I'm gonna be blunt 'ere: It's terrible.
Oh, Konami, your TMNT games are supposed to be good! The first handheld game of their 2000's offerings was a more than decent first attempt, as it showed promise, albeit in need of some
polishing here and there. But Konami opted to start back from scratch, and the result is
disastrous.
The game is a very, veeeeery
loose retelling of the series' second season. There're four modes: Story Mode, Multiplayer(Which I couldn't try), Battle Mode, which has you collecting crystals in a very small arena under a certain time limit, and Race, which is an interesting 2-D skateboard mini game against the other turtles. The Story Mode has been overhauled for the worse. There're five worlds with 6 stages each, which is already an
improvement over the shorter first game... but more of a bad thing is not a good thing, in this case, having more to dredge through isn't something to boast about.
The previous game was rather straightforward in its approach, and for whatever reason, they decided that being straightforward was a bad idea. Most levels are made up of maze-like environments in which you have to find your weapons, and then gather crystals. Yes, you have to find your weapons first. It
sounds like a good idea, at first your turtle is
vulnerable, and you have to make your way through enemies, using stealth, alongside new actions like hiding underneath certain background elements, and make your way to your weapons. But it soon becomes tedious. Y'see, in order to progress into other levels, you have to gather 85 out of 100 crystals, so you have to explore the levels. You have to traverse them to find your weapons, then, probably, backtrack and gather everything that you couldn't before. Then there's the fact that each turtle has
different abilities, so only some of them can obtain some crystals, which sounds great at first... until you realize that it forces you to replay levels in order to meet the crystal
quota. And lest we forget that the game gets rather hard once you reach world 4, and there are no checkpoints... it translates to a lot of busy work, a lot of backtracking and a lot of replaying. There's tedious, then there's hard... but hard
and tedious? Thanks, but no thanks. Mind you, it's not insanely hard, at most I must've retried a level 6 times before finishing it, but the whole ordeal of: Gathering weapons, then gathering crystals then, probably, retrying with another Turtle, with the chance of dying mid-level and having to redo everything again... yeah, it's just
tedious.
Controls have been slightly
changed, slides and double jumps are gone, but there's the new hiding mechanics. Each turtle has unique skills, Mikey can hover with his 'chucks or throw them to break stuff at distance, Raphael can climb walls with his Sai and Donatello can access computer terminals. Leonardo gets
nothing, really, your best bet is to play each level with Raph and/or Mikey, since they have the most unique crystals per level. Combat has been simplified, characters have a simple A button attack combo and three different charge attacks, but the charge is now
instantaneous. It's not half bad really, but it's the tediousness of it all that really brings the game down. On paper, I adore the idea of each character having unique skills, but in practice it only translates to some turtles being able to reach crystals that others cannot, and they use it as an excuse to force you to retry each level in order to gather more crystals. They also
kept the
annoying mechanic were characters will break into a run after taking a few steps.
Graphics received an overhaul as well, but not for the best. Everything is smaller now, and lacks detail. The animation is nothing to write home about either. Music is forgettable
if anything.
And thus ends Turtle Month 2015... on a
whimper. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 - Battle Nexus is the worst of the Konami games, but at least, at least it can be fun, when it's not tedious. And hey, at least it's not TMNT for the PSP.
2.5 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment