RadioSEGA Review: Doctor Who: Worlds In Time

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Titans Creed
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RadioSEGA Review: Doctor Who: Worlds In Time

Post by Titans Creed »

Another joint effort between SEGA and Three Rings, who were best known before their latest effort, for the stella Spiral Knights, have brought us another MMO game, but this is a completely different beast in the form of Doctor Who: Worlds In Time.

Now, unlike most other MMO's, utilising a client based system, Worlds In Time is purely a browser based game, and still free-to-play like it's Spiral Knights cousin. The main crux behind the game is that something has shattered time and space, and the Doctor, appearing in your bedroom needs YOU to help piece it back together.

Armed with nothing but something looking slightly like a sonic probe, you go into your first level, which is VERY tutorial heavy. I kid you not, some games can do tutorials well, this game seems to have the necessity to throw heavy tutorials at you on nearly every movement page. That's not the worst of it though, the tutorial level, is also very heavily scripted in "story", for lack of a better useable term, and more often then not, I found myself waiting around idly until I could move to the next section.

Once you get through the lengthy and arduious task of the tutorial level, you find your first shard, which you then return to the TARDIS and the Doctor. Turns out, you've been supplied with a room upon the fabled machine, which allows you to make modules for your sonic probe-esque device as well as deposit and move any furniture you have acquired to this point.

This is pretty much your hub, as from here, you can take on extra challenges, or "Interventions" as they are called here. Pretty much they are your missions to continue on the main story of Worlds In Time. From your hub area, you can go to new Interventions, but you can also find like-minded players to join you as you progress.

The main reason you'll have a Sonic prode type device, is because nearly everything you do to progress is a form of puzzle. To open a door and "fight" an enemy you'll have a puzzle/minigame of matching certain blocks to the ones on the slowing falling ceiling. In a similar fashion to the Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move game series.

These minigames in turn allow you to level up and apply more modules that you create, from materials from each intervention and space shard you recover, to your sonic probe device.

Of course, it's not as simple as just doing interventions, as with Spiral Knights, you require a form of energy to do each one. While it recovers over time, you can purchase more "Chronons", as they are called in Worlds In Time.

The biggest thing that bugs me about this game is the companion that you play as. There is no real back story behind the character you play. It's just as if you've been plucked from time and space to help the Doctor, with no real objective other then stopping the universe implode. This wouldn't be so much of an issue, if there was some small character development other then updating the sonic probe and your wardrobe.

Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of how this new offering from Three Rings plays out, even as a stalwart Doctor Who fan. It's a nice try into the franchise, but the adventure games available from the BBC are much better.
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Reknoc
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Post by Reknoc »

Sounds like Puzzle Pirates with a hideous Dr. Who theme. I assume that because this is for kids the "free 2 play" element isn't as completely fucking dumb as it was in Spiral Knights?
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