In a nutshell...
Classic Top Trumps stat-battling using the Doctor and friends (and enemies). And on a mobile phone.
What’s it good for?
Finding out precisely how brave Martha Jones is, compared to a Dalek or, er, a Cyber-man.
Judgement time...
Right, Top Trumps then. A reasonably fun game when you’re nine years old, wearing shorts and killing time during your school lunch break - but does it really translate well onto a mobile phone?
The sad answer is, “not really.” Let’s face it, playing Top Trumps (a card game where you declare a particular statistic from your top card and compare it to your opponents’, if you didn’t already know) on your own against a computer-controlled foe sounds pretty depressing, and that’s exactly how it feels playing this game in single player mode, especially if, like me, you couldn’t give a monkey’s about Doctor Who, which is the chosen subject matter for this particular Top Trumps game.
The game is designed slickly enough, and populated with thirty characters from the BBC TV show, but essentially you’re just clicking on a stat and hoping it beats whatever the computer’s got. Repeat for a few minutes until one of you wins. A few special abilities are added in to help you win even when you’ve been dealt a duff card, but it’s not enough to stop the gameplay from feeling thin - there simply isn’t enough skill involved in the game to make it challenging or fun.
A multiplayer mode adds a bit of human-based sparkle, but it’s all on one phone and forces you to pass the handset round between you. Not really what modern mobile gaming is all about, is it?
If you’re a huge Doctor Who fan you might get some laughs out of this, but for the average gamer there’s very little reward for your time and effort. One to banish into space for eternity, methinks.
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Brain Challenge (video review)
World Series of Poker Pro Challenge (N-Gage)
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