Flushed Away review

Flushed Away for the DS is a misguided take on a familiar 2D platformer with an otherwise good looking 3D skin. Playing as either the pampered pet mouse Roddy or the spunky mouse captain Rita, you explore the Piccadilly sewers for clues, collecting coins and treasure while leaping between pipes, avoiding biting barnacles, attacking rats, batting away nasty frogs - by the way, most enemies just go to sleep and then wake up again - and finally fighting big boss Toad.

It may sound and, thanks to some nice character models based on Aardman Animation's characters, even look kinda cute - but really, it's just another disappointing movie-based game.

All of the 3D environments are very similar, with the same well-textured brick backgrounds and drippy pipes that make it hard to tell when you've entered a new area. With no guidance and little reward except collecting coins and miraculously finding Roddy's way home, we're not sure why anyone would want to bother spending any time backtracking throughout the sewers at all.