In a brief history in our hobby, there has been loads of legendary side-scrolling beat 'em ups, offering players the opportunity to get together and punch a bunch of fools inside a mission to save a town, a woman, a president, or some mixture of those things. If there's one name that stands above the rest in the minds and hearts of players, however, it's got to become Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now, it's not that any of Konami's TMNT games were necessarily the best of the best of the genre, however they more often than not had a great balance of fun characters, exciting stages, and satisfying difficulty levels.
As we have seen names such as Double Dragon, Kunio-kun, and Streets of Rage make modernized returns in recent years, the concept wasn't so much if we'd customize the TMNT beat 'em up, but when we'd get one-and how much it'd cost for the license.
Even as merely a casual fan of the universe that oozed out from the minds of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, I'd still found myself getting really excited for the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge. From everything we'd seen up to this point, it looked as if the sport might have stunning graphics, great gameplay, along with a rockin' soundtrack.
Well, as another classic pop cultural icon, Meat Loaf, once sang: Now don't be sad, 'cause two thirds ain't bad.
There is really nowhere else I can start when conversing about Shredder's Revenge apart from its visuals, since they are the first thing you will find and are undoubtedly the game's best feature. Based on the work of amazing pixel artist Paul Robertson, every character in the game-from the teenager turtles themselves, for their allies, to the Foot soldiers as well as other baddies-come alive in a way that is simply a joy to witness. Everyone looks colorful and cartoony but never silly, each one of the turtles (as well as all of those other cast) have their own unique animations. Likely to artistic consistency to everything that can in fact be near on impossible for sprite-based games to achieve.
As well, the different stages do a congrats of showcasing just how gorgeous of a game this really is. As i don't think they're quite on the degree of what we should saw in Scott Pilgrim vs. The planet: The Game (which key members of Tribute Games worked on prior to leaving Ubisoft) when it comes to little details, they still stand as fantastic examples of just how good 2D games look. Although the adventure (mostly) takes place across Manhattan, there's a nice amount of variety within the locations you will be visiting, keeping things feeling fresh for most of how through.
That variety is also observed in the gameplay of Shredder's Revenge, which finds a satisfying balance between offering depth without being too overwhelming. For one little context, I booted up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist on Genesis while focusing on this review, and very quickly realized how repetitive those older games in the franchise are now able to feel. Here, you've got standard combos, a number of throws and jump attacks, rolls (which could combo into attacks), and a a few different super abilities you can unleash if you've got enough Ninja Power. While all of the selectable characters-Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, Splinter, April O'Neil, and also the unlockable Casey Jones-all take part in the same in theory, each feels different not just in their stats, but also in variables such as timing, reach, or those super abilities. There really isn't a bad character from the bunch, so even if you've got a full team of six players all jumping in to the game, you will not need to feel like you're getting tied to a garbage pick.
Of course, none of that means much if there isn’t a roster of enemies to supply both variety and challenge, and Shredder's Revenge is also pretty solid in that way. Early on, I was feeling like the game was a little too easy, but some of the later enemies are serious pricks. The dev team never relied on any of the presented enemy types too often, meaning every stage introduces a new style of threat or mixes some misconception in some other way. Really the only complaint I have in this area would be that the bosses are slightly disappointing in terms of complexity and difficulty. Maybe playing so much Elden Ring in recent months has me within the mindset that each boss should fight like this is an end boss, but I think the selection we get here has a tendency to lean too much toward quantity and not enough toward quality.
So, given I'm smitten with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge's visuals, and have mostly good stuff to say about its gameplay, that means my disappointment must lie in its final area: audio.
I'm not hot on the game's soundtrack. Now, as somebody who loved the job of Tee Lopes in Sonic Mania, Personally i think surprised to state that. However, the problem with Shredder's Revenge goes deeper than simply its music. All of the audio in this game is disappointing, to some degree that's a little baffling. Some of the voice acting sounds really off. Attacks often lack that satisfying oomph when hitting a rival. Explosions sound anemic. A number of the sound clips are simply outright terrible. Sometimes, you'd think a certain action or object must have an audio cue related to it, and there is nothing. As the audio in Shredder's Revenge is definitely its weakest element, it is also the game's least important element if we're being honest. (During the arcades, we could never even hear the audio anyhow.) Still-and I'm perfectly willing to recognize that a lot of you may disagree with me on all this-I'm disappointed using what the sport has to offer our ears.
Part of the problem, I think, is that Shredder's Revenge suffers the same fate that many Sega CD and Turbo-CD games did. When the CD was initially introduced as a storage medium for video games, you'd have releases that would combine 16-bit visuals with far superior audio. Sometimes, that will create a Dracula-X, or perhaps an Ys Book I & II, or a Lord of Thunder, where the three core pillars of the game gelled together wonderfully. Far more often, unfortunately, you'd have games that looked and played decidedly 16-bit, with music that sounded like it belonged with a completely different game. Given how much work went into making its overall style feel and look retro, the audio in Shredder's Revenge is simply too modern on a technical level-and in some cases, even directly clashes using what we're seeing and playing. I'd love to see Tribute Games to produce free (or perhaps paid) DLC which provides us music and sound clips crafted to evoke that similar retro nostalgia as an option.
And, if they are giving us that patch, the team may also fix the game's misguided Arcade mode.
TMNT: Shredder's Revenge offers two main modes of play: Story, and Arcade. In Story, you travel across an overworld map in one narrative beat to the next. Each point you open is a new stage, and when not progressing the story, you can travel to previous stages in to develop a number of side missions. The storyline mode is playable solo or with up to five others either locally or online, you can individually level characters to unlock new skills, and you can save and quit whenever you would like. When playing Shredder's Revenge for the purposes of this review, my first focus was on Story mode, and I came away from it with very positive opinions around the game.
Arcade is the other mode we're presented here, and that i function n't understand what Tribute Games was thinking there. Whenever you give me a beat 'em up with an “arcade” mode, I expect an enjoyable though not incredibly deep experience, where I'll probably play 6 to 8 stages, taking maybe Thirty to forty minutes to complete. Instead, this Arcade mode takes us through the entirety of Story mode's 16 stages (which average between 5 to 10 minutes to complete), one after the other, with no choice to save or perhaps the ability to pick a new character after you die when playing solo. Sixteen stages, taking just below two hours to beat, is not an arcade mode.
I completely understand the developers wanting to make a big, beefy experience that would both satisfy players and stand as a memorable new entry within the series, but you can't just line up all of those stages in a row and refer to it as an “arcade” mode. The number of people are likely to want to take a seat with family and friends and spend much time for you to cope with the game in one go? Personally i think very certain that many people will have a number of stages, and then just quit, never visiting a decent chunk of what awaits later hanging around.
The great news is, there is a relatively easy fix to this, one that Tribute Games can continue to implement afterwards. Countless other beat 'em ups over the years have featured branching paths, and that is all we need here. Use that giant amount of stages to supply numerous ways to get towards the end, resulting in a shorter, tighter game that then offers a lot more variety any time you play. While the stages presented in Shredder's Revenge weren't crafted specifically with the concept of branching paths in mind, they also aren't that reliant you going through every one of them. In fact, there's even a three-stage slice of the storyline mode that could easily split off into its very own path. Given that portion of the game, some of the deeper cuts the dev team made for bosses, and some other specific elements found through the game, I do actually wonder if the thought of branching paths within the Arcade mode existed at some point prior to getting scrapped.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge isn't the game I had been hoping it might be-but transforming it into that game would entirely be possible without any huge reworkings to what Tribute Games has given us. However, what they have given us is exactly what matters after the day, and even with my misgivings, there's still a pretty darn good game here. The Arcade mode's length could absolutely be considered a deal breaker for many, but when it isn't for you personally, then there's an enjoyable, beautiful new beat 'em up experience waiting for you here. Search hard in to the Story mode, marathon the Arcade mode now and then when you're up for that challenge, and enjoy the attention and care that entered giving the heroes in a half shell a worthy new adventure, pimples and all.
It's like obtaining a hot, cheezy, crisp-crusted pizza delivered to your door-and then realizing someone ordered it with pineapple and black olives as two toppings.
