The latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is, quite frankly, one shell of a bad effort from Ubisoft, the latest development company to take on the four green crimefighters.
And that’s the only ‘shell’ pun that will go in this review. Promise.
'TMNT' for Wii shows flashes of genuine fun but gets so bogged down by a clumsy and unimaginative control scheme that it becomes tiresome faster than Vanilla Ice's ninja rap.
It’s almost as if ‘TMNT’ has the feel of the old-school games in the series, only set in a sprawling 3D world. Unfortunately, the walk-around-beat-wave-after-wave-of-enemies-then-repeat gameplay simply does not hold up in 2007 … and the gameplay becomes downright tiring when using the Wii remote and nunchuk, which comes down to hours of mindlessly waving the controllers around. You can throw in a few special moves, but for the most part they’re activated using button presses. Not the most imaginative use of the controllers, to be sure.
The game starts off extremely slow and though it does pick up somewhat in the later stages - once you earn the use of multiple turtles simultaneously - the game never truly hits its stride, which is even more suprising considering you get through most levels by combining all kinds of different acrobatic moves (a la Prince of Persia).
Worst of all, the game doesn’t support two, three or four player local co-op – which boggles the mind. As one friend said: ‘It’s Ninja Turtles’, obviously alluding to the fact that almost every game in the series before this featured co-op play. Heck, even the recently released TMNT arcade game on Xbox Live has new online co-op capabilities.
If you can manage to string together several jumps, flips and wall-runs in a row it can be somewhat engaging, but with a fixed camera that pans up and down and around every which way without a moments notice, it’s often very difficult to see what’s ahead until it’s too late and you’ve fallen down a pit. Sure, the next time you reach that area, you’ll make the jump but there’s always another blind spot up ahead where you’re sure to meet your doom. Thankfully, checkpoints are given fairly generously so there isn’t usually too much backtracking.
The rest of the game is actually too easy, considering you can’t really die. Anytime you run out of power, you simply wave the Wii remote from side to side (there’s that imagination again!) until your character wakes up. The only real challenge comes from trying to beat your previous high score for each level, but when the game is this boring, who wants to play through more than once?
The minigames work similarly. Though they’re fairly fun, they really don’t hold up for very long. Just like the single player campaign, many of them would be much-improved if you could go head-to-head with someone else, but as they are, they’re nothing more than a quick diversion unless you must beat your previous high score.
The graphics are nothing to go ga-ga over, though they’re not particulary rancid either. The turtles themselves have some nice animations (and still hold up during the slow-motion attacks) and some of the environments look actually very good. Jumping from one giant float to another, well above the skyscrapers of Manhattan during a parade manages to make you forget about the repetitively-drawn enemies and otherwise bland backgrounds. Again, this kind of thing could hold up in side scrollers during the 90’s, but not today.
There are several unlockable goodies available in the game that you can ‘buy’ using shells won after each stage. The usual concept art and videos (many of which you’ve probably already seen in the movie’s trailers) make up the brunt of these. There are some cheats available too, but they’re not worth the effort to unlock … unless you really want to see your turtle farting while you play.
The biggest problem with this game comes down to Ubisoft really not taking full advantage of the Wii functionality like they could have. Most attack moves come down to wildly swinging the controller, and ninja-like moves such as double-jumping and wall-running are all done using boring ol’ button and analog stick combinations. Yawn.
It’s difficult to suggest this game to anyone but the TMNT diehards. Heck, the movie is out now so it’s not like any of the movie's plot details in the game will be a surprise if you’ve already gone to theatres (as most diehards will surely do on opening night).
Sorry, but like the evil Shredder before it, we can’t cut this game no slack.
WHAM! Rating: |
4.7 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
E (Everyone 10+) |
Official Web Site: |
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