Originally a VR game by the name of The Edge of Time, Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality is a reimagining of that VR game content. Developed by Maze Theory, this Doctor Who instalment promises authentic Doctor Who writing, voice acting by Jodie Whittaker herself, and lots of alien action. A puzzle adventure at heart, it had decent reception on VR devices, but does it translate well to Nintendo Switch?
A quiet laundr-o-mat. Or is it? Doctor Who crackles over a “radio” to instruct the player that they are, in fact, stuck in a time leak. It's up to players to get to the TARDIS and escape. The Doctor is stuck, lost in time, and it's the player’s job to patch everything up in a variety of Whovian circumstances to save the day. Originally a VR experience this is in first-person and relies a lot on item interactions. The whole game the doctor and others talk to the player while they hide from enemies and solve puzzles. The story is good fun, and does some interesting things with the Doctor’s key enemies.
Issues begin to creep in once players realise this is an adventure, sort of like a first-person point-and-click, involving picking up and examining loads of items. In VR this feels immersive and has simple controls. In this version it feels anything but. It's clunky, the items are low detail, and the space for holding items is very limited. This devolves into shifting through items, most of which carry no value to the adventure, before turfing them out of the inventory onto the floor in a messy pile. It results in some confusing environmental clutter. When the gameplay isn't revolving around this, players will find some fun in using the Doctor's tools like the sonic screwdriver to solve puzzles and blast electronics.
This Switch port sufferers from incredibly compromised visuals. Textures are muddy, frame rates are steady but low, and detail draws in visibly in a radius around the player. It leads to an experience that actually comes off as totally compromised or unfinished, making what was an enjoyable title feel somewhat average. The sound is decent though, it has a few more compression artefacts than it's high-def siblings but the voice work is decently acted, and the music is very Whovian throughout, including the opening theme in all its glory.
