Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Game Info

 

This will be the second Turtles game I have reviewed in the past few months, whether it’s made for kids or not I love the TMNT.  Before I get going on this, I will say that I am very disappointed that Jason Biggs did not do the voice of Leonardo for the game, whatever his reasons were I felt it took away from the character and the game.  I got this game knowing it was made for kids, so I will review it in a gamer stand point and then from the kids stand point.  From a gamer’s view this game is not much to brag about, everything is pretty easy to find, the survival mode is pretty simple and the villains are pretty lame.  From a kids perspective, it looks just like the show and it is cool to fight against Dogpound, Fish Face, and even the Shredder.

The story is told with very few cut scenes, most of the time the character comes across the screen like a comic book and says his part in the story and then slides back out and the next character will come in and do their part.  The comments throughout the game as you are fighting are funny and awesome for the turtles but get repetitive and annoying after the second level.  Sometimes the graphics were a little slow, like the character would talk and either they weren’t on the screen yet or the next character would come on too soon.

The game play in the mission mode is a little slow, you feel like you are moving way slower than what you are doing.  While I was playing in single player, I noticed as I was fighting that only one other turtle seemed to fight with me at a time while the remaining two stood there doing nothing.  The end bosses were extremely lame, they are invincible while they attack you.  After a few attack moves, they get stuck and that is when you make your counter attack.  It goes on for like four times per final boss.  The game is more of a button masher but if you push the attack button at a steady pace you will be able to hit your combo moves.  Combo moves are unlocked by upgrading your turtle of choice.  The higher the upgrades, the stronger your turtle but you can also improve your turtles special move as well.  As you upgrade the special move, it goes from being like a normal attack to a little cut scene each turtle does on the opening theme and then a huge attack that hurts all enemies.  As I was playing through, I didn’t really notice the attacks getting stronger or my health being better but the special moves definitely upgraded.  The upgrades stay permanent for all game modes, so whatever you upgrade in story mode will also hold true to survival mode and vice versa.  Also, I did like being able to throw the foot and the Kraang into the screen like the old school Turtles in Time for the SNES.

There are also a few modes in the game including and arcade garme, time attack and survival mode.  To be able to unlock each mode you have to collect a certain amount of mutagen canisters in the story mode.  Time attack is basically the story mode with a time to it.  The arcade is like the old school star wars game for the atari, even with the same terrible graphics.  You fly a ship side scrolling left or right, blowing up space crafts and preventing them from picking up the human race.  Survival mode, which in my opinion, is the best of the side games.  You get to pick from a few levels and you start with all four turtles on a little platform area to fight waves and waves of enemies.  It will get tougher as you go on and all four turtles share the same lives so once your lives are gone you will either become one of the remaining turtles or you will have to wait on your co-op partners to lose before its over.  The game play in survival mode seems a lot faster and the controls are a lot smoother too.

All in all it is a game made for the younger kids.  It is a button masher and nothing special for combo moves or anything else for that matter.  It’s cool the graphics look like the show but it will probably take more than that to keep the kids interested in it too.  The whole game is pretty redundant even for kids.  It’s fun for maybe a few levels of just beat em up type of day but not much more.  I love the turtles but I feel like they are getting no justice in this video game or any other game since Turtles in time or the Hyperstone heist.  This should have been an arcade game for the xbox 360.  It’s also weird the system selection that the game was made for like the 360, the wii, and the 3ds and totally bypassing the ps3 and the wii u.  It’s on sale a lot, that is probably the time I would suggest to buy it.