Game Review: Doctor Who - The Edge of Reality

Doctor Who has a long-standing history and is well known for being the longest running sci-fi television show of all time. Its legacy has spanned nearly sixty years at this current point and we’ve seen a lot of people inhabit the role of the Doctor as they’ve ventured far off through time and space in their TARDIS. Despite being a television show first and foremost, that isn’t to say Doctor Who hasn’t had stories spun out into other forms of media. Whether it’s a book or a comic, the history of Doctor Who has always been one you can find through multiple avenues. Video games are one such medium Doctor Who has also tried to venture out into. The history of Doctor Who video games spans from 1983 to present day and while none of them have ever been compelling enough to break into the mainstream, it says something that the BBC is still trying to find ways to bring the show into the gaming landscape in a variety of different formats.  Their latest venture into the gaming world is through Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality. 

Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality was developed by British developer Maze Theory and co-published by the BBC and Playstack. It’s a first-person puzzle/adventure game which has you travelling across time and space through a collection of levels. I understand that the primary foundation of Edge of Reality is based on Maze Theory’s prior Doctor Who game called Edge of Time. Edge of Time was originally a VR game which holds mostly the same storyline and levels but in Edge of Reality’s case it took those levels and tweaked them to be playable outside of VR and added a selection of new content on top of it. One of the most notable elements is the inclusion of an extra playable section featuring David Tennant reprising his role of the Tenth Doctor alongside Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor. 

The story of Edge of Reality follows you as an unnamed player character who while doing their laundry one night at the local laundrette ends up caught up in a reality distortion caused by something called the Reality Virus. The Thirteenth Doctor makes contact with you and explains while she is unable to assist you directly, she ends up enlisting your help to venture across time and space and collect time crystals to help them escape a time loop at the end of time. Gifting you her Sonic Screwdriver and TARDIS you venture across a variety of different worlds and time periods, facing off against some of the Doctor’s most iconic enemies in search of these crystals. It’s down to you to overcome these dangers and collect the crystals before all of reality is fractured by the Reality Virus. 

As far as Doctor Who stories go, I think the narrative element of the game is really fun, even if it feels a bit rushed.  I’m a big believer that Doctor Who’s most appealing element is the concept of travelling through time and space. The TARDIS has the ability to whisk you off to vast worlds and time periods and being able to explore those places and eras and see how they all link together through the ongoing narrative is easily the game’s most creative and compelling element. Starting out in dystopian London which has been captured by Daleks and then venturing to a drifting fleet ship in the far future offers you a consistent sense of variety and the narrative allows for that in a flexible way.  Despite giving the player an opportunity to face off against some of the Doctor’s biggest foes and visit a vast array of locations I can’t help but feel the pace of the story struggles to feel coherent. Especially near the end of the narrative I really felt the game was trying to dump a load of exposition on you and resolve the plot threads too quickly. I appreciate this is a game limited by its budget and if the game had a better resource behind it, I imagine the game would have been a bit longer with more opportunity to space out the story. It’s not a downright terrible story as like I said it gives you the opportunity to jump to all these amazing set pieces, but it doesn’t stop the story from feeling rushed near its end.

Gameplay is a double-edged sword in some cases too. I feel again it’s down to the budget of the game that you can easily see its limitation. That’s not to say what the game gives you in terms of interaction is uncompelling though, as I feel there’s a good amount of gameplay segments here; it’s just a case that they’re all limited in some regard from being truly good. Some of the more linear levels while visually interesting lack much in the way of actual engagement. You will simply be walking for a good proportion of these sections and you feel all too easily how limited these segments can be. Some of the more interesting levels can be found with the Weeping Angels and Dalek Temple segments as they utilise these foes in a way that feels notably creative and gives you a different type of gameplay compared to just walking around. I feel like the game is scared to let you deviate or explore however because there’s always a constant narration or reminder to get back onto your objective every couple of seconds. There’s a nice sort of codex system you can refer to through pages you collect throughout the levels and collectable objects from the history of Doctor Who you can view through a miniturescope on the TARDIS. These are nice touches though I feel there was a missed opportunity with the collectable objects to give the player context to where they came from as you will only know what the object refers to if you have the prior context from the episodes they originate from.

In an honest reflection I think Edge of Reality is a better game than I expected it to be. Despite the limitation of its budget, you can clearly see Maze Theory wanted to make an authentic Doctor Who video game to the best of their ability. The level of detail on display here is enough for any fan to appreciate and they’ve set the story up to provide the player with a fun collection of set pieces to wage through and enjoy. With a little more time in the oven and maybe a bit of a better budget behind it, I feel this could have really broken out and given Doctor Who that leap into the game industry is really deserves. Despite its limitation however I still think any Doctor Who fan will enjoy their time with the game as it stands, it’s an honest and entertaining experience flaws and all.