I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention or anything, but the TMNT games were released a few days ago. While eight different platforms were graced with the newest Turtles game and I own seven of them (all eight soon enough), I only picked up the Wii and DS versions. To secure my title as a true TMNT fanboy, I probably should have gotten all of them, but I don’t hate money that much. Anyway, short reviews…
The Wii version, which is probably identical to the PS2, PSP, 360, GC, and PC verions of the game, is pretty kickass. Ubisoft stole the rights to the game from Konami, and that alone fills me with hope (though to their credit, I did enjoy all the Konami produced Turtles games). Thankfully, Ubisoft took what they knew best and applied it directly to the TMNT video game. The game plays like a faster brother of the recent Prince of Persia games, which means it’s essentially sweet acrobatics interspersed with some fighting here and there. The game mostly takes place on rooftops and in alleyways and sewers, as the Turtles aren’t exactly the most welcome creatures in New York. Jumping around the city and running up and along walls feels great, and as a PoP vet, I caught on really quickly and kicked ass right from the start. Fighting is pretty simple and doesn’t occur overly often, which is okay, because just jamming around town is more than enough fun on its own. What I really like about the game are the levels where you can hotswap between all four brothers. Each turtle has his own acrobatic move, and swapping turtles on the fly to get past stuff feels awesome and has the potential to impress viewers. Team moves are also really neat, while kind of limited. Also, the game is a bit easy, because you just can’t die. The only real challenge is getting good ranks at the end of each level, which can be rough.
The DS version is the same, but completely different. It’s again all about jumping around wherever in the city, but rather than the regular one button jump and control pad to move around, you’ve got set jump points. See, you get a little free movement on wide rooftops or bridge beams or whatever, but most of the time, the jumps are semi-automatic. Your top three face buttons each make you jump in different directions, (Y is left, X is straight, A is right), and your job is to see where the next target markers are and hit the right button at the right time. It’s not a really difficult game, but learning to time jumps together and speed through levels without missing a step is entertaining enough in itself. There’s some fighting in this one too, but I won’t mince words: it’s crap. Luckily it doesn’t happen very often. Boss fights are terrible too, as you can just pin the boss against a wall and wail on it, and you’ve essentially won. While I do enjoy both games (particularly the Wii version), I think it’s safe to assume that they’re going to get bashed by critics. Some bullshit about “not being enough of a game” or some kind of crap like that. And you know, maybe they’re right, but this is essentially what I’m looking for in a game. The DS game is a completely original concept, and the Wii version is quite swanky with just enough challenge so that I have to try, but won’t get frustrated with it (ahem Sonic).
In the end though, neither game even compares to HOW AWESOME THE MOVIE WAS! HOLY CRAP! Yeah caps whatever. I’m just really excited. TMNT was everything I was hoping for and more. The human characters look a little wierd, as apparently in CG land, for every fat guy there are 700 anorexic people, but that’s a minor complaint. The one real complaint I have was that Karai and her foot ninja were not nearly central enough to the story. But that’s apparently not going to be a problem in the sequel, which they did not just leave a door open for, but rather explicitly hinted at. With new VAs for every character, Karai actually had a real asian accent, as opposed to the shitty fake one they gave her in the cartoon. Also awesome was that Patrck Stewart was in it. And Splinter’s trophy case at the end, that was a totally sweet nod to fans of the show. I could really go on forever, but you know, I think saying that it’s fickin’ awesome is enough. I was ready to go see it again right after I left the theater, but decided that I’d rather not, since I had run out of gift cards, and I just wasn’t ready to spend fourteen actual dollars.