Just as many things from the late 80s and early 90s are doing, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have surged back into the forefront of pop culture with a new, fully animated CGI movie, and the franchise has garnered a multiplatform movie tie-in video game to go along with it.

As a true fan of the Ninja Turtles, I was incredibly geared up for the release of the movie and the game. My wife and I took my son, who is also a huge TMNT fan, to see the movie on opening weekend and then we promptly picked up the new game for the 360. Seeing the movie before playing the game is almost a prerequisite to understanding exactly what is going on from a story perspective. Ubisoft explicitly states that the game "Extends the TMNT Movie Experience."

The game starts you out in the jungles of South America searching for a hidden temple. This first level introduces you to gameplay mechanics that carry throughout the rest of the game. In this level you play as Leonardo - the blue one for you non-TMNT fans - and you jump, wall run, and fight your way to the top of some very pretty environments. If you saw the trailer for the movie, you saw the emphasis that was put on the speed of action and that carried over perfectly to the game. The controls, while allowing you to perform a variety of actions, don't sacrifice speed one bit and allow you to perform precision jumps and maneuvers throughout the levels.

After completing the first mission, the story progresses and allows you to play a similar mission for each of the remaining 3 turtles. Each turtle has unique weapons, moves, and special abilities that make it necessary to play unique training missions, although a non-story related mission where all 4 turtles are available would have sufficed. However, Ubisoft did a good job of making the training light so it wasn't a burden to play.

One of my complaints with some of the more recent TMNT games was the cap at 2 player action. There are 4 turtles and 4 controllers, therefore I see no reason that you can't make a TMNT game that allows 4 people to bust up the bad guys. There must be a reason because Ubisoft took a step backwards and actually made this title a single player game. This ended up not being a deal breaker at all and after playing through the game I can almost understand the reasoning behind it.

As you get into the real missions, each level starts you off as one of the 4 turtles, except the Nightwatcher levels which are grayscale and unique to one particular character. As you play through the level and perform awesome moves, a small meter in the top corner will begin to fill up. Once full, another one of the turtles is added as an available character to play within the current level. A simple press of the X button will swap you to another turtle. Holding X will perform a tag-team move with the help of another turtle. As expected, each of the turtles performs a different tag-team move that is unique to their weapons abilities. Each of the shoulder buttons(R,L,RB,LB) perform the same function, which is to Dodge or engage in one of the turtles signature moves assuming the circumstance is right (In Air, Combat, or Against a wall). Check the manual to find out exactly what circumstance is right for each of the moves. As expected, A jumps and B attacks. B can be held for a Warp Slash move and can be strung together as a combo or even pressed while in the air for a Ground Punch. Ubisoft nailed the combat in this game: it's fast, fierce, and a real joy to play.

TMNT sports a nice, lengthy set of levels to play, with each one tracking your combat ability, how fast you made it through, and how well you performed as a team. All of these things count towards your overall grade for the level. Grades are on a school system with A+ being the top score. While fun, there is not a huge incentive to go back and refine your score as achievements are awarded based on level completion and not on level perfection. The extras included in the game are not worth mentioning and could easily have been left out.

TMNT is a decent game that truly does extend the movie experience while letting you get the feel of being one of the "new" Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The action is fast, fierce, and fun, but ultimately is pretty shallow. TMNT definitely lacks any type of replayability despite Ubisoft trying to lure you into it by nailing you with lower level scores. As a big TMNT fan I enjoyed the game, but it's definitely not worth $50 and could easily be beaten in a weekend or weeklong rental. Pick it up via Gamefly and save your extra cash for something else.

Apr 25, 2007 | 1 comments
Chris Rasco