Doctor Who: Return To Earth Review (6/10)

Doctor Who hasn't had a particularly illustrious history in video games: Death to the Doctor (1997) was an awkward mish-mash FPS that threw in every enemy it could find, then the Top Trumps game did nothing more than what it said on the tin, and even the recently freebie Adventure Games for PC were nothing special. With a Wii and DS game out focusing on the Doctor and Amy, does the former do the series justice? Not as much as you might want, but to be fair it tries its hardest. It's difficult to start this review without mentioning the lame graphics- models of Matt and Karen's characters are hideously retro, the environments would pass for a low-key Nintendo 64 title, and the Cyber-Men and Daleks look too one-dimensional. However, once you're past this striking flaw, the plot will for the most part engross you to the last: the Doctor and Amy search the SS Lucy Gray for human survivors, only to find a Cyber-plot to take control and in turn a Dalek ship ready to exterminate humanity in search of a Time Axis. By the show's standards, this is an epic yarn, and the only thing stopping Return To Earth being a great Who game is, sadly, its game-play. Puzzles are the main course here, but the Wii's hit-or-miss pointer controls can often mean unfair deaths, and frequent difficulty spikes will annoy the casual viewer this game is aimed at. All in all, while for the hardcore fans of Who there's most certainly enough here to persevere through, casual viewers best steer well clear if they're also fans of such greats as COD.