Image Credit: Maze Theory/PlayStack/BBC Studios (Fair Use)

Image Description: A promotional image for The Edge of Time

By John Salway

Name: The Edge of Time: Time Lord Victorious Update

Type: Virtual reality game

Price: £19.99 (though the update is free)

Current TLV investment: £316.41

The Edge of Time is yet another of Doctor Who’s furtive attempts to enter the video game space, but this time through the miraculous (and expensive) technology of VR following on from The Runaway. As someone without the money or house space to invest in a VR platform, I’ve had to rely on the help of Rachel Rowlands, who has kindly provided me with footage of the game to enable this piece, and whose exceptional review of the main game is available here.

But how, you may ask, can I possibly review the free Time Lord Victorious update to The Edge of Time without actually experiencing it myself? The answer is ‘very easily’, because there’s such a terrible lack of actual content to talk about!

The update adds eight collectible items to the game’s main campaign, so if you’ve already completed it, I hope you won’t mind playing through it again! These items are all related to TLV in some way, from an Ood translator sphere (bringing Brian to mind) to the Doctor’s battle-worn Gallifreyan collar. Why they’re laying around in fairly unrelated environments for you to pick up is anyone’s guess.

The other main feature in the update is access to the Ninth and Tenth Doctor’s ‘coral’ TARDIS interior. It looks nice enough, and that’s about it.

But wait! Within this TARDIS, you have access to one more task. All the TLV items you have collected are now attached to the wall, and you must correctly match each one with a related sound clip – so for example, when you hear the clip of Donna arguing with Halpen in Planet of the Ood, you must present the aforementioned Ood translator sphere. When all eight have been matched, you hear the noise of the TARDIS taking off as the screen fades to black…

And you’re done. Gee, what a fun and challenging activity. Frankly, it takes less time to play this update than it has taken me to write this review, which makes me wonder why they even bothered, except perhaps for a small marketing boost.

I know I expect too much, but it might have been nice to include a proper TLV level, perhaps encountering a Kotturuh, or visiting the Archive of Islos. If they’d put in something on this scale, they could even have gotten away with charging money for it!

While I try not to be too critical of products that are offered gratis, cost of the game aside, I just don’t see the point of this update. It feels like a waste of everyone’s time – the developers for making it, Rachel’s for playing it, mine for watching it, and now yours for reading about it.

FOLLOW OUR TIME LORD VICTORIOUS REVIEWS!

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