It's been a while since I became a Doctor Who fanboy (but I guess I can't call me fanboy yet, can I?) and I've seen most of the new series (I'm actually somewhere in the middle of the sixth season) and very little of the old one (trying to see episodes from the 12th season/4th doctor) and I encountered those "Episodic Graphic Adventures" of Doctor Who.
They feature their unique canon storylines from writers of the show, voices from the cast and, if you live in UK, they're totally free!
They were developed by Sumo Digital, which makes me remember of SEGA & Sonic All-Stars Racing, a game I liked, I thought that they couldn't be bad even though the whole series is a tie-in.. and tie-ins aren't cool, not at all.
...
I guess this is the main point I want to discuss, you might like this game and you might hate it.
If you are a Doctor Who fan like me and like the stories and everything, I think you'll be able to stand the boring parts of the game (I'll talk about them in more detail later).
The game itself is more than just a graphic adventure, it has platform-like controls with many (actually, too many) stealth parts.
You have a very limited inventory (you never have more than 1 or 2 objects).
There are many minigames like "connect the dots with wires without making the wires actually touch" (just time waster, in my opinion), "use the mouse to drag the thing across the labyrint without touching the walls" (oh, I always HATED those kind of minigames) or "align the two sinewaves" (actually, this one is cool).
They are nice, but sometimes I feel like they are here just to cover the fact that the game itself would be very short otherwise.
The stories are cool, though. They expand on the Doctor Who universe with cool things like visiting Skaro, the planet of the Daleks or the Tardis itself, showing every single button of the console, as well as explaining how they work.
And in the ending part of TARDIS (the third episode of the first series) you, as the Doctor, have to make the TARDIS travel in space and time by using the right levers and buttons!
Because nothing is perfect, is it? Well too bad, but I couldn't expect an AAA game for free... (I guess Telltale could teach something to Sumo Digital on how actually make a graphic adventure but nevermind).
So, I don't blame the graphics, it's not Modern Warfare 3 or Crysis, I know, I like the style, actually.
What I blame is what I think is most important in a game: Gameplay.
For a graphic adventure there are WAY too much stealth parts, sometimes it feels like I'm playing Metal Gear Time Lord (I just realized how cool it sounds).
Most of the time you're just trying to avoid Daleks, Cyberman or whatever deadly thing is patrolling the room.
And just to end things, the game itself is really too explanatory, I never used the "Hint" section of the game because it already told me exactly what to do most of the time!
Even though I haven't finished the first series, I've already started the second with The Gunpowder Plot, just to see what's changed.
They added Rory, which is cool, I like him.
They added 2 more slots for the inventory as well as adding a "Combine items" feature to merge two items together.
They improved the controls of the game, this is really cool, I don't really did think the controls were bad, but now they are much more functional!
The minigames.. I haven't got to them yet, which is weird since given the time I've played, if it was the first series I would be already near the middle of the episode, while for what I see I'm actually just two steps ahead from the beginning and just one episode of the second series is as big (around 3.2GB) as the whole first series, which makes me think that the second series will have longer episodes.
And finally, most important thing: I had to mess around a bit.
The game is more mysterious now, it's finally giving the player some possibilities on what the player can do, rather than just showing him/her the way to the goal, so congratulation on Sumo Digital for this improvement!
Depends.
I'd never say "Play directly the second series since the first one sucks".
If you are a Doctor Who fan and want to see more of it, check them out. The first series may seem a little boring at times, but each episode won't take more than 30/40 minutes if you play through it.
Otherwise, become a Doctor Who fan asap and then re-read this.
I've finished playing all the chapters and ..man, The Gunpowder Plot is really what I could call a game, it's long enough (it'll take some hours to get finished) and has more puzzling stuff and less stupid minigames.
