Doctor Who Overruns PlayStation Home
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With only a few days until the return of Doctor Who, the beloved British series is damn near everywhere these days, from the internet to the cover of Entertainment Weekly. One place I didn’t expect to see any time lords, however, was hanging around inside PlayStation’s virtual clubhouse, “PlayStation home.” But sure enough, the PlayStation digital landscape has been invaded by mysterious aliens, eccentric time travelers, and blue phone boxes that are bigger on the inside.
As part of the full-court marketing press Doctor Who has been serving up lately, PlayStation Home now allows users to dress their avatars up in all manner of timey-wimey get-ups. You can don Matt Smith’s dapper Eleventh Doctor suit and sonic screwdriver, or River Song’s catsuit, or even spruce your avatar up like alien critters such as the Silence or the Silurians. If there was nothing more to it than that, I probably wouldn’t be writing about it, but there’s one more feature that could be worth a look: the TARDIS.
Yes, Home apparently gives you a virtual TARDIS you can hang out inside with your other digital buddies. It isn’t clear how extensive this thing will be, but the videos and pictures show the well-known interior of the control room at least. If the PlayStation people are smart, they’ll have milked this opportunity for all it’s worth and built out a ton more stuff to explore inside the TARDIS. Because let’s face it, the appeal of a virtual TARDIS is going to wear off fast if it’s just a one-room affair.
I do most of my gaming on the PC or Xbox 360, but I bought a PlayStation 3 pretty much solely to play the Uncharted games. So while my experience with the PS3 side of things is admittedly limited, I’ve never really seen the point of PlayStation Home. I mean, if you’re really craving the chance to chat with likely-unrepresentative avatars of strangers, why not play an MMO? At least then you can kill things in between arguing politics with 12-year-old boys disguised as busty 19-year-old girls. Still, I guess if you absolutely must hang out in a virtual clubhouse, you might as well do it while dressed like the Doctor.
PlayStation will be rolling out more Doctor Who content as the year progresses, all celebrating the show’s 50th anniversary. You can check out a trailer for the “Wave One” content below.
