Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

6 Overall Score
Gameplay: 4/10
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 7/10

Arcade mode | Multiplayer

Camera Angles | Glitched Controls

Game Info

GAME NAME: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

DEVELOPER(S): Red Fly Studio

PUBLISHER(S): Activision

PLATFORM(S): Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Microsoft Windows

GENRE(S): Action-Adventure

RELEASE DATE(S): August 28, 2013

I grew up on TMNT and to this day I love them.  I watch the new shows on T.V. with my kids and love it now as much as I did back then.  So obviously I would be one to download this game.  As soon as I turned it on, I got extremely excited because the opening theme song is the same as the song from the end credits of the very first TMNT movie, but just the chorus line.  I must admit I let it play for a few seconds so I could enjoy my past.  Once the game starts, not only are you fighting purple dragons, the foot clan and bosses, you are also fighting bad camera angles.  Trying to use the environment or just combating the baddies, the camera angles will change for the worst.

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When I first took control of my character, I felt like I was playing a very generic version of the Batman series.  The fighting sequence in the game is basically a button masher to me.  You can try out the combos but they are unnecessary and don’t work every time.  Same with the reversal of attacks.  Tap the block button to stop your attackers moves and reverse it into your favor, problem is it wouldn’t always block or turn it into a reversal.  But, when the moves, combos, and reversals work, it is pretty cool.  The turtles have conversations throughout the actual gameplay, more like one-liners, and at first they were okay but after a few minutes and hearing them over and over again, it got redundant and annoying.  The cut-scenes are just like comic book drawings of what is going on in the game and with just normal voice overs.  Maybe they could have put a little more effort into these voice overs, it just came across to me as if they were reading their lines without feeling.

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Progressing through the game, you can level up your heroes in a half shell.  Earning skill points to level up certain areas of your turtles skill tree.  I found it cool at first until I realized the points are shared between the foursome.  Which made it a little more detailed and exhausting on how you want to level your characters.  So in honesty, I believe this part could have been left out. There was way too much detail for a game that has its combo’s but still comes across as a button masher.  Not to say that there wasn’t an upside though. As you get further into your skill sets, more bad ass skills and specials will open up, assuming they work when you try for it.  The actual campaign isn’t very long either, it took between four to five hours to finish.

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The headquarters (HQ) is where you will go between missions or if you choose to quit your mission, you can just pause the game and head over to the HQ.  HQ is basically the turtle lair, where you can choose the NYC map, the workshop which is supposed to be Donnie’s lab but you will get new powerful weapons. You can go to the dojo to train or to the fridge which shows you the concept art you have collected throughout the game.

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Now, I know a lot of this sounds bad but there is a cool and fun part to this game.  The arcade, which is co-op, is even better than that of the regular version of the campaign.  It reminds me a lot of the old school TMNT arcade game.  It is a side scrolling action game but the only part that upset me was that in the original game you could hit the street signs, warning cones, fire hydrants, etc.  In this arcade version you can only fight the villains and dodge the surroundings like a car that comes at you, etc.  Even without being able to hit the random things I still really enjoyed this part of the game.  I feel like its better than the actual main story mode.

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In reading this I know it comes off as a horrible game but if you are a huge Ninja Turtle fan like me then you can probably look past it but for how long?  It took me a little bit but I did wind up getting tired of the glitches and camera angles.  I enjoy the idea of being the Turtles again in a game, Ralph in particular, but I feel they could have done a lot better than this.  Now the arcade part of the game is awesome.  Its nothing special for a side scroller but I loved it and so did my son.  So for $14.99 it isn’t too bad but you aren’t missing anything if you hold off and wait for the price to drop.

**Review Based on Xbox360 Version

 

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Author: Jimmy View all posts by

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