Writing about anything connected with Dr. Who can be a nightmare as the weight of expectation from its adoring fans constantly sits atop your shoulders. The funny thing is that I’m much more a fan of Star Wars than Dr. Who and yet I don’t feel the same anxiety when reviewing items relating to Star Wars. This no doubt stems from the fact that tales of the good Doctor have successfully spanned generation after generation since its first outing on the BBC back in 1963.

Fans of the series will be pleased to see all of the usual suspects on display. The characters are from the most recent incarnation of the show although old-school Dr. Who is represented by Cybermen and Daleks albeit in their updated guises. The more recent characters on offer range from the Ood, Slitheen, and the Cat People of New Earth to the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe, or Max as his human slaves like to call him. While the game features many interesting species from the Dr. Who universe I didn’t notice a single Cheetah Person which saddens me.

The developers have done as good a job as can be expected as it must be a difficult task to base a videogame on the Top Trumps card game which is so basic and offers little scope to work with. The graphics are in a cartoon style which does make everything look quite nice. The sound effects, that accompany the dramatic Dr. Who theme tune which I happen to be quite fond of, are quite basic but they do get the job done. As far as controls are concerned I initially felt that the Wii-Mote would be perfect for moving around the on-screen cursor, which is a Sonic Screwdriver, but it can be quite fiddly and at times I found myself selecting the wrong attribute by mistake which is really annoying. The biggest issue I have with this game is that the AI is really poor. The attribute your AI opponent will choose appears to be completely random and this is evident when they play a special card to increase an attribute only to ignore it and choose something else.

I must say that I have never understood the appeal of Top Trumps. A character is represented by a number of attributes, when it’s your turn you choose one of these attributes, you then check your opponent’s card to see if the matching attribute is higher or lower than your own. That’s pretty much it. It’s only slightly more tactical than tossing a coin in the air and calling “heads” or “tails” and hoping you guessed correctly. Despite this the game appears to have a substantial following which leads me to imagine that somewhere in the world there are those who take pride in being Top Trump champions, in other words, they are skilled in guesswork. Having said that I can certainly appreciate that playing the game with physical cards which you can actually hold in your hands is preferable to sitting in front of a TV screen. If you really want to play a Dr. Who version of Top Trumps you should take the much cheaper option and buy a pack of cards.

4.5/10

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