Cybermen shuffle towards you like Matt Hancock outside Ten Downing Street, arms awkwardly stuck out like they’ve forgotten how to walk. “Delete, delete, delete,” their monotonous voices drone. It’s not intimidating in the least, given that a brisk jog is faster than their clunky marching. If they do catch you, they’ll give you a little twirl like you’re starring in Doctor Who on Ice.

It all begins in the mundane every day of a laundrette, the Doctor speaking to you of all people. She needs your help. You’re a blank surrogate for a companion without any of the build-up or emotional connection a companion usually has - it stays that dry and disconnected until the very end. But it all starts with time folding in on itself - there’s nobody else around, the streets completely barren and lifeless. That feels less like a design choice and more like a budget constraint but it lends itself to this Doctor Who adventure being far more shallow than the series that inspired it. That’s exacerbated through the Dalek invasion.

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We’ve seen Daleks invade Earth time and time again. The very first instance in the ‘60s had them rolling across the iconic London Bridge. The landmarks in the background that tend to define England made it feel like home. We knew where the Daleks were so their presence was tangible. Here, they’re in a junkyard and there’s maybe two or

three of them. They aren’t imposing - it doesn’t feel like a fleet has descended on Earth and conquered it, more like a couple of Dalek joes smoking after work.

Edge of Reality Tardis

What’s more, interacting with them doesn’t hold the same weight. In Journey’s End, the Doctor’s companions bump into them numerous times, Wilfred even firing off a paintball to try and blind one. They get angry, bubbling with volatile hatred, and feel almost unstoppable - they even ‘kill’ the Doctor. None of that is on show here. They’re comical more than ever as you can crouch right up to them while the janky death animations take away a lot of the gusto that comes with their skeletal light shows. It’s one of the weakest depictions since they were neutered in Death to the Daleks back in the John Pertwee era.

Before you even get into the nitty-gritty, you’re faced with one of the most obtuse menus of 2021. You can’t use your mouse cursor so you’re stuck navigating with the arrow keys and enter button. Although, there wasn’t much to fiddle with anyway. You can’t remap controls, customize settings, or even adjust audio to your liking - there’s one slider for master volume and music often drowns out the dialogue. Sure, that’s good in some cases like when the Angels start threatening to eat you, but it’s hardly ideal given that the subtitles rarely match what’s being said. It’s shoddily put together, immediately setting the stage for the game itself - as the 13th Doctor says, “It makes my Spidey sense start to tingle big time!”

The core idea is fairly interesting - time is folding in on itself so you take the Tardis to various worlds and times to find crystals, facing some of the Doctor’s deadliest foes in the process. One of the first places you venture to is Victorian England where the Weeping Angels are lurking in a collector’s basement - the Weeping Angels invading Victorian England during the birth of photography sounds like a fantastic episode that could return them to their more horror-oriented roots. Instead, they’re a cheap attempt to get quick scares in, completely missing what makes the Weeping Angels such a good villain. This section has some fairly basic puzzles and a Sherlock vibe to the house, with a polyphon that lets you swap between past and future. Again, it all sounds intriguing but it isn’t. The puzzles are simplistic while an AI companion lays everything out for you. ‘Layman's terms’ doesn’t cut it - it’s patronizing.

Edge of Reality Weeping Angel

Meanwhile, the horror elements of the Weeping Angels are undercut because they talk. They speak briefly in the show through the voice of a dead soldier on an intercom. The reveal itself is harrowing because we’re led to believe that it’s a human talking to the Doctor, clinging to life. When the realization sinks in, they start to taunt him. It’s chilling because of how nonchalant and calm they are, often tugging at his heartstrings for failing to keep everyone alive. In the game, they speak like babies, frantically yelling and spewing insults. One says, “Manfred big fat boy! But Angels still hungry.” I wish I was making that up - it certainly sounds like I am. It’s not even something I could see flying in the current era of the show, let alone in a video game that had to get approval from numerous different people. It’s sillier than the Adipose and those are little blobs of walking fat.

Going from Blink to Edge of Reality’s depiction is so jarring it gave me whiplash, but what stings more is that it riffs off the superior story, stealing its best moment without earning it. The Angels being their own foil, locking each other as statues by facing each other, is a eureka moment in Blink. It’s the culmination of the entire episode that plays with time travel in a way the show hasn’t done before or since. Here, it’s a quick way to get you back in the Tardis for your next stop. The ambition is sorely lacking with each section acting like a highlight reel while somehow botching the highlights.

As for actually coming face-to-face with them, it’s just as much of a joke. If you look away for even a split second, they don’t move. Walk into them and you might clip through them because of how buggy they are. Blinking doesn’t seem to matter, either, let alone turning your back, so what was the point in including them? That’s their whole shtick! The ripe potential for intricate puzzles that are based on your limited sight is untold but it isn’t tapped into whatsoever here. Instead, you’re rushed through a bunch of repetitive stone corridors by Angels that quickly lose interest in you. The threat is immediately diminished by the janky gameplay but, even when they do move, they aren’t silent killers. There’s a loud scraping noise of stone against stone while bumping into them plays a screeching sound. The subtlety is gone.

Edge of Reality 13th Doctor

But that’s just because Edge of Reality lacks any subtlety, to begin with. The story is laid out in huge exposition dumps from the Doctor and your AI companion - there’s little in the way of emotional storytelling. The finale might be the biggest sinner of them all. In the show, it would be a pivotal moment for the Doctor akin to wiping out her own race at the end of the Time War. But here, it’s a blip. She’s offered a choice between two realities, her old one and this new one in which the Tenth Doctor has settled down with Madame de Pompadour - aye, that episode from 15 years ago. Remember? I barely do and I saw it last month. It’s a bizarre place to build your plot from, but it’s also bizarre because it ignores Ten and Rose’s relationship entirely. This choice is presented by the big boss of the Cyberman, a Frankenstein creation that’s made up of all other kinds of Cyberman. The way they monologue reminds me of when I played with my action figures as a kid - it’s convoluted and falls apart the more they talk. Their entire goal is to prove the Doctor has a warrior’s heart by making them commit genocide again.

But, it’s handwaved. The Doctor gets you to “make the choice” for her but you don’t have a choice whatsoever. You are forced to wipe out this new reality, snubbing the Tenth Doctor’s happy ending. There’s a lot of ‘tell, don’t show’ going on with flat voice acting that only worsens the problem while set pieces tend to be empty and devoid of life. It often feels like a Garry’s Mod map with NPCs spawned in, something I’d do as a kid with Doctor Who mods. But it has David Tennant, right?

Yes, and it’s always a treat to have him playing the Doctor again, but he’s a caricature of the Tenth Doctor that does little more than spout catchphrases, saying “Allons-y!” a disturbing amount. What’s more, you can tell it’s the same sound bite on repeat. Not only does Edge of Reality fundamentally misunderstand Doctor Who’s villains, it completely fumbles in handling the titular character. At that point, it’s impossible to salvage. Even the die-hard Whovians out there will find little to enjoy because of how much it blunders in the basics.

Edge of Reality Tardis Interior

There are a lot of mechanical problems. Mouse acceleration is on by default with no setting to turn it off meaning there are times where you’ll randomly spin around; loading isn’t seamless and comes at the strangest times, occasionally pulling you out the Tardis without context before literally dropping you into a new map; there are no footstep sounds while movement is awkwardly floaty despite lacking a jump button - that’s even worse when you factor in that there’s a platforming segment at the end. The saving grace should be that you get to play as a Dalek at one point, an exciting prospect. You’re in a temple (which looks like a worse Quake map from the early 2000s) and you’re tasked with mowing down other space Nazis. However, the gun jams quickly, there are floating spheres that spam lasers and often fall out of your line-of-sight, and the game regularly sends too many enemies after you at once with no way of really getting to safety. You are a clunky, immobile Dalek after all.

Much like the series in its current state, Edge of Reality is an overly ambitious but underfunded adventure that relies too much on nostalgia for the David Tennant era, lacking any substance of its own. Throughout the entire journey, you’ll be left wondering why you’re not just playing the Doctor. You have a companion and a sonic screwdriver, after all. But, like the Three Doctors, we instead get awkward snippets of Jodie Whittaker and David Tennant on a monitor, dumping exposition before fading into obscurity - there’s barely any banter, certainly no grandiose monologues, and no mystery.

Doctor Who doesn’t work without those three things - it’s a fairly bog-standard sci-fi show at the end of the day, but it’s mine and many’s favourites because of the Doctor. The Doctor is the show’s edge, a lovable idiot that’s too smart for their own good tying everything together, ending up in random situations and being forced to interact with strangers to uncover plots of intrigue. We do none of that here. You go to A, do what you’re told, go to B, do what you’re told, until the game ends. Given how short it is, you’re better off watching a few episodes from the show, because this is barely Doctor Who, let alone a good game.

Edge-of-Reality-Review-Card-1

Score: 2/5. A PC code was provided by the publisher.

Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality

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