People assume that frame rates are a straight line, but sometimes they’re more of a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, stuff.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/59097/doctor-who-the-edge-of-the-reality
Doctor Who: Edge of Reality is a first-person adventure game that itself is an expanded version of Doctor Who: The Edge of Time. The latter of which is a VR game, which honestly explains a bit of Edge of Reality’s awkward handling. Guided along by the current Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, and tenth Doctor, David Tennant, the player is ushered through a cavalcade of Doctor Who villains on a quest to save all of time and space. Unfortunately, a directionless script, lackluster VR conversion, and rough Switch port left me wishing it had regenerated into something entirely different.
When an ancient being from the origins of the universe suddenly decides to start everything over, it's up to the Doctor to sort it out. Unfortunately, she’s busy so it falls on you instead. With access to the Doctor’s Tardis and sonic screwdriver, you’ll set off across time to solve puzzles and stop the universe’s destruction. The actual Doctor(s) rarely appear in the same physical space as you and instead guide you via voice over from afar. Whittaker and Tennant both turn in decent performances as their respective Doctors, but the writing just isn’t really there. The script generally feels more like an excuse to have you encounter as many series staple villains as possible rather than to convey a throughout story. When a character does go on a monologue that’s clearly supposed to carry weight in the story, it winds up feeling unearned and out of place.
Gameplay for the most part focuses on first-person puzzle solving, and this generally works pretty well. The VR roots are oftentimes obvious in that you can pick up and examine most objects, though the texture resolution on Switch makes it painfully clear which objects are important and which ones aren’t. The puzzles themselves are generally fairly easy and usually revolve around picking up everything with a high resolution texture, then putting them in the correct places. Now and then the genre shifts away from straightforward puzzle solving into light stealth or horror elements. I’ll admit that one weeping angel jumpscare really did catch me off guard. At one point, Edge of Reality briefly turns into a first-person shooter and asks you to shoot at enemies that are much too small and nimble for the sluggish movement controls. Overall, the shake ups in genre weren’t especially exciting, but they do break up the simple puzzle solving with different, though simple, styles of gameplay.
Up to this point Edge of Reality is a fanservice-filled, easy adventure game that’s greatest sin is some lackluster writing. Where it all grinds to a halt is the Switch version itself. In addition to not appearing particularly impressive visually, Edge of Reality features some of the lowest sustained frame rates I’ve seen on Switch. Almost every exterior environment in the game has the potential to drop frames down into the single digits. It’s just uncomfortable to play. I found myself lining up with where I wanted to walk to, then looking up at the sky while I walked just to speed the game up. It makes exploring and looking for objects and puzzle hints difficult and unenjoyable. At one point I found myself stuck and unable to proceed because the frame rate was so low that I was missing a button prompt. Every time I walked past the point where a button prompt was supposed to appear to activate an event, I’d simply not see it because no new frames were rendered while I was standing in that spot. Once you make it inside a more confined space, performance improves dramatically, but some levels have you spending a long time out in the open. The distance between the player and the sky box also seems to be comically short, meaning that somewhat distant objects constantly disappear behind the sky. The very first stage has Dalek ships hovering overhead that you need to avoid, but you can’t see them until they’re almost directly above you.
Doctor Who: Edge of Reality is a bit like a hastily put together reunion show. They’re hitting all the beats you’d expect, and you’ll see every fan favorite make an appearance, but the story itself feels like cobbled together, mediocre fan-fiction rather than something from one of the most celebrated science fiction shows of all time. The gameplay itself is inoffensive if not horribly inventive, and makes a decent attempt at implementing some nice variety. This Switch version, however, is just not very fun to play. It is poorly optimized to a damaging degree and turns what could be a meandering but enjoyable experience into one of the more rough experiences I’ve had on the platform. There is some fun to be had here surfing along the great wibbly-wobbly, but it’s probably better done on a different system.
Topic: Doctor Who: The Edge of the Reality (Read 1086 times)
