Erm... which ooze?
While the previous TMNT game wasn't bad by any means, it wasn't particularly good either, so Activision lent the franchise to Wayforward. Instead of a beat'em up, they opted for a single player Metroidvania romp, and while still
far from being the ideal Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, it's still a step up from the previous offering.
The story... is
almost non-existent. The Foot Clan, lead by Shredder, are dealing with the Krang in developing a new weapon, so it's up to the turtles to stop them. During the adventure they'll come across allies like Casey, Slash, Karai and April, even though they do little more than say a couple of lines and teach you a new move, and fight foes like Rahzar, Baxter Stockman, Tiger Claw and the Newtrominator. It manages to cover most of the really important characters, even if they only get to say a
few lines, and the writing feels straight out of the show, so that's fine. One neat little touch is, since you can swap Turtles at will, each turtle has
different, voiced lines when initiating each scene!
The game plays mostly like the original TMNT game on the NES, but with a Metroidvania
flair. The entire 'world' of the game is interconnected: Sewers, City, TCRI and Dimension X, and the more you play, the more 'connections' between areas that you'll discover. This being a Metroidvania, at the start you won't be able to go everywhere, some ledges might be out of reach, or doors that you can't open may block your progress, but by exploring, you'll earn
new abilities that allow you passage through them. First complaint: Most of the 'obstacles' are doors that require ammo-based weapons.
Why? Whose idea was it? Usually, behind each gate there's a machine that spawns infinite enemies so that you can kill them endlessly in hopes that they drop ammo for that particular sub weapon. To be fair, Shurikens are plentiful, and I only had to farm for smoke bombs once, but the fact remains that there's the possibility for tedium, and since that was the case, I just avoided using subweapons as much as possible in order to
conserve them.
Not a good design choice. But the worst one? Inspired by the first TMNT game, losing all your health with a turtle means that he gets 'captured' and you must
find him in one of the many 'Rescue rooms'
throughout the game. These translates to artificial length, by forcing you to backtrack in order to get him back. As a matter of fact, I lost Leonardo, my favorite turtle, to the first boss... and as luck would have it, he was 'captured' in one of the latter areas of the game, which meant I spent over an hour without my favorite turtle.
Fun. You can eventually find an item that tells you in which particular room they got sent to, but while it
cuts down on the wandering, you will still have to backtrack. And you just know that they did it to extend the game's life, as having lost Leo twice, and only him, I 100%ed the game in
little over four hours.
The game is one of those floaty, slidey kinda games, you know, those games in which it feels as if everything lacked weight. It's not
necessarily a bad thing, but I'm not particularly fond of it, that said, after a while I got used to it and didn't mind it at all. The combat is a simple 'mash Y' matter, although they did bother to add a parry mechanic, which you don't really need.
At all. They also did this weird 4 hit combo, but the way it works is that after the third hit, you press Y a fourth time and
hold it, then couple it with a direction in order to pull one of four different finishers. Each one has a different purpose, 'Down+Y' breaks defenses, 'Up+Y' breaks shields and juggles enemies, 'Forward+Y' pushes the enemy with a kick, and 'Back+Y' makes you
somersault over the enemy. The 'Hold Y' thing is baffling, but you can just mash Y, so don't even bother with it. There's also sub weapons: Smoke Bombs, Shurikens, Electric Shurikens and... Exploding Shurikens. Just save them up for the different doors, really. And hey, it wouldn't be a Wayforward game without a few bugs, the ones I came across were: The game
crashed once, during Shredder's boss fight an enemy got 'stuck' in the middle of the arena, he couldn't move, I couldn't harm him, but touching him would hurt me! And lastly, sometimes the Squirrel enemies would default to their 'standing' animation just for kicks.
Just like the previous game, the presentation is rather overwhelming. Graphically, it took two steps forward and one step back: Character models look worse than before, however, they are more detailed, with Raph even having the trademark chip on his shell. The animation is rather
poor as well, for instance, the rolling looks all kinds of
terrible. Even so, the stages, while simple, are visually
appealing, I was particularly taken by the 'City' backgrounds. The music is... believe or not, it's actually quite good! And the voice acting is every bit as good as the previous one.
Danger of the Ooze is far from perfect, it's very flawed as a matter of fact, but when it comes to it, it's quite fun. Maybe it's just my
inner Metroidvania fan talking, but beneath the bugs, beneath the lackluster graphics, beneath the questionable design choices, it's
fun.
6.5 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment