Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

"Keep waiting, turtle-fans"

I used to be the most rabid ninja turtles fan anyone knew. I taped the cartoon, went and saw every movie, owned all the action figures, and collected the trading cards. Since the 80's are coming back in the twenty-first century, I thought I'd see if that new video game about them was anything special. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

I don't think there's a longtime TMNT fan alive who didn't sink a fortune's worth of allowance money into the old four-player arcade game at the local pizza parlor. People used to line up to the back of the room to play. Only diehard fans will line up to play this game, though. But since I've got a lot of complaints, I should start with the good things. If you're the kind of person who'd play this game, you probably already know the story, so I don't think I need to repeat it.

The graphics are in fact pretty nice. It looks a lot like the new version of the cartoon, and everything is nicely cel-shaded. So for whatever the game's flaws, it doesn't look bad, and it takes footage from the show to move the story of each board along. Unfortunately, the surroundings during levels seem flat and lifeless, and the only way you can interact with them is by making cars or oil drums explode (man! remember those from the arcade game?). This is somewhat annoying, because there are explosions that can hurt you as well as the bad guys, and explosions that don't hurt you, and it takes a while to learn which are which.

Then there's the fight mechanics. Since this is a game about the ninja turtles, there's a lot of fighting. But for some reason, for being top of the line masters of ninjitsu, each turtle knows two moves--a fast weak one, and a slightly slower, slightly stronger one. You can also learn a jump attack, but that's still just three attacks. Your turtle knowing three moves when you were playing a ninja turtle game with two buttons was acceptable, but not when you're playing a ninja turtle game with nearly ten buttons. And I wondered why the turtles didn't really have any defensive moves for being top of the line ninjas. No blocks, no parries, no somersaulting forward or ducking to avoid throwing stars. I could forgive the lack of offensive moves if that kind of thing had been included. You can also pick up and use throwing stars of various kinds, but they're in short supply, don't do much damage, and your turtle nearly always throws them at some bad guy you didn't want him to. If you're trying to hit an oil drum with a throwing star to blow up bad guys and there's a bad guy closer to you than the drum, you'll aim at him instead.

And there's chaining combos. It's easy to chain combos on bad guys, but that's true for them too, so if a guy starts pounding on you with multiple blows, it's nearly impossible to escape before he knocks you down. For being the core of the game, the fight mechanics leave a lot to be desired.

And while we're talking about the fighting, it starts repeating itself really fast. You'll fight the same two guys fifty times apiece in the second level. And the levels are l-o-n-g, and repetitive. You basically kill five guys, run ten steps, kill another five guys, about twenty times in every level. Nothing is done to break it up. Speaking of repetitive, since this game is based on a cartoon show, they brought in the actors to give the characters voices. That's not bad in the cut scenes, but it IS bad when you're fighting, as your turtle will be screaming lame phrases like ''slice and dice!'' ''speed slash!'' ''out of my way, nimrod!'' and ''how do you like that?!'' a zillion times a level. Each turtle has only about three battle phrases, and considering how long it takes to get through levels and how many heads you have to bust to do it, it can be infuriating having to listen to your character all that time. If video game characters are going to talk, they should have more than three things to say apiece.

Which leads me to the problem with saving. You can only save after you complete an entire board, which usually involves beating some very tough and very cheap boss character in the last level. So unless you're prepared to invest an hour and a half to playing the game, you'll have to start the board over next time unless you clear the whole shebang in one go. And you have to play each turtle as a separate game, so if you beat the first level and then decide you want to play Leonardo instead of Donatello, you need to start the whole game over.

And there's the camera. It's awful. A lot of the surroundings are concealed by it. But there's an upside and a downside to this. Upside: the designers, apparently aware of the problems with the camera, include a radar display to show you where the enemies are. Downside: it only shows you where the enemies are. Not incoming projectiles, traps or item crates, so you'll probably get whacked by a few buzz saws and robot arms and miss a few revitalizing pizzas you would have seen if the camera worked better.

There are some unlockable features, like playing as Casey or Splinter, but these are pretty minor considering how limited it is even playing as your favorite turtle. And one of the biggest complaints I've seen levelled at this game is the lack of a four-player feature, even though both the Xbox and Gamecube can support four players. Wasn't that a big part of the fun of the old arcade game? Thrashing the bad guys as the whole team of turtles? The two player mode is fun, but not the same thing.

Overall, this is an okay rental. Only buy it if you're still a rabid turtles fan and can stand the long, repeating levels and extremely limited controls. But if you haven't played with your action figures in years, this game is not for you.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/22/03