Month Overview: July 2015

 Games finished in July 2015:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles(GBA)                                                          7.0
Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles                                             5.5
Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Danger of the Ooze             6.5
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles(Movie)                                                        7.5
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 - Mutant Nightmare(DS)                         4.0
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 - Battle Nexus                                          2.5

 Exams, studying, reading and Turtle Month 2015. Well, I'm not gonna dance around it, Turtle Month 2015 blew, who knew Ninja Turtles games could get so bad? There were a couple of good ones, at least, but the bad ones got oh so bad.

 Game of July:

 Who'd knew a game, based on a Michael Bay movie could get so good? Fitting the franchise around the genre, instead of the other way around, seems to have been the right call. As fun as it was, it needed more of everything. More environments, more stages, more loot! But hey, there's always the next time!

 Runner-up:

 It's funny, and sad, when you think about it, but Konami built a decent foundation for future games with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was too short and lacked a bit more tuning, but it was fun while it lasted. And then Konami said to hell with it and built TMNT 2 Battle Nexus almost from the ground up, and it was terrible. And for the third entry they decided to take a little bit from both games, but even then, it couldn't match the first one. Goddammit, Konami.

Review #249: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 - Battle Nexus(GBA)

 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

Review #248: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 - Mutant Nightmare(DS)

 Tough as a shell.

 Konami's run with TMNT on Home Consoles, during the 2000s, was pretty good... it's a shame that the handheld games didn't fare as well. Just as with the console games, it seems like Konami had a hard time finding an identity for these games, however, while they knocked it out of the park when it came to Mutant Nightmare on PS2, the DS version wasn't half as good.

 Mutant Nightmare is based off the third season of the show, but very, very loosely. It does dabble in some of the storylines, but just barely. As far as the set-up goes, Single Player is made up of 4 'worlds', Worlds 1-3 are made up of 7-8 stages each, while World 4 is made up of 5 stages. Each turtle has slightly different abilities, which means that some turtles will be able to explore certain areas the others can't, what's more, each turtle only has access to six stages per world, so some levels aren't available for some! Which sounds really cool, and in theory, it is, but Konami made it as obnoxious as the could. Y'see, progress for each turtle is individual, so you have to play the game four times if you want to see everything. As a matter of fact, the game is cut short on 'Easy', only letting you finish World 3, and the only way to get the real ending on 'Normal' or 'Hard' is to finish the game with all four turtles, which implies playing the same levels 4 times, even, EVEN if sometimes you go through different areas. There's also a 'cooperative mode', which I wasn't able to try out, and a 'Battle mode', which is a 'collect the crystals' mini-game.

 The game is a beat'em up with certain exploring elements, when you are not bashing skulls, you are avoiding traps, by jumping, swimming, swinging or crawling around. They got rid of the annoying 'find your weapon!' mechanic from TMNT 2, THANK GOD, and combat borrows mostly from TMNT 1. You mash the B button to attack, you can charge for some special attacks, or use a desperation move by pressing jump and attack at the same time. New to the game is calling the other turtles, but it's a bit... cheap. Each world allows you to call a turtle to attack enemies up to three times(It's predetermined for each character, for instance, Leonardo calls Raph to attack), while the other two can be called to solve 'puzzles', for instance, Donatello helps Leonardo jump higher, Mikey helps Donnie jump higher, etc... except that they can only be called on predetermined spots, so basically, no thinking involved. Heck, there's some obstacles that could easily be avoided by calling another turtle to help you jump, but alas, they can only be summoned on predetermined spots. Lame.

 Now then, each stage is fairly short, 1-3 minutes tops, but they make up for it by making it brutally difficult. Keep in mind that the turtles have slow, deliberate movements, but the game will demand you to move all over the stage in order to avoid attacks and counterattack. Enemies are aggressive, and most of them have some sort of projectile attack, so you need to learn to avoid and deal with many enemies at the same time. It is pretty taxing, and surprisingly difficult for a licensed game. World 4 is particularly brutal, unfair even. It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly why, but it's not a challenge that I enjoyed. It's probably a mixture of the game being so dull, the turtles' agility not being up to snuff and Konami pretending for me to replay the entire game four times if I wanted to see the true ending.

 The presentation has received yet another facelift, kinda. The four turtles' stances were redrawn, and they look much better, in theory, for example, Raphael is now huge, since he is the muscle of the group.... however, the stances are the only thing they redrew, as soon as Raphael starts moving, jumping or crawling, he reverts to the smaller sized sprites shared between all four. It can be pretty jarring, particularly as Raphael. That said, it's a colorful game, and the DS allowed them to add 3D elements to the backgrounds, which don't look bad at all. The music is fairly forgettable, sadly.

 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 - Mutant Nightmare is far from unplayable, but even die-hard TMNT fans will have trouble liking this game.
 4.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 - Mutant Nightmares

 Konami, whachoo doin'?

 And for the third, and last, entry in the series, Konami decided to mix elements from both previous games. Now mind you, TMNT 1 and TMNT 2, on consoles, were decent at worst and good at best, so mixing the best elements of both resulted in a great game. TMNT 1 on the GBA was good, while TMNT 2 is atrocious, so bad that I stopped playing it. Mixing elements from both was not necessarily a good idea.


 The Bad: The sprites have been redrawn, again, and for the most part they are pretty good, characters now have different proportions and what not... but they revert to generic sprites when going into shared actions, like jumping on walking, which means that Raphael slims down considerably, and Leonardo loses some muscle. It's only really bothersome with Raph though.
 Crystals are back! I hope only optional stuff is locked behind it, no levels or what not.
 You have to replay the entire game as other turtles. Yep, even if you clear stage four with Leo, if you want to replay the same stage as, say, Mikey, you are gonna have to clear stage 1 to four with Mikey. There are optional passages that only certain turtles can traverse, forcing you to replay every single stage to get to them with another turtle is really annoying. Gimmicky touch-based activities.

 The Good: The fighting is more akin to TMNT 1. Heck, you don't need to find your weapons again, which was one of the stupidest things TMNT 2 did.

 Overall: Not impressed.

Review #247: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles(Movie)

 Why is this game so good?!

 Previous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game have made the genre fit the franchise, which was probably the right way to go about it, but Magic Pockets instead opted to make the franchise fit the genre.... and they developed one of the best TMNT games in recent memory. This is a hack-and-slash RPG, in the same vein as Diablo, and as unfitting as it sounds for the Ninja Turtles, it's a great game on its own right.

 The game takes place after the movie, yes, that movie, the one by Michael Bay. The plot is paper-thin, but you really aren't playing this game for the story. The game is made up of 15 different stages, 10 ''side quest' stages and about 20 challenges, all in all, it should take anywhere from 3-5 hours to wrap it up. Which is a bit disappointing, as the game will certainly leave you wanting more. That said, you can always replay previous stages or side-quests to level up your turtles.

 Being a hack-and-slash RPG, you'll spend most of your time walking across narrow dungeons(Streets and Sewers actually), mowing down dozens of enemies in hope of better loot. At your command lie all four turtles, and you can swap them at will by tapping the directional pad or tapping their faces on the bottom screen. While they have separate life-bars, the XP gauge and level are shared among the four, and losing any turtle means dying.... but checkpoints are plentiful, and there are no consequences to dying, so it's not that hard. Another thing to keep in mind is that each level translates into 2 Skill Points, so you have to pick which turtle gets skills. There's about 10 different skills per Turtle, both passive and active skills. Passive skills grant bonuses just by learning them, while active skills are assigned to the A, B or X button(The Y button is used for normal attacks). One really neat touch is that every turtle has their own style. Take Michelangelo, his passive and active skills are all built around his 'Shuriken' skill, active skills will deal increased damage to enemies hit by shurikens, for example, or passive skills will grant bonus damage and shorter CDs to Shurikens. Meanwhile, Donnie is built around Crowd control, with many tools to deal damage in large areas and over time. Leo is mostly the DPS and Raph is the tank. One minor gripe with the system, is that the HUD is on the bottom screen, so in order to keep up with the cool down on your skills you are gonna have to look to the bottom screen, probably diverting you from whatever is happening on the top screen.

 As fun as the overall game is, and as well as they built the different skills and the four turtles, there's a noticeable flaw with the loot system. Mainly, how limited it is. Props to making the different weapons reflect on the character models, though! But I digress, the problem is how loot works and how little there is of it, namely, Weapons can only be crafted or found, randomly, on chests. Enemies do not drop weapons, and they can't be bought. What enemies do drop is materials, items(Like pizza(potions) or buff-giving items) and gold, which is used to buy items on the shop. Weapons don't come in different rarities, although some deal different elemental damage. Still, it could've been so much more than the same boring 10 or so different weapons per character, you'll have seen every possible weapon each Turtle can equip by the end of the game. The crafting system is also very simple: You gather materials, and you craft weapons from a list. Another thing I would've liked, that should be mandatory on this kind of game is randomly generated dungeons.

 Presentation is very simple, character models are rather small, albeit decently detailed, which is noticeable when you pause the game and you can look at the character models. It's pretty colorful, although it could've used more tilesets, there's only: Subway, City, Warehouse/Docks and Sewers. Music is surprisingly good, not particularly catchy or memorable, but it's not a bad listen.

 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a great little game for the 3DS. They managed to work the license around the genre, and I particularly enjoyed how different the four turtles were. That said, the game is lacking, namely, a better loot system and more stages, or at least randomly generated dungeons to make up for that. Still, at the end of the day I had a blast with it, probably one of the better TMNT games released lately.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles(Movie)

 Wow,

 I knew that this was a Diablo clone, but as soon as the game starts I read 'Magic Pockets, the devs from the very first Nickelodeon TMNT game. I was scared.

 Then I played it, and it was amazing. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a Diablo clone, you fight enemies, you earn XP and loot. As you level up you also learn skills, and all four turtles have different skills. Holy crap. I guess that having all four Turtles on-screen at the same time might've been asking too much, but it doesn't matter.

 The game feels so good. I love this game. I barely played two missions, hey I haveta study!, and I know that I love this game. I need to keep on playing. I need new weapons. I NEED MORE XP.
AHHHHHHH

Review #246: Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Danger of the Ooze

 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