Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock Review
Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock is an Action/Adventure game based on the hit BBC television series of the same name developed by Supermassive Games and published by BBC Worldwide Digital Entertainment for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and Microsoft PC. Supermassive Games are an independent studio working from Guildford in the south east of England on a variety of games since 2008.
For those who don't know, Doctor Who is about an age old Time Lord who travels through time and space in a time machine/spaceship called the TARDIS, normally with a traveling companion of some kind, and first debut in 1963 making it the longest running Sci-Fi show in history. The reason it survived for as long as it did is through an act called “regeneration” which allows the Doctor to change his face, and therefore his actor, while still being the same character. This brings us to the star of our game, Matt Smith, who is famous for playing the Eleventh Doctor. So, to quote the good Doctor himself, GERONIMO!
We start off with the Doctor in the TARDIS, where else? First thing you're likely to squeal over if you're a Doctor Who fan is the fact that really is Matt Smith's voice. And that really is Alex Kingston voicing River. I was afraid that we'd end up with an impersonator or something since TV and movie actors rarely lend their voices for games, but no. That's really them and the game is twenty percent cooler for having them.
The Doctor is traversing a time storm and finds himself in the Bank of London where we get our first taste of gameplay. The game plays like a classic old school 2D side scroller only rendered in 3D. You go left, you go right, push boxes, climb ledges, ladders, pipes, and open doors. This is where the Sonic Screwdriver comes in. In order to use it you have to match the green line with what's being shown with the red and then the door will open. Sound easy enough, right? Well, not when you're in a hurry.
There are a lot of puzzles in Doctor Who. Puzzles you're either going to love or utterly despise like the one above. Puzzles usually come about when you need to bypass a perception filter, hack into security, overload a console, and so on and so forth. Some of them are fun, but most of the time they're just tedious and slow the game down more than anything else.
The worst of them is the Time Corridor. Every time you find a piece of the Eternity Clock you have to go through the Time Corridor to make it back to the TARDIS. You're standing on a platform and you have find the next platform it can connect with before the platform you're standing on disappears and you fall to your death. Think of it like a game of Tetris, basically. Only you have no idea which block fit where and it's less time consuming to just try them all until you find one that fits.
Through the course of the game you get to play as both the Doctor and River Song. River first appears in prison and you have to sneak out to make it to the Doctor in order to assist him. Since this is a Doctor Who game you'll be doing far less actual fighting, and a lot more sneaking and outwitting your opponent, and because of that it really does feel like Doctor Who. Don't worry, though, just as the Doctor is always armed with his Sonic, River still has her gun and you'll be able to blast some poor soul who thought it was a good idea to mess with you.
In single player you'll mostly play as the Doctor with River being controlled by the A.I., but there will be moments where the two have to split up and you'll control each individually. There is a multiplayer mode where you play co-op, so if you want to grab your friend and go on a whacky wild adventure, knock yourself out. Trust me when I say you'll be better off with a Player Two. The A.I. companion is so glitchy I had to reset the game several times just to advance. One time when I was on my way to a lift I found River was still back behind the crate jumping up and down repeatedly. Another time she kept running to a ladder and climbing up and down it instead of moving the platform I needed to get across. I'm glad enemies in this game are stupid because when I was trying to sneak River will just be standing right out in the open while a Dalek is closing in. Get down! Speaking of Daleks:
The game feature the Cybermen, the Solarian, the Silence, and the Daleks as enemies. I did thought I saw a Weeping Angel in one level, but it turned out just to be a statue. Never can be too careful. All of the enemies are implemented well and feel the same as they do on the show. With the Cybermen and Daleks you're better off just avoiding them altogether, the Solarian you can fight to an extent since you can disable their weapons, and the Silence has a stage where y ou need to keep them in your sights or you're get an instant game over.
They're also just as infuriating as I imagine they are for the Doctor. I love the Cybermen, but by the time I was done with them I hated them, same goes for the Silence and the Daleks, not as much as the Cybermice, though. Yes, there are mice in the Cybermen ship. The most you can do is stun them and they are fast. They killed me more than any other enemy in the game. The enemy A.I isn't any better than the companion's. When a Dalek caught me while I was trying to sneak past it, it stayed in the same spot long after it lost sight of us and I had to jump over it and make a run for the TARDIS.
The story is exactly what you'd expect from a Steven Moffet's production, so take that as you will. The banter between the Doctor and River is top notch and you really do feel like you've stepped inside the television show if you can look pass the 2D side scroller aspect of the game. What really bums me out is that the game ends on a cliffhanger because it was supposed to be the first in a series, but the future installments were postponed and now there's no telling if they're canceled or not.
Conclusion: If you're a Doctor Who fan, or more specifically an Eleventh Doctor fan, and don't mind the style of play, this game is at least worth checking out. If you're not a fan then it's going to come down to whether or not you enjoy the gameplay, but I'm not going to lie, it's mainly intended for Doctor Who fans. If you can't get behind the style and all the puzzles, you're probably not going to enjoy it.
Try it.
