Return To Earth Review

Return To Earth Guns Ablaze

Return To Earth sets out to entice our imagination with an action-packed descent down a massive space elevator in this arcade shooter for Android and iOS. This title features hordes of robotic enemies, customizable weapons and familiar run-and-gun gameplay. Can you master your arsenal of death to find your way home?

A Solid First Impression

Return To Earth does a great job in the first ten minutes. The developers at Mini Dragon take the familiar formula of classic shooters like Robotron and add a modern twist. Our adorable little hero starts at the top of a massive space elevator. She must annihilate swaths of robotic baddies as she works her way down the various floors.

The control is simple and tight. The ease with which you mow down your enemies would make any John Deere proud. The generic nature of the floors overshadows the brilliant blue earth in the background calling you home. Return To Earth also scratches that old nostalgia itch by perfectly recreating the “pew-pew boom.” Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there.

Going Down

This was a difficult title to review because every time I thought there was nothing more, Return To Earth unlocked more levels and goodies. This would sound like a good thing, but for everything Return To Earth did right, it did two things wrong.

Let’s begin with the difficulty. Return To Earth starts out with zero difficulty. The med packs it offers in great abundance often sit unused. Players will not encounter enemies that even threaten your hero until the fourth floor and even then, just barely. Sentry robots that function as level bosses are easy to defeat by just standing in place. If players stick with this title long enough, they can unlock a light saber-wielding hero that cuts through enemies easier than Anakin at Jedi daycare (too soon?). What’s needed to unlock this new hero brings me to my next gripe.

To unlock the plethora of creative weaponry, new heroes and items, Return To Earth forces players to play the same five levels. For a title to be based on climbing down a massive stellar elevator, I found this to be an odd choice. To make matters worse, better rewards are found on just one of the levels so players will find themselves running the same level repeatedly. The reward for this monotony is for players to become even stronger than they already are.

Is There a Call Button?

It gets worse. After several days of yawning my way through combat and watching some truly mind-numbing ads, Return To Earth added two new levels. These were not part of the space elevator that makes up most levels but called Rifts. Within these Rifts, you summon a sentry robot after a certain number of kills. The good news is that the difficulty is finally worthy of the careful use of med kits. The bad news is a slew of technical difficulties.

Return To Earth is ridden with so many technical problems. I have played most of the game with no sound. It just cuts in and out as it pleases. There were announcements in an unknown Asian language, crashes, and once where my deceased ghost was able to complete the level with negative health. While some fixes appeared to have taken place, there were so many bugs that I felt like a game tester.

Return To Reality

I have more I could pick on about Return To Earth. This title should not have been released in this unfinished state. This is another mobile title that developers spent more time perfecting how to monetize than to make something players want to play. I don’t know if it’s disappointment or anger I am feeling at the wasted opportunity and talents of the artists involved. Return To Earth may eventually find its way home, but for now—it’s floating up there with all that space trash.