Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (Xbox One)
Things lined up pretty well in the the late 1980s and early 90s for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Right as the television show was climbing to incredible popularity Konami was putting out quality beat ’em up arcade games based on licensed properties, classic games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time still proving to be some of the best video games based on the franchise. With the series’s major video game footprint being those 90s brawlers, it’s little surprise an effort was made to reproduce that style, Dotemu and developer Tribute Games working to make essentially what a brawler in that style would look like with modern ideas and graphics in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge.
In this beat ’em up the four crime-fighting hero turtles as well as their master Splinter and reporter friend April O’Neil spring into action when the news is taken over to announce the Foot clan of ninjas have taken control of the Statue of Liberty. Starting with the news room the Foot used to broadcast their boast, the Turtles soon spot pieces of the android the alien Krang is usually seen riding around in. Fighting their way through various locations and other mutated animals put in charge of spreading chaos throughout New York City, it’s actually quite a while before the Foot clan’s leader Shredder is truly tied to things in this two to three hour experience. His so-called revenge seems to be mostly for the many defeats he’s experienced at the hands of the Turtles in the past. Regardless of the simple motivations, the efforts made to stop him at least take the player to plenty of unique locations around New York City and beyond.
The look of the game is an immediate eye-catcher, with expressive characters and plenty of fun details in levels and how enemies behave. Foot ninjas make up most of the enemies you’ll be facing, but as you head to new areas they’re not just simply standing around waiting for someone to fight. You’ll catch these colorful ninjas decked out in their full fighting outfits doing mundane things like running a taco shop or typing away at office computers before they spot you and jump into action, and even when they’re doing something a bit more silly like working as a carnival barker it adds some substance to the level since the backdrop is more than just an interesting new locale to walk through. When you grab or attack your enemies they’ll often react in exaggerated ways, and with attack options like hurling them towards the screen you get a lot of amusing interactions or fun ways to eliminate foes as you progress from battle to battle. The reactions of your characters are also quite fun to see, whether it’s making a joke when they fall into an open pit or getting flattened like pancakes by passing vehicles, the game finds moments for little bits of silliness that don’t slow things down but add to the old school mix of humor and action the series became known for.
There are plenty of recognizable characters from throughout the series, both the cartoon and the games released back in the franchise’s heyday. The humanoid rhino and warthog pair of Bebop and Rocksteady are solid fun recurring villains for the early part of the adventure but you’ll face plenty of unique villains as well from pretty popular choices like the fly-man Baxter Stockman to strange picks like Wingnut the bat man and Groundchuck the bull-man. Even if they’re not the most recognizable they have unique attacks for their roles as bosses, although some like Leatherhead lean a little too hard into their gimmick, his being diving into manhole covers frequently to slow down a fairly simple fight. Many levels have you find characters from the series’ supporting cast as little secrets, these again sometimes being important characters like April O’Neil’s fellow employees from the news station and at other times being as strange a pull as the Neutrino aliens which feel like a treat only for the biggest series loyalists. It’s certainly nifty to see them dig that deep, and some characters like the Punk Frogs even have a fun running joke to them regardless of your familiarity with the specific callbacks.
Fighting in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge feels fluid and is varied across the small cast, up to six players even able to cooperate in battles that still feel like they offer enough for the whole team to participate. Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael not only have different stats but play into them differently, Donatello’s staff having a reach advantage compared to the close-range nunchuck attack style of Mikey for example. April O’Neil, Splinter, and the unlockable character for beating the story all have more creative move sets though, Splinter the rat getting his claws involved quite a bit and April’s reporter work meaning she’ll swing her microphone and camera around as a weapon or just unload with fancy kicks. The enemies you face are better tackled with more than basic combos, the player given special maneuvers like a rising attack to continue your combo up in the air and a few aerial moves like a dive kick or slam that can handle foes even while they’re ground bound. Heavy charged attacks can break through shield defenses but you can also get in close to toss enemies around for an often quick kill at the risk of having to approach your enemy. The environment will sometimes provide you extra tools in a fight, players able to hit things like fire hydrants that will knock back a nearby enemy. Even with some mild mixing of your attack buttons and using situational tools you can get a satisfying string of attacks going that handle fights pretty well, but characters also have a Ninja Power super attack where things get a little more dicey in how they contribute to fights.
Ninja Powers require you to fill up a meter to unleash a super strong attack. This attack varies across the cast, some standing in place and unleashing a powerful moves, others able to move around while swinging their weapons, and all characters have an aerial variant where they can slam down for heavy damage. You get temporary invincibility while using it as well, and conceptually there isn’t much of an issue with having a power you can whip out if you want to clear away a particularly large group of baddies quickly or deal heavy damage to a boss. Building up energy for it seems fine at first too as you earn it by dealing hits without taking any, the power only being saved if you hit a full meter. However, you can also taunt, a short and usually fun animation playing for a character that will instantly give you one full charge of your Ninja Power. There’s little reason not to do this when moving between battles and if you play with other people it’s not too hard to avoid a boss, build up a charge, and then unleash a Ninja Power attack to deal quick damage with a single strong technique. The good news is this doesn’t trivialize too many fights, the ninjas often numerous enough or coming in waves to counter just trying to quickly clear them away and bosses take quite a lot of Ninja Power hits before going down, but it also can sometimes mean you aren’t engaging that much with the foe you’re facing. Bosses have interesting techniques for you to dodge but if you can go invincible and hurt them at the same time fairly often you can often just weather the hits as necessary, the game pretty generous with life and extra lives since they’re all level specific. You can literally power through moments the game tries to build up as a difficult fight, but the satisfying design of the combat does at least mean when you can’t find room to charge up or want to just rely on your weapons you’ll have an entertaining form of fighting to offset those moments of more mindless heavy damage output.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge offsets some of that low difficulty with good enemy variety. While you will see a lot of the Foot Clan ninjas running about, their color-cooded masks help you gradually understand which variants you’re up against and they attack differently enough that they’re not too samey. Some can actually guard themselves fairly well, others pester you from range, and you’ll even encounter some with situation-specific tools like riding motorcycles across the battlefield. Peppered throughout are some more unique foes like the Mouser robots that appear in small swarms and can snap you in their jaws for brief stuns, later levels feature more alien threats like rock men who won’t flinch and thus are harder to combo, and a few hoverboard stages shake things up a bit as more freedom around the screen turns things more into a focus on dodging tons of attacks and hazards instead of how well you can hit the enemies around you. The hoverboard stages are sort of simple because of the movement focus, but they’re not a bad break between the heartier levels that can sometimes have quality boss concepts like the Rat King that mixes offensive skill with his rat army that you’ll need to keep dodging.
To spice up stage movement beyond just moving from battle to battle there are collectibles and cameos to find, although these are often uncovered just by hitting conspicuous objects rather than really scouring stages. These collectibles are often part of simple subquests where you’ll need to find something like video tapes or diaries across multiple levels, although these don’t contain anything to watch or read unfortunately. Instead, you gather them up and will get a reward of experience points, each character able to level up to gradually earn new techniques or expansions to their health bar or ninja power charges. These aren’t so vital that you will feel like you’re stuck playing as your highest leveled fighter thankfully, although the powerful Radical Mode that gives you brief incredible power would have been a great motivation to hold onto Ninja Power charges since it costs all of them and it only unlocks once you’re nearing max level. A more interesting way of earning points towards leveling up comes from level challenges though, each stage having a few incentives for fighting in special ways that might push you out of simply tearing your way through opposition. Some of these will ask you to be more careful, and while the zero damage challenges are more for enthusiasts, you still have some like avoiding enemy grabs that will encourage caution in a more interesting and achievable manner. Having a challenge discourage power moves for the final fight is a smart way to get you to engage with the boss design though, and having the little bonuses to shoot for in a stage gives some greater direction than always just trying to kill quickly and efficiently.
Outside of the story there is an Arcade style mode that tries to better provide a challenge, lives carrying across 16 levels and there being a true risk of a game over. All of the game’s stages are stitched together sequentially here and you can’t be too careless, although you can still taunt for ninja power charges and with higher stakes it’s harder to resist leaning on it quite a bit. Rather than a devotion to difficulty though, a dedication to game feel seems to be the priority, with plenty of voice lines, solid music including some cheesy but fun songs with lyrics even from the likes of the Wu-Tang Clan, and that sense of wanting to see where you’ll head next since a place like the zoo is going to have area appropriate dangers and interesting backdrops to the ninja fighting action. Simply seeing the smooth animation of a combo can make it satisfying even on a basic foe, and with some extra tricks like team attacks and bosses that only take damage from specific strategies there are enough ideas to poke at that the game doesn’t wear thin before this quick adventure wraps up.
THE VERDICT: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge seems to be trying for a fun and amusing action romp over providing a legitimate challenge, and while the satisfying combo system would have been up to snuff for a more demanding experience, this brawler still maintains its quality during its short runtime. The Ninja Power super moves can undermine some fights, but the challenges on the other hand give you an incentive to mix things up a little bit and the stages keep rolling out fun new visual touches or special foes that stand out even if many of the foes you face are variations on the standard ninja. Not really an evolution of the beat ’em up genre so much as a clean execution of familiar ideas, the stylistic touches and potential co-op fun make it exciting even if it’s not pushing the envelope in any department.
And so, I give Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge for Xbox One…
A GOOD rating. While the ease of use for the somewhat too strong Ninja Powers is certainly the easiest area to critique for undermining the difficulty, it’s not like they’ll be the only attack you’ll be performing and the standard fights are often simple enough you can just try to chain together regular attacks for something interesting and flashy. Enough regular enemies can pressure you in groups and bosses will at least have an interesting start before you see their few unique moves and start going for your special move to wrap things up. A lot of the fun is just seeing what concept comes up next, be it something as simple as how a turtle reacts to specific damage, what a Foot ninja is doing in the background, or how a boss chooses to attack. That novelty makes the story easy enough to tackle without getting too boring and arcade’s somewhat stricter constraints at least give you a way to play afterwards that requires a bit more caution, but this brawler does feel like it could have very easily strayed into repetitive button mashing if it hadn’t added so many nice touches to your techniques and given the playable roster such fluid fighting styles to slip into. It’s a people-pleaser beat ’em up, not asking too much but giving you enough unique action to occupy yourself with, but it’s missing deeper substance and moments memorable for things beyond being a kooky looking villain or fun visual gag. Battles aren’t hard fought, but that keeps you moving down the line to the next little idea to be impressed by even if you quickly crush it and move along without having to even mix up your combo strings too much. Death isn’t an impossibility if you’re too brazen or careless but health and revivals aren’t limited much outside of the mode where you’ll still be able to build up Ninja Power energy to offset the small shift in skill requirements, but if you surrender yourself to reveling in the action rather than focusing on the fact your attack options have more depth than the fights then you can easily find a solid enjoyable brawler.
Restricting Ninja Power would do a lot to really spice up the fights in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge and a post-release patch even reduced how easily they could be relied on by only allowing you to gain one at a time, but they’re not a dealbreaker. The game hits enough of the expected excitement of unleashing cool looking attacks against groups of enemies that gradually pull out new tricks and you can’t just super move yourself out of every situation so you will still engage with them somewhat. It’s still easy to be sucked into the game’s artistic direction and reverence for the franchise and its older titles even if you aren’t too familiar with them, so while there may be caveats that keep it from being a real evolution over its ancestors, it’s still a brawler that’s fun to put on with a group of friends if you want some awesome action without having to focus too much on what’s needed to get through it.