Fresh from the family viewing of the 2010 Christmas Special and the Doctor Who Prom, I loaded up Doctor Who: Return to Earth with great anticipation. Sure, I knew it was a casual game - I love casual games! Sure, I knew it was a television-show-tie-in - I also admit to quite enjoying a game of Desperate Housewives and have Grey's Anatomy sitting in my "to play" pile. Normal people might have been turned away by those two concepts, but I pressed on, undeterred.

The initial loading screen was great, kicking off with that evocative theme-tune that never seems to age. Unfortunately, that's about where it ended. I selected to play a New Game, and the game started loading properly.

It's been a while since I've played anything on the Wii, so I excused the graphical quality of the Tardis-zooming introductory scenes. Perhaps I've just been spoiled by watching too much HD-quality television, and maybe I was expecting a bit much.



Unfortunately, as was quickly revealed, I'd set my hopes far, far too high - and I'm not just talking about the quality of the graphics.

Doctor Who: Return to Earth is - to put it bluntly - pretty insulting. The BBC had done really well for itself with the freely downloadable PC tie-ins released in 2010. Responses to the four episodic releases were "overwhelmingly positive", so we're at a loss to figure out how the mighty have fallen so very, very far.

As mentioned, the graphics have ignored any advancements over the past 15 years, appearing clunky and poorly-skinned. Even Matt Smith, who looks like a cartoon in real life, is not portrayed in a flattering light. The camera is dismal, often rotating around a stationary character and pausing at an angle which gives the gamer a fabulous view of a box, a fence, or a wall (sometimes, if you're lucky, the camera will go inside the wall and you'll get Amy Pond's blank pixelated face staring at you as she tries to walk through an obstacle). Aiming and firing is a tricky affair, using the somewhat un-sensitive Wii remote to focus on a significantly more sensitive target. Tied in with that, the control scheme is ridiculous - pushing 'up' on the Nunchuk results in Amy Pond wandering off to the side (any way but forward).

The storyline was written by Oli Smith, who also pens the comic versions of the series (with a few novelisations in there, too), so the pedigree should be there, which makes the whole thing even more disappointing. It ends up a mish-mash of story elements with no real continuity. People love Daleks! We'll put them in here. Cybermen? They go over there. The Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver is awfully popular, why don't we give Amy one as well?

A faint sparkle of hope - although nowhere near enough to redeem the game - is the audio quality. The iconic theme tune plays a key role, and that's never a bad thing. Robot voices sound like robot voices (and Daleks still make me cringe). Both Matt Smith and Karen Gillan provide the voices for their characters, but the script they've been given is rubbish. For a British game, the developers have somehow forgotten their Nation's typical humour, instead writing nonsensical babble for the NPCs, enemies, in-game robots and even the Doctor and Pond. "Time for a cup of tea," indeed.

Oh, and to make matters worse, I didn't even get the Sonic Screwdriver Wii remote cover that came with some copies, either. Boo.