Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan Review

Congratulations, Platinum Games … you f*cked it up.

Why is it so hard for developers these days to make a decent TMNT game? I mean, the franchise is there … developed. The characters, the story, the everything. You just have to take all that, think of a nice plot, make cool gameplay and voila … ya got a game. I’m making it sound easy, which it’s not, however, I definitely expected better from action genre masters – Platinum Games.

I actually didn’t know about this game until recently. I saw it on the review list and I thought “oh, a TMNT game … oh! It’s being developed by Platinum Games … what could go wrong” … well, a lot it seems. Back in 1991 a beautiful title came out on the market for the NES: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project. It was quite a simple game really, had only 2 types of attacks, no decent (if any) combos, very simple plot, linear side-scrolling gameplay. However, for a game from the 90’s it got me so hooked up, that a friend of mine and I spent hours and hours of gameplay on her NES, alongside Chip and Dales, kicking ass with the turtles, back in the childhood days. So let me ask this … you find it hard to beat that game in terms of gameplay, combat and keeping the player’s attention, eh?!? Why … just why? I mean, this coming from the legends of action, who gave us combat masterpieces on the level of MGR: Revengeance and Bayonetta 1 and 2 … wut?

Sigh … well here I go. TMNT is an action, hack and slash game … it pains me to even write it … which follows the adventures of the four mutant ninja turtles we all know and love throughout Manhattan. When I started this game I actually tried the tutorial, just to get a hang of it, because it recommended it to me itself. I will make a remark here and elaborate on it later. The tutorial was effin longer than a mission. Now hold that thought. Anyway, I mainly used this to get a hang of the controls, because hack and slash doesn’t seem to be getting along with PC controls for quite a while now and I stubbornly refuse to buy a controller. In terms of easing the player into the game, it is well explained with nothing out of place and even gives you a freestyle brawl at the end just to see what you learned from the actual tutorial. When I got the one about dodging and more specifically, dodging at the last second, I thought “oh Platinum, you like this, dodge at the last second to become unstoppable, thing, don’t’cha?”

In fact, right from the very start I felt like this game was Platinum turf, but … but I actually came to regret this, the more I was progressing through it. Enough random rambles, let me point out the good and the bad now (yes, there are actually some things which do this game good, it’s not all bullocks).

TMNT’s combat sucks s*it … there you go, I said it. It’s unappealing, repetitive and quite frankly as straightforwardly plain as it can get. You have light and heavy attacks, a set number of combos you can perform with those and to top it off, since each turtle uses only its own weapon you can experience all the combos in less than a whole mission playthrough. Now, the only place for variety the player gets is switching between the turtles, because when you play through story mode, you don’t just control the turtle you choose, but the other accompany you as AI. Now this is actually a good thing, because as I say, the turtles are not the turtles if not fighting together, however as good a concept as it is, it has some bad implementations, but more on that later. Beside the generic combat moves, the turtles have special ninjutsu techniques, which are … pretty much spin and hit everything around you, spin forward and hit everything in front of you, throw some shuriken, slash someone, dash to someone, kick someone … special they said … I see nothing special about these techniques, beside the fact that they do a bit more damage than the normal moves. There are your occasional white sheep, I like the beam laser one, which you unlock after defeating Krang … so basically at the end of the game. And also there are takedowns, which are performed by sneaking by an unalarmed enemy and surprise butt se… I mean surprise attacking him. But are these takedowns, cool-looking new moves? WRONG! Just a normal slash or kick or punch, which instant kills … 10/10. I don’t even know what to say anymore.

Okay, the positive thing to this … “wait, there is a positive?” you’d ask. Yes, there is, however, it doesn’t really fix the issue. Anyway, I’m talking about none other than Mr. Boss Battles (or Miss Boss Battles, so that people don’t say I’m sexist). Boss battles are actually really good. Each and every one of them is unique and engaging and actually quite a handful, if you do not utilize everything right. I died on my first boss like 2 times (that is 6 retries total, cuz when you die in a mission you can retry 3 times). First time was cuz I was too badass for using dodge, until I realized that I’m playing a game developed by Platinum and with the it’s like if ya don’t dodge ya gonna die brah. So then I started dodging but the second time the wonky controls got me (more on that too will be covered later on, don’t you worry your pretty little hide, dear reader). On every mission, I couldn’t wait to get to the boss and battle it. However I will say that battles here are so chaotic … like you have the boss spamming abilities, the 4 turtles spamming crap and by the end of it, I found myself just spamming random buttons yelling “PLS DIE, CUZ I’M DOWN TO ONE TURTLE AND MY HEALTH IS FLASHING RED!!!” The boss also has like several health bars … something again so typical for Platinum, but I actually think it’s better to just stack it, rather than have one difficultly long HP bar, dropping down with the speed of a (ninja) turtle … ya see what I did there *wink* *wink*. I also liked that the turtles’ health bars are pizzas (pizza is love, pizza is life) … that was a cool little interface addition.

Since we’re talking about fighting, how much it sucks and the turtles, I think now is a good time to cover the AI. Now remember how I said that you breeze through the game with all 4 turtles. Yes, you get all 4 of them, you control one, but you can switch to another at any time during the mission, be it in combat or not. Also when the turtle you control dies … no, is knocked out (they don’t die!!!1 They never do! Which is a good thing) the game automatically switches you to another turtle. I found out that the game liked giving me Donnie. Every time I got knocked out, it switched me to him, but that was maybe because Donnie is next in line (I was playing with Mikey and his icon was before Donnie’s) Anyway, unimportant, as much as I loved having my brothers with me all the time … well … the AI sucks too. It just spams normal attacks, barely uses the special ninjutsu and if by any chance they do decide to use it, they do so in the most inappropriate times ever. I remember in my battle against Karai, Leo would always use his special ability, which slows down time, on her when she was either unhittable or dodging and she ended up doing so in slow mo’, but guess what, we still weren’t able to hit her, so off was a uselessly used very useful ability just so I can watch Karai do her acrobatic dodging crap … in slow motion. WHYYY … However, I will give props to the AI for one thing. Whenever a turtle is knocked out, there are a few seconds time to revive it, before it goes back to the lair to recover (the nifty thing here is that they are not out indefinitely, but when they recover, they rejoin the fight; I ended up running around as Donnie on one boss battle, waiting for my brothers to respawn, which was actually pretty funny and the niftier thing was that you recover by eating PIZZA … *excited gasp*). Anyway, as I was saying, when a turtle is knocked out, the AI is programmed to immediately go and help that turtle whether it’s another AI or the player, and I really liked that, because oh how many times did they save me, so this is the sole reason why I love the AI so much. Other than that, it’s stupid as f*ck … sorry AI, I still love you, don’t worry (it’s the puppy kind of relationship between the AI and me, where it’s not very bright, but it’s so loyal, that I just can’t bring myself to hating it … I’m a dog person, okay? I love dogs, so shush!). Other than that, it was good company.

The other thing, related to the AI is the command you can give it. They were good at following commands … but the commands themselves sucked. I know they were meant more for communication in multiplayer, but you could have still made them more useful in single player too. Now you can tell the AI to either follow you, protect you, stay or go all out (see … puppy relationship … sit, lay down, play dead, gimmie a paw … good boy, here’s your treat). Go all out is basically every turtle does what it wants and goes where it pleases, which you can’t pretty much f*ck that up and actually, they did do a good job on simple missions such as defeat all enemies or catch a certain enemy. Holding position with the stay command is self-explanatory too. However, the follow me and defend me ones kind of puzzled me a bit. When you tell the turtles to follow you, they do so and they fight whatever you attack. The real sh*t is the defend me command, which indicates that the turtles are supposed to defend you. What they do is, basically follow you again and attack everything within a certain radius around you. However, that is not as pink as I describe it to be. I usually used that command when I wanted to do an objective, which didn’t allow me to fight at all, so I needed back up. Little did I know, my back up decided to attack enemies at the end tip of my range radius, which didn’t even know about my existence, while the gazillion enemies around me were using me as gangbang tool. Yes, thank you, nice defense guys … Switching to multiplayer, it’s basically the same but with random people, doing whatever they want … at least the AI listen to me.

I said we’d talk about controls too. I personally played with a keyboard and I know that the game did warn me about it and I know that it’s a suicide to do so with PC controls and I do not blame Platinum. The following question is more directed towards every developer out there: IS IT SO HARD TO MAKE PC CONTROLS CUSTOMISABLE?!?! I mean, yes, games like that just go better with controllers and PC controls suck, as they always have been, but why is every developer out there making them set. I wanna be able to customize them at least, so when I eff up because of controls, it will be my fault! But yeah, the camera was wonky, I struggled and became a pianist, trying to keep up with so many buttons, mashing them most of the time, but this is just a bonus complain and it actually does not affect the final verdict, cuz I know that it’s probably gonna be cool with an actual controller (not to mention easier).

I’m not done complaining, however. This game reminds me a lot of Anarchy Reigns – another title from Platinum and it actually managed to pull it off better. I’m saying this because they both have similar gameplay and mission structure. To put it simply a mission contains the following elements: start mission, do little sub-missions to reach boss, reach actual boss, defeat boss, end mission. The reason why Anarchy Reigns pull this archetype better is because the whole mission is divided into little areas and each area has 3 story missions and 3 side missions and after each of those little areas you get a boss fight, until you reach the end of the line and progress to the next area. However boss fights were sometimes set in the actual story missions and that made the story and gameplay flow better. With TMNT it is just as I described it: start mission, do little missions, get to boss, kill boss, end mission. Nothing else … nothing … nada. And it’s like that with every single mission. To top it off the missions are as simple and generic as “defeat all enemies”; “defuse bombs”; “get object A from point A to point B” all within a time limit, which is ridiculously long. I mean, 10 minutes to kill off a few enemies? Really? The only exception from the archetype were the final boss missions, which are 2. They basically said, eff that preliminary mission crap, here just fight the boss and be done with it. Well, maybe just a little bit, but that was between the 2 Krang boss battles. Mission diversity was not the only thing it pulled off better … combat and variety too, but I already raged about that so I’m not gonna go back to it. I’m not even gonna talk about how ridiculously short this game is. You’ll be done with it in a few hours (2 to 3 max) and you probably won’t come back to it soon, if at all.

Instead, let me head into the positives. The game is beautiful, no matter what I say. It has this comic style look, the city areas are beautifully made and they are diverse (unlike some other aspects of the game, which I will not *cough* combat *cough* mention). There are no 2 areas alike, even though it’s one city and I enjoyed my surroundings. I also enjoyed the fact that I can interact with them so much, by climbing buildings, running on rooftops, sliding on rails, gliding (assassin’s creed: tmnt edition). The only thing was how slow I was when simply running, but oh well, I am playing a turtle after all … get it? Get it? *wink* *wink* … aww forget about it. If anything the world is immersive and this is a huge positive for the game.

Secondly, I loved the writing. I am so glad that the turtles felt right. Thank you for that Platinum. The script was great, I laughed at their moments so much. And each turtle was just as it was supposed to be: Leo the leader, Donnie the tech-geek, Raph the berserking anger-management issue one and of course Mikey the pizza-loving, childlike turtle I love so much (he is actually my fav). They complete each other so well and they actually were able to take me back to that 2003 cartoon I love so much. The only complaint I have here is that other than the great turtle performance, Splinter and April felt like 2 generic NPC’s. I know it’s all about the turtles, but both play important side roles in the franchise. Here they were turned into a bland upgrade shopkeeper and a not-so witty repetitive one-liner spewing generic female … wait, let me add something to that – not-so witty repetitive objective one-liner spewing generic female.

Last, but definitely not least, the music. Every stage had different music and it was a great mixing between rock/metal and Japanese ninja style beats. I never did get bored with the OST, so they did that great too. I actually turned it up and enjoyed rocking to it, while in the midst of a heated boss battle.

However, this game still makes me sad. Because it has so much potential and it’s all wasted. All I see here is an action game, which is scraping by on story, music and boss battles … while its main aspect – the combat – is so successfully managing to plummet it down right at the bottom. As a final verdict, I will give this a 5/10 on a few reasons. If I had to give my harsh judgement, it would probably go lower, however, there are a few things which prevent me from doing so. First of all, it’s TMNT and I just cannot, I love the turtles and it saddens me that people don’t do them good. Second, like I said, writing, music, scenery and boss battles were really great, so that gives it an edge. But the major downside, serving in the name of combat, is crushing it, especially coming from veterans in the action genre, such as Platinum Games. I effin bought a WII-U just so I can experience Bayonetta 2 guys! This is how good you are! So, why didn’t you put more effort into TMNT? I mean, I feel like it’s super rushed (more so than Devil May Cry 4 felt). Last, I will say this: you set the standards of hack and slash really high, Platinum, and if you can’t keep up with your own quality bar, then that is truly sad. Think about it.