Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

"A promising start"

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise is one that, many felt, peaked in the 16-bit era. With countless games of varying quality released in several genres, it was a virtual household name. But in the advent of the 32-bit era, they all but vanished.

And now Konami releases a new game based on the franchise. Based on the newer show as opposed to the decidedly campy old one, it shows promise but never fully realizes its potential.

Graphics: 7/10

The developers opted for a cel-shaded approach to all the characters, and a simple, very cartoony look for the backgrounds. This is often hit-or-miss, because for every strength to the presentation, there is a miss. For example, the character models look great when they are fighting, with fluid movements and cartoon sound effects (nice touch).
However the levels themselves are very plain and suffer from weird angles. At no point in time does one feel that the power of the system is being taxed. The cutscenes are also laughable at best. They essentially consist of the characters standing about, rocking constantly. They also don't have moving mouths (except Mousers) or fingers, for that fact. This is ESPECIALLY visible with any character that isn't a Turtle or a robot. Hun and Casey look ridiculous most of the time.

Sound: 6/10

Konami got most of the voice talent for the show to do their voices for the game (what happened to Hun and Quarry?), so if you love the show's voices you'll be right at home here.
As far as cutscenes go, the dialogue if often passable when the Turtles them selves are speaking to each other. But lacking motion of any sort while they quip is a disgrace. The scenes with Hun, especially Hun are horrendous. Example: In one cutscene, Hun is supposed to be angry. His facial expression is: eyes closed, mouth texture WIDE open. But he doesn't sound mad, so he just stands there, gently rocking with his mouth wide open.
The Turtles talk a lot during the fighting. The problem is, they only have about 4 unique sayings, so as you fight they will be repeating the same stuff over and over and over and...well, over. Also many of these lines aren't classic. Michaelangelo can get away with saying corny stuff over and over, but ''Slice and DICE!'' (Leonardo) and ''Outta my way nimrod!'' (Raphael) get old very fast.
The music is inoffensive: neither terribly catchy and at the same time not distracting. It puts you in the mood to keep fighting, and that's the most important thing. On the upside, they have the theme music of the new show in the game. Unless you hate the new theme.

Gameplay: 7/10

The Turtles all basically control the same. They have two strengths of attacks, can amass and throw three types of shuriken, can double jump, and they can now evade and pop up their foes for juggle combos.
The attack system is reminiscent of the Dynasty Warriors series. You can chain weak attacks into strong attacks, which all have different abilities. Depending on the chain, you can stun your opponents or hit multiple opponents to create breathing room.
Your shuriken are long range weapons. Basic shuriken stun opponents and deal little damage. Electric shuriken stun for longer periods of time, and deal more damage. Fire shuriken are explosive, deal the most damage and te splash damage hits multiple enemies. You can use these to set off barrels and beat bosses from afar.
The evade move allows the Turtles to dash really quickly out of danger (a la Shinobi). You can evade out of pretty much any move provided your feet are on the floor. You can use evades to catch up to fores and keep your combo count going. When evading, you are essentially invincible, with the exception of barrels.
You can also summon Turtles to clear out the screen of enemies when you're in trouble. This can be done three times in any area.

The downsides to all these new moves stem from the enemies themselves. The enemies AI is very sketchy. They range from standing there mindlessly to all out berserkers without a moment's notice. This means that you could be beating everyone in the level with no problem, and then lose half your health to a single group of enemies.

Advanced techniques like juggling and jump attacks also fall to the wayside. Most bosses and later enemies cannot be juggled, which leaves the weaker early enemies, all of whom can be as easily beaten without juggles. It is also hard to actually juggle anyone because the Turtles fly all over the place when they attack and as such, miss their attacks. Jump attacks often result in you missing and getting knocked on your back, and the benefit gained is infiniessimal. And you can't even jump attack when you begin: you have to be taught this later. Likewise, the Turtle summons only become available much, much later. The only advanced technique that is worth its salt is evade. It is useful withou being cheap, and even with constant evading you will get hit.

Which brings me to the problem of the layout. The stages copy the premise from many episodes of the show, with aspects changed to suit the game. These are accented by somewhat blurry clips from the show. There are a few continuity errors (such as the Tengu sword being called the Goblin Blade, the revamp of the Notes From the Underground (which was a good thing), and the Turtles mentioning they have fought the Shredder before when they meet him for the very first time), but the narative is acually decent.
However, every level boils down to constant fighting through VERY short sections. The placement of bosses is infuriating, as they often drop in with no hint and in the middle of a level. If you fail to defeat the boss, you will have to start from the VERY beginning of the stage. This can prove maddening in levels that play like survival mode (In the Tengu chapter, you have to fight more than three bosses back-to-back in the same section. With no warning whatsoever).
And a warning about the bosses: They define the term ''all offense, all the time''. They never stop attacking or show a vunerability, so you must risk losing half your life to whittle off a chunk of theirs. Hun stands as the perfect example. He never stops attacking as is, but once you manage to hurt him a but he turns red and really starts to go to town. Until I shurikened him to death he never let up. And it wasn't like he went off in one direction for a while. He was always spot on with his attacks.

Replay Value: Medium

You unlock a database of art by collecting scrolls (or makimonos) in the levels, you can unlock alternate costumes and extra characters by playing through Story Mode as the various characters. There are at least two extra modes to uncover by playing through the game. YOu can unlock extra passwords for cheats and effects. There is also a versus mode to test your mettle against a friend or the CPU. Versus mode is fun for a while, but like Zone of the Enders 2, only a few of them are balanced (namely the Turtles). Use any of the bosses and victory is almost certainly yours.

Yet despite all this, the game is fun to play, especially with two players. The game really comes into its own with two players, as this makes up for most of the faults in the game. As a solo effort, this game will be hard. And annoying.

With a little more effort spent refining the mechanics and audiovisuals, the game could be better. A promising start.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/03