TMNT 3: Mutant Nightmare is a mistake to begin with and gamers should bewarned before buying this game.
The plot of the game revolves around the 4 turtles trying to save the planet and arch nemesis shredder who is trying to take over the world once again. You wont have as much back ground information of the turtles since this is a sequel to the game TMNT: Battle Nexus. You will encounter many enemies and character through out the game. Casey Jones, Splinter, and April return in this adventure of saving the day. TMNT 3:Mutant Melee plays similar to TMNT 2: battle nexus. You start by choosing one of the main turtles of the game. The game will then focus on the character you choose leading you to many paths as you travel through the levels. There consist of 4 different types of worlds and each world has about 6 - 8 levels within. Making this game about 40 stages in this entire game. There consist of 3 differnt types of modes you can choose from, Easy, Normal, and Hard. Once you have selected a mode, youll choose a character, and so on into the levels. You can choose one of the 4 t urtles and youll have to finish the entire game with just that one character. You can always choose another characater, but it dosnt mean you can continue off with what your first character was at. Youll have to start all over from the begining with that new character in order to see his ending. The levels have a mix and match of beat em ups and puzzle problems. These may seem like a good feature to the game but which really makes the game a let down. Many of the puzzles are too simple and are not fun. Some of the puzzles will use the bottom touch screen giving you the chance to use the stylus to finish the puzzles. There will be more then just puzzles that you will encounter, like enemies. The enemies that youll encounter are mostly Tricertops soldiers and some of the foot clans. While you are passing through the levels, there will be a small icon that shows up in front of the top screen and warns you of the enemies youll encounter. You can have different ways of defeating the enemies on screen. You have your typical b button which lets you do small quick attacks. If you hold the b button down, youll be able to do a charge attack. The charge bar is on the bottom screen which is kinda hard to notice when your actually using the top screen to fight. The charge bar consist of 3 sections, but you can only use 2 of them. When you charge it the first bar, there wont even be an attack that comes out. When you charge it to the 2nd or 3rd bar, youll blast out a super attack that can unleash a devestating attack on your enemies. But the enemies wont even give you a chance to charge because there always infront or behind you. Most likely you wont even need it and just basic attacks can eventually kill your enemies. The most frustrating part of this game is the life bar and the enemies that attack you from behind. You dont have mens or lives in this game which means you get one life and thats all. You will have unlimited continues but it dosn't even help at all in this game. Lets say you have made it half way through the stage, but you die. You dont get to start at that check point, you actaully have to start from the beginning of the stage which really causes gamers to eagerily shut the game system off. Now another thing that can get very irrating is the enemies behind you. You dont get an back attack like TMNT 4, you actaully have to turn around and wack the enemy if you get the chance to. The controls are horribly designed and fail in every aspect to control the character. Many of the controls are very unresponsive and to me it seems like Konami didn't even bother puting a decent code in this game to make the controls right. Graphically this game looks pretty well done from using 2d sprites in a side scrolling action game. The animations for each character looks nice and each turtle will have there own little actions. Each character has there own unique color and when there weapons are used. The color implies like a shadowy strike upon the weapon which makes them look very unique. You wil eventually get small cutscenes that are animated from the movie and thats about it. No CG animations are in this game, but game visually looks good. The back ground is mostly 2d sprites and depending which area your in, the back ground can move up ,down, or even sideways. Now back on the old school TMNT games, the music is what really got some gamers invovled too. Most gamers will realize that the new theme for TMNT is horribly done. Its fast beat, but just dosnt have a rythm to get you pumped for the game. Music in most stages involve techno mix's to soft electronic melodys. Each weapon has there own unique sound and presents itself mostly well but not enough to get a gamer involved in the game.
Most gamers will realize that Konami has not put enough punch into the turtles franchise and should just let another company take over. If your looking for an action game, its better that you look else where and avoid this game.