We have done a review of the game in general and a Q&A with the creators themselves. I am personally a massive fan of the game: I have finished the game, I subscribe to their newsletter and I regularly watch Adipose TV - Doctor Who Legacy Stream (a must for any fan of the game). I am going to put everything here, as doctorwhoreviewed.blogspot.com is a massive supporter of the game and it has been noted that the pages where Doctor Who Legacy is featured on the site are much more popular.
This page is to be constantly updated with new things about the game such as our brand new Review of The Hunt for Greyhound One!
Compared to previous levels The Hunt for Greyhound One epilogue is much faster paced, concentrating on a longer new story than revisting old favourites. The story itself is interesting (spoilers ahead!) as we play with the doctors as they fight through time to collect the specific parts needed to build a device which will enable them to find the Brigadier who cannot be reached normally since his and the doctors timelines are heavily intertwined. The story makes a lot of sense and the script is good. The Doctors are written well enough that you can hear the actual actors speaking the lines of the screen in your head.
As they are not visiting any specific stories, the creative team could choose any characters they liked and had the rights to use, to drop in the game. This means that classic favourites such as Ace, The Brigadier and Bessie are now drops along side new series favourites like Wilf and Rose. It is nice to see these characters here and their abilities are great. I love the ability given to The Brigadier as he now can convert yellow and pink to green which means he works well with The Second Doctor in turning the board green for powerful attacks. Ace being a bomb character seems the logical choice. The only character missing from the story personally is the Brigadier's daughter herself, Kate Stewart - to me she would have fitted perfectly in these levels but I suspect they are holding her back for either a Series Eight release or part of The Day of the Doctor (whenever that turns up).
I do hope though now with The Brigadier joining the game that he does a Captain Jack style thing and brings all his UNIT team into the action to fight The Master (Yates, Benton, Jo Grant).
REVIEW - Doctor Who Legacy Season Five
We did a review of the game in general but it is a topic too large to cover in a small review. Furthermore the Doctor Who Legacy content has been by far the most viewed content on the site, so I decided that it a review of Doctor Who Legacy Season Five would be the best thing to do.
The season begins very much where Season Six left off. We venture through a series of Christmas based levels which lead to The Time of the Doctor (which was included despite the fact that it is actually in season seven). There is some impressive artwork in these levels (The Forest of Death levels especially). The characters which drop in these levels had come from the advent calender series last December.
The story itself is very good and I am looking forward to see how it progresses in future levels. The designers recently stated that they 'look for the episodes which provide the best opportunities for varied gameplay (i.e. with lots of potential threats to deal with).'. It is a shame therefore that The Pandorica Opens was not included with this but they have chosen a good selection of levels: The Beast Below, Victory of the Daleks, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Vincent and the Doctor. I really liked the Vincent and The Doctor level, this episode highlights the amount of effort the creators put into making this game (the gems have extra skins).
As we progress further into the games we see the games true aims and ambitions come to fruition. Season Seven is effectively a line up three game, it is there to introduce you to the game. Season Six just powers up your characters ready for Season Five. Your characters do not level up any more (they will begin to level up in update 2.2 coming soon). This really is a strategy game. The gameplay has been made so complex that you can no longer pass levels through just lining anything up.You need to think, you need to choose characters with the correct abilities, you need to choose perks wisely. The perk system is the only thing that allows you to get through Season Five, since the enemies become increasingly powerful whereas you cannot level your characters up anymore.
There are also a few extra features in Season Five which are really nice touches. March of the Adipose just makes you smile; the Roger Delgado Master is met in Tarminster - setting of parts of Terror of the Autons, that is a really nice touch. I do wonder if the Autons themselves will be added to the game in the future. John Simm's Master has the Toclofane, what if the other Masters have allies of their own (I do not think The Master's Adipose army will probably cut it).
Speaking of Timelords, we have four new Doctors in Season Five. John Hurt's Doctor drops early and his abilities are very good, but the best one of all is my personal favourite - THE SECOND DOCTOR - his abilities make him a very powerful Doctor (a massive help when fighting the reapers in the final level Paradox of the Zygons).
In summary this is a very strong addition to the game, and I do hope that the future looks as bright as it seems here.
The creators of Doctor Who Legacy kindly got involved with us and we have been able to do an interview with them, asking questions about the game:
Lee - The BBC has been
amazing. There is no way, at all, that the game could have been made without
the constant support of many parts of the BBC, from our amazing producer, the
legal team who get us permission to add characters to the game, and the Doctor
Who brand team who make sure we're true to this amazing universe of characters
which we love so much. We're in contact with the BBC constantly - rarely a day
goes past that Susan isn't on the phone to someone there, and our aim for the
relationship is complete transparency on our side - from the first day of the
project we've talked to the BBC about everything as it's decided on and
built.
Doctor Who has generally failed to produce a successful game to play in the past. With Doctor Who: The Adventure Games being cancelled it appeared that there was never going to be a great Doctor Who game.
One of the two best elements of the game is firstly
how you are able to build up a team from any number of characters of the show.
So you can have your favourite Doctor and your favourite companions fight your
favourite enemies. I personally design teams around eras and strategy so at
present I have an Eleventh Doctor team (11, Clara, River, Lorna Bucket, Amy,
Handles) and a Tenth Doctor team (10, Martha, Jenny, Sarah Jane, Captain Jack,
Yellow Ood), alongside my other more strategy based teams.
11/10
The Hunt is on for Greyhound One - Doctor Who Legacy
The Hunt for Greyhound One has begun! Continuing our continuing reviews of Doctor Who Legacy we turn to the latest story update.
Compared to previous levels The Hunt for Greyhound One epilogue is much faster paced, concentrating on a longer new story than revisting old favourites. The story itself is interesting (spoilers ahead!) as we play with the doctors as they fight through time to collect the specific parts needed to build a device which will enable them to find the Brigadier who cannot be reached normally since his and the doctors timelines are heavily intertwined. The story makes a lot of sense and the script is good. The Doctors are written well enough that you can hear the actual actors speaking the lines of the screen in your head.As they are not visiting any specific stories, the creative team could choose any characters they liked and had the rights to use, to drop in the game. This means that classic favourites such as Ace, The Brigadier and Bessie are now drops along side new series favourites like Wilf and Rose. It is nice to see these characters here and their abilities are great. I love the ability given to The Brigadier as he now can convert yellow and pink to green which means he works well with The Second Doctor in turning the board green for powerful attacks. Ace being a bomb character seems the logical choice. The only character missing from the story personally is the Brigadier's daughter herself, Kate Stewart - to me she would have fitted perfectly in these levels but I suspect they are holding her back for either a Series Eight release or part of The Day of the Doctor (whenever that turns up).I do hope though now with The Brigadier joining the game that he does a Captain Jack style thing and brings all his UNIT team into the action to fight The Master (Yates, Benton, Jo Grant).
The art is very good, I especially love the art in Bubble Universe Delta which is some of my favourite background art to date (along with the forest of death art). The characters too are very well drawn.
The Hunt for Greyhound One is thoroughly enjoyable and I do hope more of these more frequent smaller updates are set to continue. With series eight on the horizon I look forward to the weekly levels which will come out simultaneously with the show and I do hope that following that and the Titan Comic levels, we will begin to see more of these sorts of updates!
REVIEW - Doctor Who Legacy Season Five
We did a review of the game in general but it is a topic too large to cover in a small review. Furthermore the Doctor Who Legacy content has been by far the most viewed content on the site, so I decided that it a review of Doctor Who Legacy Season Five would be the best thing to do.
The season begins very much where Season Six left off. We venture through a series of Christmas based levels which lead to The Time of the Doctor (which was included despite the fact that it is actually in season seven). There is some impressive artwork in these levels (The Forest of Death levels especially). The characters which drop in these levels had come from the advent calender series last December.
The story itself is very good and I am looking forward to see how it progresses in future levels. The designers recently stated that they 'look for the episodes which provide the best opportunities for varied gameplay (i.e. with lots of potential threats to deal with).'. It is a shame therefore that The Pandorica Opens was not included with this but they have chosen a good selection of levels: The Beast Below, Victory of the Daleks, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Vincent and the Doctor. I really liked the Vincent and The Doctor level, this episode highlights the amount of effort the creators put into making this game (the gems have extra skins).
As we progress further into the games we see the games true aims and ambitions come to fruition. Season Seven is effectively a line up three game, it is there to introduce you to the game. Season Six just powers up your characters ready for Season Five. Your characters do not level up any more (they will begin to level up in update 2.2 coming soon). This really is a strategy game. The gameplay has been made so complex that you can no longer pass levels through just lining anything up.You need to think, you need to choose characters with the correct abilities, you need to choose perks wisely. The perk system is the only thing that allows you to get through Season Five, since the enemies become increasingly powerful whereas you cannot level your characters up anymore.
There are also a few extra features in Season Five which are really nice touches. March of the Adipose just makes you smile; the Roger Delgado Master is met in Tarminster - setting of parts of Terror of the Autons, that is a really nice touch. I do wonder if the Autons themselves will be added to the game in the future. John Simm's Master has the Toclofane, what if the other Masters have allies of their own (I do not think The Master's Adipose army will probably cut it).
Speaking of Timelords, we have four new Doctors in Season Five. John Hurt's Doctor drops early and his abilities are very good, but the best one of all is my personal favourite - THE SECOND DOCTOR - his abilities make him a very powerful Doctor (a massive help when fighting the reapers in the final level Paradox of the Zygons).
In summary this is a very strong addition to the game, and I do hope that the future looks as bright as it seems here.
INTERVIEW - The Creators of Doctor Who Legacy
The creators of Doctor Who Legacy kindly got involved with us and we have been able to do an interview with them, asking questions about the game:
How did the game develop from the drawing board to
the app it is now?
Susan - The game that exists is very true to the
game we originally set out to make and pitched BBC on in early 2013.
We're very proud of that fact. Our development partner, Seed Studio
in Taiwan, focused first and foremost on building a data driven back end system
for creating and deploying new levels as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Our character artist at Seed, Pest Jiang, was responsible for the art
style vision which we heavily iterated on with the BBC before beginning the
mammoth task of creating the beloved characters of Doctor Who. We were
also fortunate to have very talented background artists who continue to amaze
us with the work that they do bringing the sets of Doctor Who to life in the
game.
What is your working relationship with the BBC, are
they helpful?
Lee - The BBC has been
amazing. There is no way, at all, that the game could have been made without
the constant support of many parts of the BBC, from our amazing producer, the
legal team who get us permission to add characters to the game, and the Doctor
Who brand team who make sure we're true to this amazing universe of characters
which we love so much. We're in contact with the BBC constantly - rarely a day
goes past that Susan isn't on the phone to someone there, and our aim for the
relationship is complete transparency on our side - from the first day of the
project we've talked to the BBC about everything as it's decided on and
built.
You say you have to get BBC approval for anything
you put in the game, have they ever turned anything down?
Lee - It's very rare we get turned down. We're huge
Whovians, we understand the universe and characters very well, and we care
about them, and the integrity of Doctor Who as a property, deeply - It's very
rare when discussing new ideas for the game internally we ever get near
something we believe wouldn't fit in the universe to the extent that the BBC
would be concerned. Especially now - we've been working with them daily for
over a year, and we have a much better understanding of their visions and goals
for the universe, how they view the series as a whole, and we know the sorts of
places where we cannot tread, and those where we need to tread very carefully.
But ... sometimes we try and push the boundaries in little ways for fans of the
game - we asked if we could do a Christmas K9 costume for the advent promotion
last year and, looking back, it was absolutely the right decision.
The game has been a huge success, probably the
first doctor who game to be anywhere this successful, are you shocked by this?
Lee - From the very start of the design for the
game we has a very specific plan: a high quality, accessible to all ages, free
mobile game which any fan of the show, almost anywhere in the world, could
download and play immediately. What really shocked us was how quickly an
absolutely awesome community built up around the game, who help us design it on
a daily basis as we try to make it, week on week, become an even more awesome
Doctor Who experience.
What part of the game are you most proud of?
Lee - One of the pillars of the original design was
that the game would feel more like a dungeon crawler, where you go into an
encounter, the enemy poses a question in the form of a challenging situation on
the board, and then you answer it with the characters and abilities you decide
to bring into the encounter. This back and forth, the choices you have to make
(I'm stunned - what do I do now? The gems are locked, how do I react to that?)
make the game feel much more reactive, exciting, mature and deep compared to
very arcade-y games such as Bejewelled and Candy Crush Saga.
Some of episodes such as The Hungry Earth/Cold
Blood and The Pandorica Opens have not been put into the game, do you have a
process which chooses which stories you base levels on?
Susan - Lee and I have watched most episodes (of
the modern seasons anyway) multiple times. We look for the episodes which
provide the best opportunities for varied gameplay (i.e. with lots of potential
threats to deal with). In the past, we typically avoided 'monster of the
week' episodes where the conflict focused on just one enemy. That said,
this has evolved as the game has matured and we've found that those episodes
can present some of our most engaging and memorable levels -- i.e. Vincent and
the Doctor and The Satan Pit.
Are there any stories in the future you are personally
desperate to get into the game?
Susan -- There are definitely some favorites of
mine from the Tennant years that I'm looking forward to adding including The
Girl in the Fireplace, Silence in the Library, and Doomsday!
Just have to say thank you to Lee and Susan from
Doctor Who Legacy for answering our questions. Make sure to check out the game,
unlock the fan area and keep playing the game. You can also check out the
review we did of the game in the reviews section of the site, along with reviews
of other episodes.
REVIEW - Doctor Who Legacy (General)
Doctor Who has generally failed to produce a successful game to play in the past. With Doctor Who: The Adventure Games being cancelled it appeared that there was never going to be a great Doctor Who game.
We were wrong. Last November, a new game was
produced and is now a massive hit - Doctor Who Legacy. It is essentially a
puzzle game but as you progress through the levels it becomes increasingly
strategy based. You get to build up a team which you use to fight Cybermen,
Sontarans, Weeping Angels, Daleks and the main enemy (spoilers).
The game is constantly
being updated with new characters, monsters, levels and now the perk system
which has added a whole new dimension to the game, enhancing the strategy side
of the game which I hinted at earlier. And most importantly it is free! You do
not have to spend any money to play the game but you are able to unlock the fan
area which enables the players to play bonus levels and collect bonus
characters which enables the makers to continue making the game and producing
more levels, but is not necessary for ones enjoyment (we do urge you to get it
though - all you need to do is buy six or more time crystals in the store). All
doctor who fans need to get this!
One of the two best elements of the game is firstly
how you are able to build up a team from any number of characters of the show.
So you can have your favourite Doctor and your favourite companions fight your
favourite enemies. I personally design teams around eras and strategy so at
present I have an Eleventh Doctor team (11, Clara, River, Lorna Bucket, Amy,
Handles) and a Tenth Doctor team (10, Martha, Jenny, Sarah Jane, Captain Jack,
Yellow Ood), alongside my other more strategy based teams.
Secondly is the way that the designers interact
with Doctor Who fandom. Every Thursday night on Adipose TV on Twitch there is a
two hour feed where the presenter (Adi) and the producers (Lee and Susan)
discuss everything which is coming up in the near future in the game and listen
and respond to fan questions on the sorts of characters, monsters and
improvements fans want for the game and improve the game as a result to favour
fan enjoyment. Furthermore their facebook page is constantly being updated with
news and special promo codes for extra characters.
This game is incredible and urge everyone to play
it (despite the fact I suspect everyone already is) and on the sister site
Doctor Who News will try to update you when any news on future developments are
announced along with our daily updates. Normally I score everything here out of
ten but this gets a special score:
11/10