Review #162: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

 Heroes in a half-shell, turtle power!

 Back in 2003, 4Kids rebooted the TMNT animate series, this time following the original Mirage comics more closely and providing a darker, more mature and more faithful rendition of the Ninja Turtles than many of us grew up with. Just as it was back then, Konami took the mantle of providing us the videogame adaptations, and they stuck close to their guns.

 The game is loosely based on the first season of the series, the game even uses scenes from the series itself as cut-scenes, which is really neat touch. Even some of the dialogue before stages is taken straight from the show. The game has three different modes, Story, VS and Challenge. Story Mode has you, and if you want, a friend too, go through six stages as any of the four turtles(You can also unlock Splinter and Casey Jones). VS mode is a rather simple one on one match that runs on the game's engine and pits you against another player or the CPU. There's about 6 unlockable characters, bosses from the game, and everyone has their own moves, for such a throw-away mode, it's a surprisingly good addition, sure it's pretty unbalanced, but it harkens back to the NES beat'em ups of old that would include this mode just for kicks. Lastly there's Challenge Mode, one player only, where you must go through 26 waves of enemies with just one life.

 TMNT on the PS2 is a beat'em up game, a genre that flourished on the Arcades, got a number of decent entries on the NES but bloomed on the SNES. This game is the exact result of bringing one of those games into the third dimension, alongside all the detriments that the genre is known for. Each Turtle has two normal attack buttons, which can be combined for different effects, a double jump, limited shurikens, which also come in Explosive and Electric variety, a dash, a pop up move and later on a jump attack and "Gembu" super power. First thing I want to mention, is that the instruction booklet makes a huge deal out of the Gembu attack, but you only unlock it after clearing the second-to-last stage with every turtle, and unless you've been doing every stage with every turtle at an even pace, which you probably won't do, you'll only get to use it on the last stage with the last turtle. What the hell? And the Jumping Attack must also be unlocked, which is very weird since it's a very mundane attack and is unlocked after clearing the first stage. Maybe they were planning to have unlockable moves but run out of time?

 Gameplay is very simple and very repetitive. Pro-tip: If you are gonna play by yourself, do yourself a favor and slide down the difficulty to Easy. Thing is enemies, particularly the early stages, are filled with enemy waves, and they have a ton of health. They aren't hard to defeat by any means, you probably won't lose a life on the entire run, but, as easy as it is, they can take a lot of punishment, and they come in large numbers, which makes an already repetitive game very, very tedious. And yes, the game is repetitive, sadly, it comes with the territory. Older beat'em ups have always had this problem, and this game is no exception, which is why having a second player is advised(it also makes the enemies' endurance more tolerable). Another issue the game has, is that in order to unlock Challenge Mode and the secret boss you are gonna have to beat the game with all four turtles. Each turtle's playthrough is almost exactly the same, Stage 5 switches up when they encounter each of the two mini bosses and each Turtle has an exclusive boss(Stockman for Donnie, Hun for Mikey, Splinter for Leo and Casey for Raph).

 To the game's merit, they got the fighting right. The overall mechanics are very simple, God of War or DMC this is not, and while its simplicity works against it, since it can and will get a bit repetitive, it's not too bad, particularly with two players. While the four turtles work more-or-less the same, each one has different reach, speed, strength and... accuracy. You'll see that Mikey is really fast, but his combos move him all over the place, Raph has the shortest reach, is really slow, but fights in a straight line and is very powerful, while Donnie isn't as slow as Raph, he isn't as strong but his bo-staff grants him better reach than any of the other turtles. And hitting dudes just feels right, it's hard to explain, but part of making a good beat'em up is making the game feel right, and they nailed it. However, one thing they didn't get right is saving the game. You can only save the game after clearing an entire Stage. And Stages are divided in "areas", usually 5 to 7, it's really weird why they would divide the game in Areas and not allow you to save in-between, I understand that they made it to mask loading times, but if you are thrown back to the map screen, might as well let you save, especially since some areas tend to drag for too long.

 The game uses the now-so-popular cell-shaded style. Character models are pretty plain and very little detailed, but, curiously, it makes them look more akin to the show which ends up being really cool. Human characters are also very simple, but fall on the "generic" category, plus, their faces look terrible, this is most noticeable on Casey and April who get close-up shots during the Story Mode. The environments can get a bit repetitive, but they are very true to the show. One wouldn't expect a stellar soundtrack from a licensed game, but it packs some really good tunes, particularly the latter levels. They also got the voice-actors from the show, which adds to the legitimacy of the game.

 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the PS2 is a game best played with 2 players. It's repetitive, oftentimes tedious and sometimes, can get a bit long in the tooth. Expecting players to beat almost the same exact game four times in order to unlock most of the extras is a bit too much. However, despite these flaws, and maybe since I kinda grew up with beat'em ups and like the genre, I liked the game for what it was. And as far as licensed games go, this one goes the extra mile with clips and lines from the show, coupled with unlockable concept art.
 6.5 out of 10