Review #163: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 - Battle Nexus

 Well, at least Konami tried.

 The first TMNT game Konami released on the PS2 was kinda good, flawed, but playable and a decent time waster. For the second installment, Konami decided to go back to the drawing board and produce a very different game. In many ways, it's a much better offering, but it has some rather hard-hitting setbacks that keep it from being an altogether better game.

 Battle Nexus covers, loosely, the second season of the 2003 TMNT cartoon, and once again, it borrows clips from the show, they actually went the extra mile and produced exclusive clips for this game. At the outset, the game only offers one mode, disappointing since the first one had a VS and Challenge Mode, but challenge mode is still here, disguised as "Tournament" when accessing your Hub. This time around, the game is divided in over 40 stages, which sounds a lot, but each stage is very small and short, so you can play in bursts, and save your game any time you are on the stage select screen, which is a good thing considering how awkward the first game was when it came to saving. Another improvement is that now you can play with up to three other players at the same time... but you'll have to contend with the fixed camera angles

 The first game was a simple, straightforward beat'em up game, this one is a bit more of an action-adventure game. Now you can switch between any of the four turtles(Or the four unlockable characters) at any time, which you'll probably need to, as each turtle has a unique ability that you might need in order to go onward... or collect the hidden antiques in each level. Leonardo can cut through fences, Raphael can push blocks, Mikey can hoover on the air and Donatello can tinker with computers. This is a change for good, as the game won't get as repetitive as the first game, plus, there's a couple of vehicle stage to break the action. All things considered, it should be a better game than its predecessor, however...

 The combat system received an overhaul, for the worst. Just as before, you get a weak attack and a strong attack, however, the four-weak attack and three-weak attack combos are gone, weak attacks will combo up to two hits, and if you don't press strong attack, you will be left open for a counter attack. Early in the game, before you unlock other combos, even the three hit combos will leave you open for a counter attack. And you just can't mash buttons, as each character has a different time window to press buttons, instead of making them feel unique, it makes it a chore to switch characters, as you'll start messing up. And then they introduce the combos that require you to end it by pressing two buttons at the same time, coupled with the weird timing, makes for a very unsatisfying and clunky combat system. And it's a shame, because if the first game got something right, it was the combat. This game gets the adventuring right, but screwed up the combat big time, might as well just skip as many enemies as you can.

 The game is fairly large, with things to find on each level. There's a ton of different themes for levels, so there's a lot of variety as well. As a bonus, you can unlock the first TMNT arcade game. Truth be told, the game hasn't aged very well, and this is a straight-up plain emulation, there's no dip switches to temper with the options, you can't pause it, you can't pick a character, being locked on a Turtle depending on which player are you.

 The presentation is definitely among the game's best features. There's a ton of different environments on each stage and characters look much better than before, although the first game's simpler models made them more faithful to the cartoon, but oh well! As a consequence, the framerate took a hit, and when it gets crowded, prepare to dip into 10 frames per second! Music is top-notch, these are all original tunes, and surprisingly, they are really good, dare I say too good for a licensed game? The game borrows the voice actors from the show, and they performed admirably.

 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  is about as good as the first one. I think I enjoyed this one just a tiny bit more, but it might be due to nostalgia. You prefer a beat'em up game? Go with the first one. You'd rather play something that has more exploring and jumping and don't mind clunky combat? This is your game.
 6.5 out of 10.