60 Years of Doctor Who Anniversary Marathon - Pertwee 5th Review
Doctor Who: Infinity (The Orphans of the Polyoptra) - Video Game
So Doctor Who: Infinity is a spiritual successor to the Doctor Who:Legacy game that I covered earlier in the marathon. And just like that previous game, this one too was no longer available to buy. I guess the BBC just doesn’t like to make money or something.
Once again I downloaded the apk file to play on an emulator and tried out the free tutorial to get a feel of the game play. It’s similar to Legacy, in that you move orbs around the board to match colors, but that’s it really.
The game play feels really paired downed from the last entry. Rather then trying to strategize with a custom party, abilities, and trying to find the best move set that works for you; you’re instead giving a single objective each round to complete. Gather blue orbs, match orbs around this one item, avoid this obstacle ect.
It’s really rather repetitive in the worst way and feels very tacked on. The challenges just exist as roadblocks for the story rather than the story existing to the support the game play. So much so that you can even choose to skip the game segments all together in the option menu if you want.
After all, you’re really here for the story.. or stories in this case.
One improvement that Infinity has over Legacy is in the story department. Rather than having a long drawn out single story, with no end in sight; Infinity opts to have shorter standalone stories that you can play in any order.
This is the better approach to on going online games in my humble opinion. The stories are better paced, presented, and self contained so your not wasting hours trying to get an ending that won’t ever come.
Basically I appreciate the idea, even if the game play is lacking.
Overall, Infinity is a well executed series of motion comics, complete with voice acting and music, that happen to have optional game play mechanics. Which makes you wonder why they just didn’t make a bunch of motion comics to begin with.
As for this particular entry, The Orphans of the Polyoptra, it’s okay. It’s nice to get a sequel for the Web Planet but it’s kind of by the numbers. Not bad, but not super exciting as well.
