The winner for the most obvious opening line in a review in 2021, goes to: “You might have heard this about me, but I like Doctor Who.” So when I say that a Doctor Who game, a 3D fully realized adventure specifically, is exciting as a concept, I mean it. Of course, we’ve had those before with Sumo Digital’s episodic series Doctor Who: The Adventure Games. I think it is fair to say, they were crap, Doctor Who, but a bit crap.

Back in 2019, Maze Theory had this thing called The Edge of Time, a VR-only adventure as led by Jodie’s 13th Doctor with upside-down dustbins, less than angelic stone, and it was basically just a great big adventure starring you. However, VR isn’t widely used, so it limited the market. I could comment on the number of people engaging with Doctor Who‘s main TV story as of late also limiting that, but I’ll refrain. Nonetheless, the folks over at Maze Theory have spent the better part of the pandemic porting The Edge of Time to become The Edge of Reality, and enjoying a bit too much Doctor Who.

Now, I’ll be the first to complain about anything, especially if I have gripes with it. However, I will say out of the gate, I might just like The Edge of Reality for simply breaking down the wall. Ok, not the highest of praise you can give something, but the point still stands. I might have tried jumping up on the bench in the launderette to hug the TV Jodie appeared on. I may have also tried to leg-it past a Dalek after the obvious thing to do didn’t work, and that is where I think The Edge of Reality falls down so much. It has the ambition of a fan-made thing and it has the excitement, but it lacks the shine of something done professionally.

If you saw images of The Edge of Time and images of The Edge of Reality side by side, you’d think the former came later because it looks cleaner. Honestly, the VR version looks like a remaster of a mid-2010s game made at the early point of the Xbox One and PS4-era. There are edges that are lacking anti-aliasing, environments that are lacking in character, and generally, questionable performance. The thing is, I don’t understand what is causing the last one there. Red Dead Redemption 2 runs moderately well enough until you hit San Denis, and it is rendering a lot more even in the wild. The Edge of Reality feels almost like a world made of plastic, immobile and emotionless.

I say all this knowing you can look a bit past it all and look into the world of the Daleks, the Angels, and the Cybermen. Opening those blue doors and stepping into the TARDIS, as it has always done, makes you feel a bit queasy, in a good way. I felt it when I stepped into Matt Smith’s first, his second that he handed off the Capaldi, and now Jodie’s only TARDIS. It is a moment that never gets old, and I think that’s simply because to our tiny monkey-clinging-to-a-rock brains, it is impossible (it is improbable). There is something special about it, just like those fun and memorable lines from Jodie’s first series: “Let’s get a shift on.,” “Right, this is gonna be fun.,” and a few other lines.

Not that she’s the only one, because you have to please the Americans and young women/gay men from the mid to late 00s. Hi Tennant, I do still have a touch of nostalgia for you, yes. This is what most of the game is based on (to be fair), but the Miniscope is meant as a collection menu for a questioning umbrella, some 3D specs, and handles. Any Doctor Who game is going to be a museum filled with ephemera of nearly 60 years and details of the world I’m sure you and I both love. Details so beloved when you have a Doctor, any Doctor, tell you “You just saved the universe.”

However, as a timey-wimey puzzle adventure game, it is in an odd spot because not only can you see it is mostly made for VR, but it feels odd too. Puzzles that are fixed with fixed perspectives or driven points by a director/writer just don’t feel all that interesting sometimes. Two examples of puzzles being broken were when I was meant to sneak behind a Dalek, on two separate occasions, it just didn’t work as intended. The first time you encounter one in a space Egyptian tomb you are told to throw an object, but no one has plainly told you how to throw objects and there are no prompts to say you hold LT and throw with RT. The second time I just legged it past the pepper pot Nazi.

That’s the biggest issue I think. If you know and understand the most basic bit of game design for the last 5-10 years, you might be more advanced than some ideas here. That’s not as bad as it might sound, it is just the UI being a faded bit in the bottom corner with objects you flick through, the slow and clunky nature of pulling everything out to interact with it, and awkward controls when inspecting things. There is something about the gameplay segments that remind me of mid to late 00s adventure games you get from a bargain bin, the good ones.

As for the story, it gets a little odd to say given the quality of stories recently with Doctor Who on TV. The best thing I can say is that you can feel the enthusiasm with which it is written, but it hardly feels like I am involved beyond set pieces. There are Simon Says TARDIS controls, the standing about for the story to catch up with something I solved a few minutes ago, and so on.

Yeah, I do enjoy being told not to blink if I wasn’t having to clean my underpants after the fact. Sadly, a lot of the game is standing about. A Doctor Who game should be constantly running away from things. Here it is stealth section after puzzle after puzzle, and that’s somewhat true of the show, but when it is lumpy and awkward, it just feels slow and like I’m not really there.

Honestly, yeah, I do like Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality, but that is partly because it is Doctor Who with some interesting bits in a 3D First-Person game. It has the most modern Doctor’s TARDIS, you are using Jodie’s spoon-based Sonic Screwdriver, and that maze with the Weeping Angels felt uncomfortable in all the right ways. However, with the dated gameplay, the story with its almost passive nature towards me as a player, and performance and bugs that led to subtitles lagging quite a few lines back at times, I can see why some might not love it all too much. It is a museum of happy memories with clunky ideas surrounding it.

An Xbox One copy of Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality was provided by Maze Theory for the purposes of this review.

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Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality

$24.99

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• The Maze with the Angels
• Stepping into the TARDIS Never Gets Old
• A museum of all the Things I Love

Cons

• Performance and Bugs are an Issue Throughout
• Some Clunky Mechanics Leaving You Standing About
• A Story that Doesn't Engage as much as it Might Think it is
• That Whole Dalek Shooter Segment