First off, I'm a HUGE Ninja Turtles fan. I grew up with these guys. Sadly over 20 years the last good Ninja Turtles game to come out was Turtles in Time on the Arcade and Super Nintendo. Out of the Shadows hasn't helped fix this trend. It's a shame because this game had potential and looked awesome before its horrendous launch last summer. I have both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 but I planned on getting this for the PS3. Unfortunately, this piece of crap released so buggy and broken that they PS3 version was delayed. So after MONTHS (the last update on the PS3 version coming in October) of no word on the PS3 version, I assumed it was cancelled, I went out and bought the 360 version and then like 2 weeks later the PS3 version was released and from what I hear, it's vastly superior. This made me very angry to say the least.
Graphics: I'll admit I hated the look of the Turtles in this game at first, but then the Michael Bay Turtles were revealed and those ugly ogre looking Turtles make the ones from Out of the Shadows look like Scarlett Johannson. All the level designs are kind of boring and un-inspired. Dark, dreary and very linear. It's a download game, so what can you say?
Story: I don't have the patience to finish this turd of a game. The premise is that you have to save April from the Foot, done it before so, whatever. It's no big deal, I mean how many times have we saved Peach from Bowser? The story is told in a very half hearted way and is based off of the current Nickelodeon show. There are no cutscenes, but crudely drawn stills that are supposed to resemble a comic book but just look boring and uneventful.
Sound: The Turtles voices aren't voiced by the real actors though this is mostly forgivable minus Raphael, who every time he talks I cringe. Leonardo really does sound like Jason Biggs at times too. The music is very average but the title screen does have Partners in Rhyme's Turtle Power song from the credits of the first live action movie.
Gameplay: Oh god, here we go. Slow, clunky, over-complicated. You have normal attacks, strong attacks, special attacks and team attacks. The special and team attacks seem to rarely work. There is a counter button but that doesn't help all that much as well. The computer A.I. is terrible, especially for CPU controlled Turtles, they often stand there and take hits, never replenish their health, and rarely put down enemies away from you. Also, each Turtle has their own items and this gets annoying trying to keep up with each one's inventory. You can also switch from Turtle to Turtle with the D-Pad which works fine for once. Upgrading, pretty standard, you upgrade their attributes, combos and weapons. Boss fights are very tedious, redundant and drag out too long to the point of sever boredom.
All in all it's a shame this game was so broken at launch, and so clunky and over-complicated control-wise. It's apparent that the creators liked and knew enough about the TMNT with things like the T.U.R.T.L.E. Power song, Donnie's (gravity Gauntlet or just power gauntlet) which is from the 1980's mirage comics as well as the IDW comics. The Turtle's horrible dance from the end of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze as well as the team finishing move where they all collide into one enemy shell first is in this game. Many little things were thrown in to pay homage to the 30 year history of the TMNT and I guess there is even a code to make all of the Turtle's headbands red like the original mirage comics, unfortunately this game was just very hard to play for more than 10 minutes.
So the search continues for a "good" or even "decent" Ninja turtles game, it's been 20 years, could be 20 more.................
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