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 LP Finished! Playlist link below, or scroll down for individual links Doctor Who: The Adventure Games  If you live in the UK and watched Doctor Who around series 5 you might have heard of these games. You might have seen the brief advert at the end of some of the episodes and thought “huh that Doctor Who game looks kind of okay” and then completely forgot about it. They were available to download for free to UK residents, and available for purchase outside of the UK through the overly complex Direct2Drive if you didn’t know how to use a proxy or whatever. However, these are now available on Steam. Good job, BBC. They’ve been on Steam for a while now, long enough to be in bundles and sales and such anyway. You more than likely own these whether you realise it or not. Are they worth playing? Probably not. Also, they are no longer available to download for free from the BBC, which is annoying. There are five games in the series, the first four forming “series 1”, and only one episode from “series 2” was released before the project was shelved in favour of console games like the also poorly received Eternity Clock. The Adventure Games have quite a lot of flaws, but hey, they were free and quite varied. I’d take these over the Eternity Clock any day.  Pictured: what the Eternity Clock thinks is a good character model The Adventure games were developed by Sumo Digital, primarily written by Phil Ford (who has an impressive amount of Who under his belt), and produced by Gary Russell (also with an impressive Who track record). Maybe these games were good? Not really. But they’re not too terrible either. They all put out a kind of solid five-episode series of work. It’s just depressingly mediocre in implementation as an actual game though. They very much feel like the sort of free games you’d expect to find online, though with a little bit more love put into them. So Why Video LP It? Playing these games are just kind of a chore. They’re not very fun, and they’re kind of dumb in places. If there’s one thing I love it’s kind of mediocre and dumb stuff. My first LP, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was actually a pretty rad game if somewhat tedious. Adam’s Venture is just bad, which AngstyFerrets and I LP’d the first two episodes of. And, I love Doctor Who. I don’t know everything, but I care enough to listen to the odd audio drama. I’m that guy. AngstyFerrets really isn’t. Sometimes he might pop in to do some commentary with me. Other times it will just be me. There’s only so much I can expect him to take.  The freshest Cyberman you'll ever see (episode 2) I’m getting déjà vu – didn’t you do this LP already? Sort of. About a year and a half ago AngstyFerrets and I started to do this Let’s Play. We got two episodes in and then life happened. That’s what happens when you start a Let’s Play right before graduation. Luckily after that we didn’t end up have nothing to do except Let’s Play and instead got real busy with life stuff. Now I feel in a position to actually work on some stuff I want to do again. And I really want to showcase this game. It should be noted that I don’t have access to as great audio equipment as before, which I hope to change in future. This new OP already contains a brand new update – and gameplay footage is already done for the second of the five episodes. Rules & Notes -We’ll be making our way through all five of the Adventure Games, splitting each one up into three parts as they are just naturally split into three acts anyway -We’ll be updating somewhere between once a week and once a fortnight -We’ll be doing post-commentary, except if we don’t -Don’t spoil the episodes we’ve not done yet – be nice -Feel free to discuss other Doctor Who games but spoiler tag and be sensible with it -All up to date Doctor Who spoilers are fair game, but tag them if they’re pretty recent. I watch on iPlayer UPDATESEpisode 1: City of the Daleks BBC Website posted:The TARDIS materializes in 1963 to find the human race crushed by the Daleks. The Doctor embarks on a quest to the Dalek planet to correct time and save the last survivor of Humanity - Amy Pond! This is your chance to be the Doctor. Are you ready for the challenge?    The BBC Website's Episode Page & Extras (trailers, behind the scenes, etc.) Episode 2: Blood of the Cybermen BBC Website posted:The Doctor and Amy materialize in the Arctic - where members of a survey team are turning from flesh to metal and digging something sinister from under the ice that's been waiting thousands of years - an army of Cybermen! This is your chance to be the Doctor.    The BBC Website's Episode Page & Extras (trailers, behind the scenes, etc.) Episode 3: TARDIS BBC Website posted:With the TARDIS caught in a time riptide, it's up to Amy to save the day or leave the Doctor trapped in the void forever. Meanwhile, a dangerous entity is roaming the TARDIS corridors and it hasn't been fed for a very long time...    The BBC Website's Episode Page & Extras (trailers, behind the scenes, etc.) BONUS  Episode 4: Shadows of the Vashta Nerada BBC Website posted:The Doctor and Amy discover a sub-aquatic base that's been attacked by a sea monster from another world, but its crew are living in fear of something else - a voracious horror that hides in their shadows. The Vashta Nerada.    The BBC Website's Episode Page & Extras (trailers, behind the scenes, etc.) Episode 5 (Season 2!): The Gunpowder Plot This Episode is the only part of the abandoned season 2! As such, it makes some nice changes, and is a fair bit bigger. Also... Rory! BBC Website posted:The TARDIS lands in London, 1605, encountering a group of men who are plotting to assassinate the Head of State. The Doctor, Amy and Rory realise they are at a pivotal point in time but so are two alien races, both of which are more than happy to change history to suit their own ends...        The BBC Website's Episode Page & Extras (trailers, behind the scenes, etc.) PoshAlligator fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Oct 8, 2016 |
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Nov 21, 2015 02:03
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I've watched Doctor Who for a few years, but have not checked out any of the tie-in materials, so this should be an interesting experience.
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Nov 21, 2015 23:47
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Ohhh boy. I remember being too bloody kind to these when I reviewed the first two episodes. After that, I just sort of gave up. Sumo Digital, meanwhile, are kind of a depressing story, in their way. They used to be members of Gremlin Interactive (Who made some interesting stuff), but after they became Sumo Digital, their output has been... Erratic. Broken Sword: The Angel of Death. Driver '76. Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed. Sumo had a hand in all of these, and more, and now have ex Bizarre Creations and Black Rock staff on the team. But yes, these games are aggressively mediocre, and yet, your commentary is keeping me interested. Oh, and Metal Gear mechanics... I'd blanked those out. 
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Nov 24, 2015 01:35
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Curious. There's a surprising number of Doctor Who games, and not a drat one of them is any good. Probably the best one is the one on the DS, and that's just because it's an unispired Professor Layton clone with a story that's bog standard but not awful. Amy and the Doctor end up at the end of the Earth, just as the last ship is finishing its final repairs and preparing for launch (yes the same ship later saved by a space whale--which happened earlier for the Doctor and Amy. They reference it) Of course, the Tardis gets co-opted into the scrap parts used to make the ship, because that makes any sense at all. There's a couple interesting turns as the plot goes on though.
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Nov 24, 2015 02:34
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Choco1980 posted:Curious. There's a surprising number of Doctor Who games, and not a drat one of them is any good. Probably the best one is the one on the DS, and that's just because it's an unispired Professor Layton clone with a story that's bog standard but not awful. Amy and the Doctor end up at the end of the Earth, just as the last ship is finishing its final repairs and preparing for launch (yes the same ship later saved by a space whale--which happened earlier for the Doctor and Amy. They reference it) Of course, the Tardis gets co-opted into the scrap parts used to make the ship, because that makes any sense at all. There's a couple interesting turns as the plot goes on though. And the minigames - oh god, the minigames. Using any of the traditional tools (particularly the Sonic Screwdriver) involves a minigame like moving a particle through a maze with moving obstacles. Also, at least in the version I played, one puzzle had a misprint that completely changed the solution. I had to look it up online because not even the in-game hints could tell me what they were looking for.
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Nov 24, 2015 03:57
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Honestly, the best game to have come out for Who, is that recent Lego Dimensions game; it's got all the Doctors, gets around the issue of having the Doctor kill things by virtue of everything being made of lego, and generally has pretty solid and varied gameplay. And some nice little charm to it.  The downsides are that it's massively expensive, and it's limited in that it's basically a short level pack. Anyway, the cutscenes in this game remind me of the somewhat jerky animations you could create from The Movies game.
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Nov 24, 2015 05:08
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Pesky Splinter posted:Honestly, the best game to have come out for Who, is that recent Lego Dimensions game; it's got all the Doctors, gets around the issue of having the Doctor kill things by virtue of everything being made of lego, and generally has pretty solid and varied gameplay. And some nice little charm to it. I want to play that so badly but like hell am I paying that much. Choco1980 posted:Curious. There's a surprising number of Doctor Who games, and not a drat one of them is any good. Probably the best one is the one on the DS, and that's just because it's an unispired Professor Layton clone with a story that's bog standard but not awful. Amy and the Doctor end up at the end of the Earth, just as the last ship is finishing its final repairs and preparing for launch (yes the same ship later saved by a space whale--which happened earlier for the Doctor and Amy. They reference it) Of course, the Tardis gets co-opted into the scrap parts used to make the ship, because that makes any sense at all. There's a couple interesting turns as the plot goes on though. Yeah, there's a tonne. Adventure Games isn't exactly good, but I wish they'd stuck with it for longer. Weird they released one episode of "season 2" then abandoned it. With the episodic approach they could have progressively improved it some. Best Doctor Who DS game though?  Love those Top Trumps. Did anyone ever get that Top Trump-esque Doctor Who Battles In Time card game? Back when I was in school it became moderately popular for like a couple of months.  There was some cool Classic series stuff in it. Too bad the game itself was a bit rubbish.
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Nov 24, 2015 23:25
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Showing my American side here, I didn't even know Top Trumps was a thing. Looks pretty simple. Also, nthing that Lego Dimensions looks great but holy hell am I not getting into anything with that sort of "pay to play" racket going on. My son liked Skylanders for a couple years, and that was enough...
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Nov 25, 2015 00:13
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Pesky Splinter posted:Honestly, the best game to have come out for Who, is that recent Lego Dimensions game; it's got all the Doctors, gets around the issue of having the Doctor kill things by virtue of everything being made of lego, and generally has pretty solid and varied gameplay. And some nice little charm to it. You can get the other Doctors? I know they appear in the title sequence. I have more money than sense and bought Dimensions (actually, I have a weak spot for the Traveller's Tales LEGO games in general) primarily for the ability to do things like play LEGO Portal and LEGO Doctor Who. I bought the LEGO Doctor Who level pack so I might be convinced to do a video of that if people are interested. (Plus I can drag my brother into it to play it the proper way: constantly killing your co-op opponent as your fellow player is an auto-aim target.)
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Nov 25, 2015 01:12
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Xenoveritas posted:You can get the other Doctors? I know they appear in the title sequence. IIRC, when you die as The Doctor you respawn as another regeneration.
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Nov 25, 2015 01:24
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Mokinokaro posted:IIRC, when you die as The Doctor you respawn as another regeneration. Yep. To unlock them all (and respective TARDIS interiors!), you've got to die as 12, and then work your way killing off each regeneration back to 12 again.
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Nov 25, 2015 01:39
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Next update is up a little earlier than expected because I got a new microphone and put everything on hold to try it out. The first part of... Episode 2: Blood of the Cybermen BBC Website posted:The Doctor and Amy materialize in the Arctic - where members of a survey team are turning from flesh to metal and digging something sinister from under the ice that's been waiting thousands of years - an army of Cybermen! This is your chance to be the Doctor. This episode is more interesting than City of the Daleks, and probably is one of the ones with the most solid, varied content to it. Choco1980 posted:Showing my American side here, I didn't even know Top Trumps was a thing. Looks pretty simple. You don't know Top Trumps?! It made my childhood. They make packs of themed cards (they usually do one per season of Doctor Who), and then you split the deck up, and pick a stat from the card at the top of the deck. If your stat is higher you win the cards the other player(s) had. Pretty fun, though you all end up memorising the cards after long and you can end up stunlocking your opponent by always picking the most optimal stats. Though there's always one or two cards in a pack that are the absolute worst that keeps it interesting. I got a free pack with a magazine once that was just the best popular robots. It was pretty cool. It had Robot Wars in it, Short Circuit, and even the one from Lost in Space. Think I lost them though. Xenoveritas posted:You can get the other Doctors? I know they appear in the title sequence. I'd watch it. More than happy to add it to the OP if it's just a small thing and you don't want to make a whole thread for it. I have zero idea how long the content is. PoshAlligator fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 01:40
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Mokinokaro posted:IIRC, when you die as The Doctor you respawn as another regeneration. That must only happen outside the Doctor's story. During the Doctor's story level, the Doctor just respawns and one of his quips is "what? You expected a younger version?" PoshAlligator posted:I'd watch it. More than happy to add it to the OP if it's just a small thing and you don't want to make a whole thread for it. I have zero idea how long the content is. The story mode part would be something like a half hour to an hour, especially if I edit out the backtracking. (As the Doctor is a time traveler, a bunch of puzzles are "use the TARDIS to go back in time, do a thing, then go forward in time to make use of the new path you opened." I guess that's sort of a spoiler but it's also a very generic "video game time travel" trope.) I haven't screwed around in the open world part you unlock after finishing the story so I have no idea how much stuff is in there. I don't know how it would go with a co-op partner because, as in most co-op games, having a co-op player is frequently more of a detriment than a help.
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Nov 25, 2015 18:54
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Xenoveritas posted:That must only happen outside the Doctor's story. During the Doctor's story level, the Doctor just respawns and one of his quips is "what? You expected a younger version?" Yeah, having the Doctor regenerate in the level would make it pretty difficult to animate cut-scenes. You unlock the regenerate ability afterwards. I don't have the game myself, but I've been watching let's plays. The open world is pretty much the same size as any of the others, but you can travel between a bunch of different planets and time periods. Plus there are a bunch of Who characters that give you missions.
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Nov 26, 2015 01:46
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Welcome back! This is one of the better "acts" of this season of the Adventure Games. It's almost nice. If it could offer more stuff that were variations on this kind of stuff it would be getting somewhere. But it doesn't really. The next and final part of this Episode is not going to be too much fun. But the next episode (TARDIS) is an interesting diversion at least.
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Dec 5, 2015 21:21
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A new update! Closing out the second episode with what everyone wanted - more rubbish stealth. Still, the story here is better, I think. And there's one line from Matt Smith here that cracks me up every time I hear it.
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Dec 19, 2015 22:52
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Yeah story is more engaging than the Dalek one - though that's really damning with faint praise. I can't really tell if I like the models for this game or not - they're fairly accurate, and they move sorta the right way, albeit kinda jerky in cutscenes, and they have some nice little details on them. And I know the games were made on the cheap for free download, but some of the puzzles... 
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Dec 20, 2015 06:32
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Man, how did I miss this reboot of the LP? Great to have it back.
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Dec 20, 2015 09:21
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Yeah I did like the cyberman story better here, even if it did feel like basically a summary of Tombs of the Cybermen from way back...
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Dec 20, 2015 19:41
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Well, I just binged these. I've never been into Dr. Who but I love adventure games. Pity these are, uh.... shall we say less than stellar? I was a bit confused by the last video- why did the Doctor assume that the head researcher had been a Cyberslave all along? Especially when until that point all fully converted Cyberslaves had been totally bereft of ability to think for themselves or converse more than simple phrases. I would have assumed she went out to do something while we were gone and got converted then, not that she'd tricked the doctor from the beginning. How does that work?
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Dec 30, 2015 03:06
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I just discovered these...things are in my steam library from a bundle way back. After the videos I'm afraid to try them though. Think I'll just keep watching your suffering and shuffle it off to the hidden category.
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Dec 30, 2015 23:57
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Sorry for the delay! The next update is now live. I was joined this time by special guest star Adam, a friend of mine who is quite a big Doctor Who fan. I'm reminded throughout this episode of other times when the TARDIS has been used as a main location. I'm quite a bit reminded specifically of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, though this doesn't nearly have that scope. As a bonus, if you're interested, Adam and I recorded a podcast where we talk about each episode of series 9 of the show (including the Christmas special) in order: Shoeless posted:Well, I just binged these. I've never been into Dr. Who but I love adventure games. Pity these are, uh.... shall we say less than stellar? Yeah, it's a bit of a leap. The only link I can think of is that she was hiding her partly Cyberised arm in the sling. But, well, yeah.
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Jan 9, 2016 20:00
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The episode set in Blackpool is The Nightmare Fair.
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Jan 9, 2016 20:39
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Wasn't the painting over the mantle of the "other" Doctor, from "The Next Doctor" aka Jackson Lake, regular human?
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Jan 10, 2016 07:00
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The next update! Can the Doctor rejoin his timeline with Amy's via a Doctor Who trivia pop quiz? Sorry the update took a while. I do a bunch of this kind of editing at work so it can be a little tough getting it together at home too. Choco1980 posted:Wasn't the painting over the mantle of the "other" Doctor, from "The Next Doctor" aka Jackson Lake, regular human? Hmmm, I'm not sure. I can kind of see it. It's not exactly easy to tell with some of the designs in this game. Comparison shots:  
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Jan 24, 2016 23:18
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It's finally here, a new update. We close out TARDIS in a bit of a weird way. Well, the weirdness isn't really our fault. Talk about a weak conclusion to what should have probably been a more interesting Episode.
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Feb 17, 2016 22:25
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Okay, I will admit that TARDIS got a bit dire in places, but this one's a bit more interesting. Presenting the first part of the final episode of series 1 of Doctor Who The Adventure Games (a reminder that it's also the only complete series)... This is probably the episode with the most interesting story, but some of the worst gameplay decisions. Though that may just be comparative, as, of course, there aren't really any decidedly good gameplay decisions in any of the episodes.
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Mar 7, 2016 00:18
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Yep, that was indeed a very Doctory thing to do, and to be fair to Karen, she hit that right note of mockery and surprise with the "I think you pulled!" line. Shame that's pretty much the only thing worth commenting o- Oh, wait, that's a lie. Anghelides is not a mathematician, but most likely Peter Anghelides, the author of a fair few Torchwood books. So that's something else.
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Mar 7, 2016 01:25
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JamieTheD posted:Yep, that was indeed a very Doctory thing to do, and to be fair to Karen, she hit that right note of mockery and surprise with the "I think you pulled!" line. Shame that's pretty much the only thing worth commenting o- Oh, wait, that's a lie. Anghelides is not a mathematician, but most likely Peter Anghelides, the author of a fair few Torchwood books. So that's something else. Yeah that line was okay, but in general she's much weaker than Smith is at this point. Doesn't help that she barely gets any worth while lines. Not sure on the production schedule of these but he definitely seems head and shoulders above the earlier episodes with his performance here, like he's starting to have fun with it.
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Mar 7, 2016 14:33
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Remember me? It's here! I'm pretty sure this is the biggest update yet. So many tubes. I get really frustrated with the game design this time.
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Apr 21, 2016 23:51
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Oh, boy, they brought out the Philadelphia Experiment for this? I'm feeling better and better about the fact I was on one of my reviewing hiatuses when the latter eps came up. Also, I think the main problem here is that old chestnut about game before story, or, more accurately, the "need" to game things and pad out the time screwing the pacing. If the backtracking and the "Repeat this thing 'puzzles'" were removed, it would cut this ep by a third to half, and some of it would maybe have felt urgent. Also, yay for drama through incompetency? "This man has made a perfectly reasonable argument that you die in the dark, and the lifepods are all rather dark. Maybe those lifepods are, logically dangerous? But no, that would be silly." It has to be mentioned, but thanks for LPing this so far. You're not doin' a bad job of it, and you're showing more forbearance in the face of this than a few others would. 
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Apr 22, 2016 03:31
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e: Things PoshAlligator fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 01:02
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It's sad to see these and imagine what they could've been in the hands of a capable developer.
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May 22, 2016 12:44
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gschmidl posted:It's sad to see these and imagine what they could've been in the hands of a capable developer. Well, Sumo have made some pretty great games in the past. But it seems from their portfolio that they're able to just get on with a project based on anything on any scale. I'm betting this had a pretty slim budget, especially as originally this was a free thing to be downloaded from the BBC website. Definitely a shame this seems to have forced them to move away from episodic Doctor Who games though, which could be pretty rad in theory. I wonder if Telltale could do it...
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May 22, 2016 17:35
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PoshAlligator posted:Well, Sumo have made some pretty great games in the past. But it seems from their portfolio that they're able to just get on with a project based on anything on any scale. I'm betting this had a pretty slim budget, especially as originally this was a free thing to be downloaded from the BBC website. Yeah, judging by the heavy reuse of puzzles, and the somewhat janky nature of the animations - yeah they probably didn't have a lot of money to work with. They did their best with what they had with the limitations of the format, and tried to put in little details here and there. Wasn't it the abysmal reviews of The Eternity Clock, that prompted the BBC to discontinue these sort of games?
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Jun 8, 2016 01:01
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The final episode begins! Get a load of that Rory. Ouch This episode as a whole is a bit longer than the others.
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Jun 11, 2016 22:40
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We emerge from the tunnels beneath Parliament into London proper. Or... as proper as it can be in Doctor Who: The Adventure Games, which is a tiny area with some sickening sky boxes. You can really feel the lack of budget in this episode, and it's a bit sad.
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Jun 26, 2016 23:55
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This update's a little shorter and mainly just consists of Rory - or a hideously deformed Auton clone - making his way through some sweet, well-designed sewer stealth sections. It does pick up a little after this. This episode is a little longer than the ones we're used to from the "first season". You can see why they cancelled it though! We're very close to the end now.
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Jul 17, 2016 23:22
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I swear this LP is cursed. I lost my save this time. In this update we see the Doctor aid the Gunpowder plotters, even going so far as to literally hand the fuse over to Guy Fawkes. Who knew!? Firs the Fire of London and now this.
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Aug 29, 2016 00:09
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The Internet interprets completed LPs as damage and routes around them. Seriously, though, keep at it. Thinking about these as, like, licensed educational games helps put a lot of things about them into perspective, and educational games are always fun to have a sensible chuckle at the simplicity of.
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Sep 6, 2016 04:06
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