoping but no motion capture? Motion capture would be a must, I would have thought.

But never mind about the visuals. It's the quality of the puzzles right? And at least the snippets of dialogue sounded... alright (except that it includes the Darleks. I just realised that the Darleks bore me to tears by this point).

On a slightly tangential note, I have noticed that lots of TV trailers for games are looking rubbish recently. Badly voice-overed, badly edited and boring shots chosen. I did some work once as a "virtual camera man" capturing video to be edited into a trailer by someone else on ten times my salary. It was fun and not all that difficult to get nice looking shots. But some of the adverts I see on TV now... they make games as a whole look a bit rubbish.

[NoChorus]

  DanJW said:

. But some of the adverts I see on TV now... they make games as a whole look a bit rubbish.

This would have been markedly improved if it had the IllBleed trailer music playing behind it, that would at least explain how dead the two of them look.

It really does look if the new doctor who had come out around 2001 and they had a scene where they got TRAPPED IN A COMPUTER VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT GAME! A bit too reminiscent of Reboot for my liking.

Also not to be all fannish inquisitional but don't both Matt Smith and Karen Gillan sound completely unconvinced by how good the game is? And they act for a living. Oh well.