TMNT is a surprisingly good game with some cool platforming segments, but falls short because of the laughable combat.
When it comes to everything that this game has to offer, the story is one of it's biggest downfalls. Most licensed games will try to expand the story and show things that didn't happen in the movie. TMNT does attempt this, but it fails most of the time. Leonardo has been sent off by Splinter to meditate and train and do all that crap that ninjas do. When he returns, he finds that the family isn't as bonded as they used to be. Raphael leaves at night to become his secret identity, the Night Watcher, Michelangelo is a kid's entertainer, and Donatello is a computer assistant answering questions over the phone. They quickly find that an unexplainable flock of monsters are loose in the city and they must overcome their discrepancies with one another and band together to bring them down. That's the plot of the movie. TMNT's plot is basically the same with a few extra things thrown in that don't help flesh out the story at all. But the plot isn't told through cutscenes. All they show you is a book with pictures in it and you hear the Turtles and Splinter talk about it. Basically, they're retelling the story that you're playing through and probably already know if you've seen the movie. Yawn. There are a few scenes from the movie, but nothing that's really needed to progress the story. It's just thrown in to say, "Hey look at us! We have clips from the motion picture! We're special! Tee hee!"
When it comes to the gameplay, it would be an understatement to say that I was pleasantly surprised. I knew that TMNT would borrow heavily from the Prince of Persia series, but I really didn't think that the platforming sections would be as good as they were. The usual things that you expect from a platformer are all there. You'll be hanging onto ledges, jumping gaps, wall jumping, flipping on poles, and running along walls. The greatest thing about these sections is how seamless they are. The Turtles are incredibly fast and you'll be speeding from one area to the next without so much of a blink. They are ninjas after all, and this game shows just how quick they can be. It was awesome.
But with the good, there must be bad. In between the platforming segments, there will be fighting portions. I cannot stress enough how boring the fighting gets. There is only one button that carries out an attack. That's right -- one. By jamming on the circle button, you will clear the room of any enemy on screen with ease. Sure, you can hit the triangle button to jump kick a baddie away from you if you're surrounded. And of course you can block. But most of the time, constantly pounding away on the circle button should suffice. It boils down to this: if you die from the combat sections of this game, you are an idiot. The only times I died were from some of the trickier platforming segments and from my own stupidity like accidentally rolling off of a platform. Not once did I bite the dust from an enemy. I understand that for children, this is exactly how the combat should be, but if a child is that dumb, then that child probably won't be able to get past the platforming segments so it's a moot point.
I can get past the easy fighting mechanics, but I can't get past how random most of the battles are. The Turtles rarely go down to the city streets, so most of the time they'll be hopping from rooftop to rooftop. Answer me this. Why in the world are there so many gangs on the rooftops? Do they seriously have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for somebody to come along, on the roof of all places? TMNT would have benefited tremendously from levels that consisted solely of platforming segments because that's where all of the fun lies. But the developers opted against that and threw in some of the most random battles I've ever seen in my 20 years of video gaming. For instance, there's a level where you'll play as Michelangelo who has just finished up entertaining kids at a party. Donatello is supposed to pick him up, but can't make it. Michelangelo is so self conscious about his costume that he refuses to go to the streets and hops across rooftops to get home. This is a level where it should have been all platforming, but there are more than a few battles thrown in and it's just ridiculous. It didn't fit the mood of the level or story at all. The majority of the fights in the game are like this and just feel out of place.
What most people have seen as a big disappointment for the TMNT game is the lack of multiplayer. I'll admit, I was bummed too when I first heard about that because what's a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game without multiplayer? I mean come on, there's four of them. But after finding out what company was behind the game and that they planned on focusing a lot on platforming not unlike Prince of Persia, I was sold. Is it a success? It's a tough call. I don't think I've ever played through a Turtles game by myself before this one and it was definitely weird. There were more than a few moments in the game where I thought that two players could be used. I understand that with the platforming segments of the game it's difficult to do multiplayer with two people, much less four, but it could have been done. The closest you'll come to seeing multiple Turtles on screen is during the team attacks, but it's just not the same. You are always playing by yourself, but you'll constantly hear the voices of the other Turtles talking to you even though they're nowhere to be found. During a team attack, they'll just pop out of nowhere, do the move, and disappear again. I just didn't think it was thought out very well.
After each level, you will be graded based on how you performed. It will judge how quickly you completed the level, how advanced your fighting techniques were (despite only one attack button), and others. The lowest score I got on any level was a B+. Most of the time I got A's or A+'s. It's just not that difficult to do. If you get a good score, you'll unlock a challenge map. At the menu screen, you can go to this section of the game and complete a short challenge in a seemingly virtual reality environment. There are a couple combat challenges, but thankfully most of them are platforming and they're quite fun. Depending on how fast you completed them, you'll get coins to add to what you collected during the story game. There are numerous things you can buy with these coins, but almost all of them are completely useless. You'll be able to buy a big head for each character (which is just bursting with originality), clips from the movie, an inside look at how the characters, comics, and game were made, and others. Some of these are overly expensive and there is no way you'll be able to buy them all after one playthrough. It's hard for me to believe anybody besides young children would play through this again, so don't expect to unlock everything.
The graphics are about as good as you'd expect for a kid's based game. They focused on making the main characters look cool and some other things look colorful and fun, but put the environment and enemies on the back burner. There are only a handful of enemies and you'll be seeing them over and over. As for the environments, some of them are the most drab and unfinished things I've seen in quite some time while others, usually during the daytime levels, looked rather good. It was a mixed bag.
The sound wasn't too bad for a game like this. I'm not certain whether or not the voice talent from the movie was worked into the game, but I felt the same way about the game as I did the movie. I thought the Turtles sounded more or less exactly how I thought they should while Splinter sounded like a tool. I cannot stand the voice that Splinter had in the movie or this game. They took a super sweet character in the Turtles universe and made him a complete dork by using the voice they did. Most everything else sounded fine, but the one-liners that the Turtles spit out got very annoying. You'll hear the same stupid lines over and over. If I hear Raphael say, "Here's Johnny!" one more time, I might just rip off my ears. Not only is it annoying, it's completely wasted on it's target audience. No matter whether they're referencing the Johnny Carson Show or The Shining, I doubt any children will know what it's from.
Even with some downfalls, TMNT is a game that I just can't help but enjoy. I loved the Turtles growing up and I still do despite some of my disappointment with them over the last few years. I really think that the Turtles are starting to find their place again in pop culture and I'm overly stoked about that. As long as they have a nice balance between the 80's cartoon show and the comic book, I'll be happy. This game is a great beginning for the series to start their ascension, but it's certainly not going to catapult them to the top of where they used to be. I would love to see another Turtles game made for the older crowd with more platforming, a completely revamped fighting system, and an interesting story, but this will have to do for now. Despite the overly simplistic combat and inane story, TMNT has some awesome platforming sections and it's well worth checking out no matter what age group you fall under.