THE ADVENTURE GAMES EP 1 – ONLINE NOW!

• 2nd June 2010 • Blog Post by Seb Patrick •

Go go go. Go go go go go go go go go. Get it now, now now now.

Fuck knows why it’s gone online now when it’s not supposed to be out until Saturday, but let’s not complain. Give it a CRACK, and come and tell us what you think, and we’ll have a review or some sort up ourselves at some point over the next week.

(Unless you’ve got a Mac, in which case you’ve got to wait until the 15th. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.)

Seb Patrick once met Paul McGann, who immediately pretended to be Mark McGann. He writes for Den of Geek, BBC America, Film4 and the official Red Dwarf website, among others. He owns over thirty toy Daleks and wishes the Dapol factory tour was still open.

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13 Responses

  1. Oh good, serve me right for being smug about Macs – it won’t play on my netbook despite the “system checker” saying it would (the cutscenes are just cripplingly slow – didn’t even get as far as the gameplay) and on my other PC, it refuses to acknowledge that I’m connected to the internet even though I FUCKING AM.

    So it can fuck off, frankly.

  2. A fun little way to spend half an hour or so. This is exactly how a Doctor Who game should be done with a mixture of stealth and puzzles. My only gripe? Would have bn nice to have had some explination about Skaro being intact and all.

  3. > it refuses to acknowledge that I’m connected to the internet even though I FUCKING AM.

    With any luck you’ll be ok after a quick reset. I’m downloading it now to give it a try over lunchtime.

    EXCITING.

  4. BREAKING NEWS: What a load of bullcrap. I’m getting exactly the same problem as Seb is on his Netbook. The graphics are laggy as fuck meaning all the dialogue is out of sync. Now, my work PC isn’t exactly a top of the line gaming PC, but it should be MORE than capable of playing this game smoothly on 800×600.

    Tut tut.

  6. Yeah, I did actually end up sitting through the opening cutscene on my netbook, and it was terribly stilted – even allowing for the long pauses between lines while the animation caught up! Both sounded a bit off, and in Matt’s case I think it emphasised just how much of his performance is down to his brilliant physical acting and mannerisms, which the game simply can’t replicate.

    It’s such a shame, though – I waited for the gameplay bit to see if it was any better, but it was still just so slow. Frustrating, as if you’d asked me what my ideal game would be, it would probably involve running around as the Doctor in a post-apocalyptic London filled with Daleks*. Sigh.

    *(waits for someone to point out Dalek Attack)

  7. I got it running on my laptop, although I had to drop the graphics from “high” to “medium” (running @ 1280×720) to counter the lag.

    It… isn’t very good. Having got to the point where Amy gets her bracelet, the voice acting isn’t so bad (even if the pauses between lines in the cutscenes are), but the models have virtually no facial animation and very stilted other motion, the gameplay is basic verging on banal (run around, click a button occasionally, with the occasional simple puzzle), and the story is nothing to speak of.

  8. Oh, and the Matt Smith facial likeness isn’t that bad, but Amy Pond barely resembles Karen Gillan,

  9. – Opening and closing credits matching the TV show – fantastic.
    – The reuse of environments in ruined/pristine states was clearly down to budget, but I quite liked it: gave it a bit of a Zelda OOT/Sonic CD good future/bad future feel. Ideally, they’ll build on that in future episodes, because any good time travel game should give the player the feeling that their actions in the past make changes to the environment in the future.
    – Even more so than most licensed games, this gives us a great chance for us to compare actors’ voiceover performances with their live-action ones. Both of their lines sound more stilted than in the TV show. As Seb says, the animation doesn’t really capture his mannerisms – occasionally raising his hand to the back of his head isn’t enough!
    – Best-looking bit of the game: looking out of the domed windows with the rain splashing down them.
    – For some reason I found it really funny when the game flashed up “OBJECTIVE: Think of a plan”!
    – The Doctor says “I’m so sorry” at one point…
    – Daleks yelling “My vision is impaired!” – good! Daleks repeating it on a continuous loop – bad.
    – The electric maze puzzles were nasty due to the way one mistake will reset the position of all the items, rather than just the one you buzzed.
    – I liked the idea of the rewiring minigame – very similar to the one in Timesplitters Future Perfect, which I also liked. But as someone on that RockPaperShotgun comments thread said, its grid layout didn’t work very well with a mouse – letting you use the keyboard would be better.
    – Stealth bits were nasty. But at least the Commandos-style vision cones were clear and consistent, which is better than some stealth games manage.
    – Conversation trees are really basic. I suppose I’ve been spoiled by the likes of Monkey Island to be able to keep pestering NPCs with comedy questions…
    – I’ll definitely play through any more of these that they make, but hopefully future episodes will have more interesting puzzles and less frequent stealth sections. But I don’t think I’ll be playing through this one again – even with the incentive of different collectible cards!

  11. I can’t play it. It won’t download on our computer. Please stop talking about it anywhere on the internet where I might see your comments. Thank you.

  13. Have you checked out Blood of the Cybermen yet? I REALLY like where they’re taking the Cybermen now, first through the “head in the head” scene in episode 12, and now this. The game reminds me a lot of Seeds of Doom in location/atmosphere (or The Thing if you prefer… and the game itself isn’t unaware that we will make this connection), but brilliantly we have Cybermen with slow-moving “zombie” characteristics. Far more threatening than the “stomping” robots of RTD’s series, and the facehugger-like properties of the Cybermats is welcome, too. Welcome mats, ha.

    Enjoy!