Review #165: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 - Mutant Nightmare

 Konami decided to go with a bang!

 Konami has a thing with TMNT games and making three iterations of it, eh! Mutant Nightmare is the last TMNT action-adventure game they would produce, and man, did they finally get their bearings together and deliver!

 Just as the previous game covered Season 2, this one covers Season 3, using various clips from the show. This time around they opted for a Episode-based distribution, yet it means little, you still have to play them in order, and can save after any stage on any episode. You'll eventually unlock Free Battle, that allows you to visit any of the bigger stages and explore them in order to find goodies, Score Attack(Which is basically a survival mode against endless waves of enemies) and Time attack that tasks you with defeating as many enemies as you can in a set amount of time. You can also unlock the Arcade version of Turtles in Time, with new music and voice cues, it ain't as good as the SNES port, and the character you played is tied to which player you are, but at least you can pause it now!

 Gameplay has been revised, again, this time for the better. The terrible combat system from the last game has been overhauled to more closely resemble the first game, however, each turtle has very different combos and inputs, without that terrible timing issue the second game had, which is very welcome. Just as with the first game, you are now stuck with the character you pick before starting a stage, however, even while in Single Player the other Turtles will fight alongside you, they are pretty useful to be honest, and you can switch characters before starting any stage. Vehicle stages from the second game return, but they are more fun this time around(Probably because now you get to attack as well as move!) alongside some new shooting galleries, they are not particularly noteworthy, but they are appreciated.

 Stages are more open than before, previous game's stages would consist of single rooms with an objective, some of the stages in these games have various sections. Still, individual abilities are gone, not that they received much use anyways. Hidden throughout most levels are Scrolls and DVDs. DVDs unlock cutscenes, but Scrolls are items you can equip on your turtle in order to enhance it. Y'see, this time around enemies drop crystals that you must collect and then use as currency to buy new combos, new skills or new Scroll slots. This is very neat, on paper, as you can customize your Turtle to suit your style or get some nice extras... however, most of the time the only scrolls you'll really need are the ones that increase your HP or Attack power! There's also scrolls to play as the Dino Turtles and the Ultimate turtles. Dino Turtles sound really cool, I mean DINO. TURTLES. But they all amount to some very lame looking armor above their shells and different weapons. Lame. Ultimate Turtles are really cool, they are featured on the game's intro and the instruction booklet keeps talking about them... but you unlock them after finishing the game and then replaying each Nightmare Level. If you've been doing all the Free Battles to earn the unlockables, there's basically no point to the Ultimate Turtles.

 As for complaints, there's the fact that the minimap is basically useless. Stages like the first Free Battle are rather confusing and the mini map doesn't help, plus, to actually earn the unlockables and crystals you found in a Free Battle, you have to return to the starting point. Combat is also a bit shallow, buying combos, and equipping slots are neat ideas, but the game is a beat'em up at heart, enemies and bosses need little more strategy than just mashing buttons. And while previous games gave you unlockable characters, that played differently from the turtles, or alternate costumes(Battle Nexus had 2 costumes per turtle!), there's none of that here. Dino Turtles look lame, and Ultimate Turtles, while overpowered, have the exact same combos as the normal turtles.

 Character models certainly look slightly less detailed than their Battle Nexus counterparts, but stages have gotten larger and more detailed, so I guess it's understandable. Framerate is pretty decent too, although the game does struggle some times. As per usual, voice acting is done by the actors from the show, even though characters like Bishop and his 'research' aren't very convincing. Music is still surprisingly good, but it lacks the spark the music from the previous games had, it's still rather good, just not as memorable.

 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 is easily the best one of the bunch, Konami mixed the best things from both games and wound up with a fitting finale to their run with the franchise.
 8.0 out of 10