Game Review - TMNT (PS2)

Here’s a review about TMNT for PS2, a game based on the new block-buster movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2007).
The game is again another title about the world’s favourite pizza-loving anthropomorphic turtles and their fight against the evils of New York. The game sees the Turtles grown apart after their defeat of the Shredder and their sensei, Master Splinter, is trying to keep the family together. Meanwhile, strange things are happening in New York City. An army of ancient creatures threatens to take over the world and the Turtles must unite again to save the world. Not having watched the movie, writing this review has become a bit more challenging, but here it goes! :

The first thing the player notices is the well-defined graphics which make the objects really pleasurable to look at. The sceneries and level structures show a lot of diversity and detail in terms of the expansiveness. The world around the player’s character seems vast and it shows that a lot of effort has been made to make the player really feel as a part of the game’s environment. Whether it is the thick jungles with waterfalls, cliffs, trees, rivers and vegetation or the city’s skyscrapers, alleys, gulley and rooftops, the game’s levels definitely show well-structured scenarios. Great job to the creators!



The next thing you’ll notice is (I hate this part the MOST!) you can control only one turtle at a time! Where’s the point of a team of turtles when the player handles and sees only one turtle at a time?! This section will be discussed more in detail further but as far as I can see, this is one of the key flaws of the game.

The game starts out in style as it is narrated by Leonardo and Master Splinter in the jungles of South America. Throughout the game, all 4 turtles narrate during the game as well as in between levels. Keeping in mind that this game was made by Ubisoft, I noticed that the game’s characters move a lot like the Prince of Persia (Ring a bell? Ubisoft also made the Prince of Persia series!).
This can be seen in the wall running and constant jumping off walls and over obstacles like……well……a ninja! This makes handling the characters a lot of fun in the huge environments.

The story starts with the player controlling Leonardo in the first level, and the other 3 turtles have their own levels for themselves. The 5th level onwards is where all 4 turtles are actually fighting together.

Your progress is monitored in the form of your turtle’s strength, agility and teamwork.
Strength is determined by how quickly you finish fights and how much damage you take while doing it.
Agility is determined by how much time you take to finish the entire level (excluding the time taken to fight).
Teamwork is really weird concept in this game. This is measured by how often you keep cycling your turtles while fighting. For example, I control Raphael for the 10 seconds of the fight and then switch to Don and so on so that each turtle feels included in the fight and thus the gang of 4 work as a ‘team’.
The above mentioned measures are graded (‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’) at the end of each level and a final grade is given for the overall performance of the player.

While playing the game, I feel that to every level there are 2 basic components: - level racing and fighting sequences.
In level racing, the turtles are against the environment; hurdling over obstacles, running across walls, bouncing off them, leaping rooftop to rooftop, swing poles, etc. which is mostly the fun part of each level. The player feels the rush of a Sonic the Hedgehog game as he advances forward, never looking back and collecting turtle coins (the game currency). One problem which makes the level racing a problem is the inconvenient camera angles. This leads to miscalculated jumps and turtles jumping into the pitfalls a little too often.
But while you race against the clock, these annoying fight sequences come every now and then. At first it’s pretty fun too, but gets very repetitive after the first several levels. The player has to use the circle button to use his turtle’s weapon and the triangle button to kick. Using these 2 buttons, several combo attacks are spawned, but they seem to be inefficient in terms of necessity. You’ll mostly need the aerial stomp and good-old-weapon-bashing to win the fights. And of course, the player has to (sigh) keep cycling turtles in the fights if he wants his teamwork quotient high at the end of the level.
The point of having good ‘grades’ at the end of each level is to earn more coins to buy special features in the extras menu.

Music and sound is nothing special in this title. The soundtrack suits the mood but the unclear narrations at times are a drag.

So the key problems with TMNT are its camera system and it’s dull fighting system. It’s repetitiveness starts creeping into the gameplay. But its best features are its expansive environments and fast-paced action.

Here are my ratings:
Changes have been made to them as of 26 June '07:
Graphics: - 8/10
Sound: - 6/10
Gameplay: - 7/10
Life Span:- 7/10 (thanks to the challenge maps and extra courses in the special features menu)
Replayability:- 5/10

Overall: - 7/10

Feel free to post your opinions about this game in the comments section!

To those who have the game, here are some hints I picked up:-

• Use Mike while jumping rooftops so that in case you take a miscalculated jump, you can use his nunchak-propeller technique to get out of sticky situtions.
• Use Don in the fights for long range attacks with his staff.
• Use the air-stomp technique while fighting against enemies that surround you.
  

Thanks for the screenshots Gamespot.com!!!