Review: TMNT (X360)

The latest trend these days is to bring back nostalgia memories from the 80’s and early 90’s. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the latest in old school characters to be brought back in to the mainstream view.
TMNT is the game based on the movie which is not based on the old cartoon.

The game was designed by Ubisoft Montreal and you can tell that a mile away in the gameplay as this game plays out as a lousy unpolished Prince of Persia clone.
In the game you can use any one of the four turtles Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michalangelo. Each turtle has there own special moves to use to move through the game enviroments and all play differently in combat.
Each level is full of platforms to be jumped, walls to be run and enemies to be dealt with. The first few levels are nice and fast and have a really good flow to them. Then however by the time the five level comes around TMNT turns into a mess.
The first four levels introduce the turtles one by one and then all the turtles come together as one force.
The reason the game becomes a mess when all the turtles are together is the fact that there is really no point in having their unique abilities. Once in a blue moon will a level will require one specific power. The game manages to dilute itself into such simplicity that it becomes a total bore.
The only challenge stems from the beyond terrible camera. This thing is out to kill you at any interval. It is constantly stuck on the player in ways that don’t allow the area to be scouted to figure out what path ways to take in the levels.

What doesnt help is the horrendous combat. There is never a visceral feel that enemies are being hit and the sound effects are so pathetic. Most of the time the enemies will fall without giving any damage to the player.
The combat is so simple but Ubisoft somehow thought that there was a requirement for team combo moves for the turtles. That is great and all but doing these moves are never fully explained. All the game states is push X. In this day and age of good in game tutorials this is just pitiful. There is barely any direction for anything in this game and it shows.

TMNT could have been a really good game. It showed promise with some good fast platforming but the easyness of difficulty and lackluster combat just drags this game down. Seeing as the engine for the game seems to be directly taken from Prince of Persia this game should have been way better.
These turtles better just stay in their shells.

Score 2/5