As a child of the 90s, I grew up during the heyday of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Simply put, they were everywhere: from cartoons to live action movies, to beat ‘em-up NES/SNES/arcade games, to sweatsuits. That’s not even touching on action figures, of which I owned many, including sports variants.
I loved it all, and spent many hours with Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo and Michaelangelo in each of those mediums, plus others that weren’t even mentioned. I even had a Turtles beach towel, if I can recall correctly, though it got stolen while I swam at a public pool. Needless to say, I was a fan from an early age, and have never lost interest — at least when it comes to video games. I can’t remember the last cartoon or movie from this IP that I actually sat down and watched.
Although I’d forgotten this, a well received movie was recently released. It goes by the name of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and presents a really unique and impressive art style. Developer AHeartfulofGames, and licensed tie-in publisher, Outright Games, chose to follow that film up with a new video game, which is budget priced at approximately $40 American dollars. They call it Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed.
It might have been the buzz from the incredible Shredder’s Revenge game that came out not that long ago, but I found myself following and wanting to play this release. When I failed to get a response about a review code, I broke down and preordered it. However, I made the decision to leave it unopened, and returned it for my money back because I wasn’t so sure about the decision to buy such a game. That was a very smart thing to have done, as it turns out, because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed is a boring and bad experience that fails to carry on the apparent quality of its theatrical predecessor. In fact, it’s probably the worst game I’ve played this year.
Since you’re likely confused about how I was able to play a game that I didn’t get code for, and also returned after preordering, know that I borrowed it from the local library. God, I love libraries. Still, playing this for free left me thinking I paid too much, both in time and gas.
Growing up, this IP was turned into some good to downright amazing 2D beat ‘em-ups, like Turtles in Time. I have fond memories of playing that as a kid, and the frustrating underwater mission of the first NES game is part of my earliest gaming memory. I remember going over to my cousins’ to play it on their home console.
In the years that followed, I kind of stopped playing Turtles games outside of a 360 movie tie-in, the Xbox Live Arcade version of Turtles in Time and, of course, the incredible Shredder’s Revenge. I borrowed another couple from the library, but never got to them.
With Mutants Unleashed, I was expecting a decent 3D or 2.5D brawler, which would be a relatively fun game to complete over 5-10 hours, and something to add to my list of beaten games. What we got is some franken-mess that tries to mix brawling with light platforming and, of all things, Persona style narrative content, not to mention visual flourishes borrowed from that popular series. I never expected to play a mash-up of TMNT and Persona, but here it is. Whoever decided it needed to be a thing should reevaluate that decision.
The basis of this overlong and repetitive game, which can take upwards of twelve or more mind numbing hours to complete, is that mutants and humans are now coexisting in New York. As such, the Heroes in a Half-Shell are not forced into hiding anymore, and can visit places like coffee shops, public pools, parks and whatnot. There, they can interact with human beings, as well as other mutants whose designs I assume originated in the last movie. Hell, Leo is dating April, which is just odd.
However, as required, the proverbial shit hits the fan and the new ‘mewbies’ begin to act out and cause chaos within the city. The result is a city-wide curfew. Of course, it also means that our four favourite talking turtles must rush into action and investigate using their weapons.
This game features a time system, as well as a day/night cycle which reminded me of Persona. You’re given a set amount of days before you must complete the next main story stage, and can spend that time interacting with people in limited environments like the ones mentioned above. Doing so requires you to travel there (by selecting its icon on the map and pressing a button — this is not an open world game), approach the person or mutant, and talk to them. That’s it! There’s no player agency here, in the dialogue driven side quests, and they suck as a result, even though some of them end with short side missions that lack variety. While I appreciate some of the ideas behind them, like Raph assisting a young swimmer who’s got a prosthetic leg and another Turtle bonding with a kid over flying a drone in a cement park, these sections were incredibly boring and really dragged. I completed them, though, by speed reading as I mashed A to progress to the next text bubble. Why? Well, you unlock new things, like additional skill tree tiers, visual filters and the ability to use your smartphone to scan environments for ghosts. Don’t get me started on that tedious, needle in a haystack, annoyance.
You’d think that these would make for good mini-games, along with other segments like when Donatello plays a DDR game, but no. There’s nothing for the player to do except read or listen to seemingly endless dialogue that is about as interesting as watching paint dry. Why they decided to make a large portion of the game like this I’ll never understand, but more than half of it is taken up by tedious and slow cutscenes.
Master Splinter, or dad, is one of the characters you build a relationship with, and you do so by talking about slightly adjusted John Hughes movies. They go out of their way not to mention the director, his movie titles or their actual characters’ names, but mention Chuck Norris by name. Thankfully, Splinter at least gives you challenge rooms to complete, and these task you with defeating a group of enemies in a certain amount of time. One even makes it so that you fail if you touch the ground, while another tasks you with not getting hit. However, I somehow passed the second one with an S rating despite going 20 seconds over the time limit.
This would be a much better game ‘mode’ if it weren’t for the basic and repetitive combat, which boils down to mashing light, heavy and aerial attacks. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed gives each of its heroes a unique combat style, but it all boils down to button mashing despite unlockable skills and abilities, and an annoying block/parry system that I tried to avoid because I don’t enjoy partying. It rarely felt like I was doing anything cool, interesting or standout. Hell, you’re almost always alone, so you rarely even feel part of a crime fighting foursome. Even when you call for assists, the second Turtle never appears alongside you.
Each of the Heroes in a Half-Shell has his own assist type. Raph seemed to stun enemies, while Mike hit them and caused damage. I mostly stuck with Don, when needed (later on), because he’d drop four boxes that would contain energy drinks or health increasing pizza slices. Sometimes I’d even find a full box, or a mimic pizza box.
The stages, themselves, are also misleading. They feature collectibles like photographable graffiti, VHS tape pickups, arcade tokens and coloured vials (which increase your health, damage or another stat), but they’re usually hard to miss. That’s because the stages are so linear, and trying to go elsewhere will introduce you to one of many invisible walls, or a fall into oblivion. It’s misleading, because it often looks like you can go to those areas. Meanwhile, the places you can go sometimes allow for flawed platforming, forced skateboarding along rails and limited wall running.
The same environments (city streets/rooftops, cargo boats, sewers, and the like) repeat over and over again, to the point where you’ll essentially be replaying earlier stages. This becomes really tedious and downright boring, and half-decent and more creative bosses do little to make up for that. Even some secondary stages, in which you bounce around, avoid obstacles and deliver pizzas without holding pizzas, or defeat pink tinged enemies, reuse the same assets. The same several enemy types also repeat ad nauseam, and it gets really stale really quickly.
The camera is another issue that those who buy or borrow Mutants Unleashed will have to deal with. It tries to create the feel of a game from 20 years ago, but doesn’t do so well. The static camera can barely be adjusted, and it’s easy to lose sight of enemies. Furthermore, you’ll find yourself fighting the camera during combat, and hating how disruptive the camera shake effect. You can’t turn that off.
The camera angle changes when you enter new areas, which sometimes requires loading. This can be jarring, as it’s disjointing and far from seamless. You’ll miss some of the experience giving VHS tapes because of it, or because they’re just out of your reach at the outer bounds of the stage limits, or have fallen into water (or ooze) you cannot enter. Said experience points are used to unlock new combat abilities for the Turtles, which we covered above.
This game tries its best to recreate the unique and impressive art style of the movie it follows, and does so well in some regards. I liked how certain aspects of the environments, and certain effects looked like they were drawn in using crayon. However, the Turtles look too cartoony, and there’s a lot of uncanny valley type stuff going on with them (and the often ugly, stylized, NPCs) during cutscenes, which take forever to complete their wordy dialogue expositions. Hell, there’s even a brief (and wholly unnecessary) cutscene before most enemy encounters, which pans over the oft-repeated group of foes and shows the Turtles’ reactions. It kills the flow, or what little there was. This existing tells you what you need to know about how limited the combat can be in what is a 2.5D brawler that tries to feel 3D.
The game suffers from performance issues and visual glitches, and doesn’t always run great. I also had to quit the game and start it again, when it failed to move off of a loading screen following an early stage. It’s also not all that welcoming to those who want to play with friends, because it only supports two player couch co-op, and player one deals with a majority of the ‘gameplay,’ that being pressing a button to cycle through dialogue.
They apparently got the movie’s actors back to voice certain (ugly) characters, and carried their looks forward from the animated film. I wouldn’t have known otherwise. The voice acting is hit and miss, and can be pretty underwhelming. Not all of the dialogue is voiced, either, nor is it that well written. The movie apparently had a lot of 90s rap music, but this does not, and the music and effects are merely fine.
Although the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been experiencing a resurgence in recent years, thanks to the movie, Shredder’s Revenge, the Cowabunga Collection, and a recently released roguelike, this game doesn’t aid that cause. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed is a messy hodgepodge of ideas that aren’t well executed and don’t work well together. The result is a boring game that might well be too challenging, slow and wordy for kids, and too simplistic, wordy, slow and uninteresting for adults. I’m not sure who thought mixing this IP with (light) Persona elements would be a good idea, but it wasn’t. Returning my preordered copy was a great one, though.
Steer clear of what is probably the worst game I’ve played this year. It’s ugly, it’s not fun and it has some hideous animations to boot.
This review is based on the Xbox Series X version of the game, which the reviewer borrowed from a library.