It seems like everyone is getting into the game maker scene. The BBC have just launched their own take on Super Mario Maker with Doctor Who Game Maker.
And no, it’s not that good.
It pains me to realize how bad the BBC is at licensing their biggest Sci-Fi property for games. The 2D adventure games were pretty bad, and the Eternity Clock was god-awful and broken. At least we have LEGO Dimensions to look forward to! Before then, though, we have to deal with this, a subpar web-based game creation tool that is really only Doctor related because of the graphic assets within it.
The web app (it should have been an iOS or Android app!) lets us arrange platforms, items and enemies and create absolutely basic “puzzles” that the Doctor (or Clara, or whoever we choose to drop in) interact with, mostly by jumping or blasting their weapons. Depending on the “type” of game, we can even make a top-down racer (with lasers blasting at us), a survival game (last until the clock runs out or we get blasted by a laser) or a block blaster, in which we blast blocks with lasers.
Do you see a pattern there?
Yes, there is lots of blasting. The Doctor himself rarely kills anyone or any thing, and the last time I checked his Sonic Screwdriver is definitely *not* a raygun, as it is here. And that’s the big issue I have (tool set and shoddy physics aside). The BBC, strapped for cash, is sacrificing their IPs by releasing bad products. It’s a shame that we haven’t to this day received a viable game based on Doctor Who, one of the most storied cultural phenomenons in SciFi. The LEGO Dimensions experiment will be fun, but that’s only because we’re getting a snippet of Who. If the BBC was more involved, I don’t know if I would be secure in knowing the outcome would be pleasant.
Anyway, go make some levels of Doctor Who shooting at Daleks and Cybermen, I guess.
Source: BBC
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