Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

"I have always liked: Cowabunga!"

You remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles don't you? Of course you do. Many of you, like myself, probably watched the cartoons, the movies, played with the action figures, and of course played Konami's TMNT games. The world's obsession for the TMNT lasted quite a long time, but like most fads, it eventually died out. Many years have passed and suddenly Fox decides to revive these forgotten terrapins in a new TV show on the FOX BOX, and like the olden days, Playmates gets the rights to make new action figures and Konami obtains the rights to produce TMNT games. Yes, dudes and dudettes. Major league butt kicking is back in town!

Story- Most of the story is taken from the new TV show (which is based on the comic books). It consists of the usual: defeat The Shredder and along the way fight Foot Soldiers and monsters…

Graphics- The cel-shading is nicely done. It resembles the TV show most of the time. Sometimes the textures can get bland and the character models look pointy. Aside from that, I don't have much to complain about. Overall, this is still one of the better looking cel-shaded games out there.

Sound- The sound is nothing to get excited over. The voice acting is good but it gets annoying when they say the same thing over and over. The music is also plain and generic. The music from the old TMNT was much better and more memorable.

Gamepay- The classic TMNT beat-em-up formula is back in 3D form. This plays a lot like Konami's TMNT games of old. Beat up a number of baddies and move on. The classic games only had two buttons to use. This game uses more buttons. You have a normal attack, a strong attack, and a juggle attack. You can also dash and throw shuriken. There are combos in this game, but not a lot. Using the same combos over and over can get repetitive and may lead to boredom. I don't recommend you play this game for an extended period of time because you may get tired of it real quick. The difficulty in this game varies. It's not too hard, but if you choose the higher difficulty settings, the later levels are almost impossible to beat. The multiplayer modes are nice. You can choose to play co-op or one-on-one fights. I don't get why there is no 4-player support.

Final Score- 8/10. This is just a fun game that you could easily pick up and play. Don't go expecting much replay value though since there's not a lot of it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/27/04