Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus

"What a shame: I came so close to going a year without playing a bad game. Maybe next year..."

I'm going to start by saying that I consider myself one of the biggest fans of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, since I grew up watching the movies, playing the games. I love everything about them. So I will immediately open myself up to play any new games that come out. The first new TMNT game, released in 2003, was decent at best, and had me extremely disappointed. It suffered from sub-par sound quality. Hearing the words "Slice & Dice!!" over and over again from Leo was not my thing. Overall the game was repetitive, gameplay and all.

Gameplay
Where should I start? New this year is the edition of 4-player co-op, which you would have thought would be a good thing, but sadly, it this not the case. The game is designed so poorly, it negates any possible fun there could've been. The camera works in favor of frustrating the players, because it seems to zoom out and make the view very difficult to deal with, driving them insane in the process. The worst part of all of this? All players share the SAME HEALTH METER!! If one player is no good at the game, there is a good chance that you will be getting pretty mad at the fact that you aren't working very well with the other person. The combat is bad, too. Enemy AI is incredibly dumb, as they will just stand around waiting for you to attack, and block fairly well. There are enemies off-screen that like to be incredibly accurate with shots from their arrows. And what's worse is the enemies on the ground with guns like to shoot you up endlessly before you can even approach them. While it sounds like they are pretty smart, they are very cheap, and will make you want to turn the game off soon after. The controls are sloppy, combos seem to never happen when you punch in the right button sequence. Bad platforming is here as well, and only serves to make you want to hate the game even more than you probably already do.

Story
Here, you won't find anything all that great, as the story comes from the new cartoon's storyline. Basically, your goal is to save Master Splinter, and beat the Evil Shredder. The game also also has different story paths to follow. If you're like me, you'll end up very bored and skip most of the cut scenes.

Graphics/Sound
The sound is also another mediocre part of this game. The music is nothing special, voices are annoying because you have to hear the turtles say the same phrases over and over again, though, not as bad this time, as they have more lines to say. The graphics are, for the most part, decent, as you'll find no difference from last year's version.

Replay Value
I guess this could be considered the game's high point. The game has a system where you can unlock things, such as art, and stuff like that. The best thing you'll find in this game is one unlockable: The 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. While this is nice to have, it's pretty far into a game that's poorly developed. Thus, making it not worth forcing your way through the game to get to it.

Final Thoughts
In the end, it's obvious this game was rushed to make it out in time for the second season of the show. It's just a very broken game in a series that needs to take about two or three years off to be developed into a quality series. I believe that it can happen.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/23/04, Updated 11/27/04