Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ah, the old glory days of youth. From the dark comics (complete with beer swilling), to the humorous cartoon, and even the live action movies, TMNT has always been a staple of mine. While reading an EGM (and watching an old video tape from the early 90’s cartoon series), I was stoked to find out that Konami was resurrecting the game in conjunction with the new cartoon being aired on Fox. Yahoo!
TMNT made a pretty successful run in the early 90’s as a video game franchise. It started rather flat with the horrible original title that involved a little turtle running around in overhead view. Next came the classic arcade title and the two arcade-influenced sequels, one on the NES and the other on the SNES. There were also a couple of fighters, but they pissed me off. So, when Konami announced that they would be resurrecting the old arcade formula, I was even more stoked than I was to hear a new Turtle game was being released. How did it fare? Does it live up to the classic arcade, or does it just plain suck?
As with most titles, the graphics usually hit first for gamers. Visually, the game is rather bland. Focusing mainly on the now-irritating cel-shading method, Konami tries to go for the animated feel. It doesn’t work too well as Leonardo and the gang end up looking like frogs with shells. Enemies don’t fare much better in the visual department. Mousers look like white blobs and the human enemies are boring and unimaginative. Level designs are flat and basic, little more than a straight path to follow with weak textures. Even the effects, like fire, are bland. Wind Waker and Jet Set Radio Future did a good job with cel-shading, TMNT did not.
As with the above, the level designs are a whole lot of stupid; from the basic and boring textures, to the content itself. You have little say in where you can go (it even points with an arrow) and are faced with only a few enemies here and there, rarely getting to be more than 10 enemies at once. Sometimes an exploding barrel or horribly out of place power-up crate will be tossed in. The designs are sickening, disgusting, and lacking any innovation over old titles like the TMNT arcade game or Final Fight. A multi-path method would have worked wonders, giving players a choice as to where to go. Maybe even some non-box moving puzzles, as well.
The gameplay, unfortunately, is just plain boring. You've got your basic attack button, A, and you can pretty much master the game. Yeah, they did put in a spring button, jump button, special attack button, and shruikens, but they aren’t even necessary to use to beat the game. What's even more irritating is that something as basic as a mid-air attack has to be un-freaking-locked to use. Please, why should I have to unlock a useless mid-air split attack?
Gameplay focuses mainly on a point system, as in the previous titles. Unfortunately, this makes multiplayer mode rather unenjoyable, as players will frequently find themselves trying to compete with the other player for more points. The combo system is trite and useless as the variety of attacks is rather slim.
Speaking of multiplayer mode, why didn’t Konami take advantage of the four ports on the GameCube and allow four players at once? That would have been a smart move, though it probably wouldn’t have saved the game from being dull and boring.
The sound department is sort of a mixed bag. The voice acting, while average on the whole, is rather good for gaming. Konami went to the trouble of bringing in the guys doing the new animated series. Either that or they just captured sound bites, I'm not sure which. Still, the voice acting is decent throughout the game. Unfortunately, the sound is brought down a notch by the boring in-game effects. You've got a basic explosion sound, attack sound, and the occasional sound bite from the Turtles themselves. The music is boring, repetitive, and stupid.
There are a couple of miscellaneous things to talk about. First, TMNT shows that quality cut-scenes can be done on the GameCube. Konami pulled the cut-scenes directly from the new TV series and put them in the game, with absolutely no degradation from the TV version.
The next item is a major gripe. When there are more than 5 enemies (mousers particularly) on the screen in two player mode, the game goes amazingly slow. It gets to the point where you'll think the system has locked up. It is incredibly irritating and renders the multiplayer aspect of the game totally unplayable.
Overall, TMNT is a gigantic disappointment. The gameplay is boring, the graphics are boring, and everything else is just plain boring. Even the multiplayer, when it WAS playable without all the debilitating slow-downs, was boring. It pains me to say this, but old school arcade beat’em ups are no longer a viable gaming solution without a serious overhaul. TMNT went from a promising title that I was looking forward to, to complete garbage.
Turd-le Power.
