Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up Review: Turtle Power

No matter how you slice it, “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” is a great game. It may have some problems, particularly in the online area, but at its core, the franchise is one of the most enjoyable fighting games ever created. Since the original was released, back in 1999 on the N64, a surprisingly small number of games have tried to duplicate the frantic fighting formula that worked so well for Nintendo. Enter “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up,” one of the first potentially worthy successor to the “Smash Bros.” crown, but does it have what it takes to really put up a good fight, or does it just end up shellshocked?

The premise of “TMNT: Smash-Up” is simple; it’s a solid fighting game that stars four mutated turtles, their friends, and their enemies. If that’s all you take the game as, then it succeeds actually quite well, but when you dig a little deeper you realize that this title is either a missed opportunity, or a great setup for a sequel.

The heart of “Smash-Up” are the four-player battles (the perfect number to get all of the brothers into the action at one) that can go down both locally and online. From there, the game houses a single player arcade mode that comes complete with a story where you have to take down the evil Shredder, as well as a host of multiplayer and training modes. Overall, the assortment of gameplay options are sure to keep any fan of the series busy, at least for a little while.

What should be the game’s showpiece single player modes, arcade and mission, only take a short period of time to blow through, leaving you wanting more. The arcade mode, in particular, will only take most players 20 – 30 minutes (if that) to work their way from start to finish with a single character, only to do that six more times as one of the other turtles, Splinter, Casey Jones or April O’Neil. After the second time, it gets really repetitive, and you have to do it to unlock some of the game’s more prominent characters.

In a fighting game of this style, the controls have to be dead on, or else it’s not even worth picking up, and, fortunately, “Smash-Up” manages to come through in that department. The controls may not be absolutely perfect (every now and then you may run into some problems pulling off a flying wall attack) but they are as good as can be. Additionally, the game offers all of the different possible controller methods (sideways Wiimote, Classic, Gamecube, and Nunchuck) which means that no matter what your preference is, the game has you covered.

Each character has their own set of moves, and, as you play through each match, you can pick up special power ups called Ninja moves. Game Arts did a great job of making each character feel unique, especially when the four main characters are essentially the same. They also incorporated characters that offer a variety of different styles for players to choose from. There is also a big emphasis on up-close combat, since most of the characters don’t come with any kind of projectile attack, but the Ninja move pick-ups make up for those.

No matter what you’re preferences are, “Smash-Up” will have an option for you. The only problem is that that’s about all they will have; one option. As fun as the game is, it doesn’t offer a ton of depth, and most players will be done with it on a rainy Saturday. The maps that are included are fun, but there’s only a handful. Everyone’s been complaining about the decision to include three Rabbids in the game, and leave out key characters from the comics and TV shows. Fortunately, it seems like Game Arts put the emphasis on quality, not quantity, so they created a good game, just not enough of it. They did however manage to squeeze in some great bonus content, like concept art from the original cartoons and movies, as well as a rather enjoyable target shooting mini-game where you unlock Turtle figures (again, fun but very short). Both are nice diversions, but it still felt like something was missing, fortunately, that thing that was missing wasn’t an online mode.

From the outset, as good as “TMNT: Smash-Up” is, it still feels a little like “Smash Bros. Lite,” since there aren’t as many characters, maps, power-ups, hidden items, collectibles, etc. But, that’s okay. “Smash-Up” makes up for it by including a playable online mode, which is one of the biggest problems that “Smash Bros.” had. Once you start a match online, the combat flows smoothly, with little to no lag, and it creates a great online experience.

“TMNT: Smash-Up” has gotten a bad rap on the internet since its release. Fans of the franchise had high hopes for this game, add to that the “Smash Bros.” fans that were looking for a better experience with different characters and you have two rabid groups of fanboys with unreasonably high standards. Could Ubisoft have included more characters from “TMNT”’s long and hallowed history? Absolutely. But, maybe, just maybe, they weren’t sure how sales of the game were going to go, and they didn’t want to use up all of their resources in the first game. Perhaps, if this game sells well enough, there will be a sequel in the works, with a huge roster of characters, including Bebop and Rocksteady, as well as more alternate costumes, skins, modes, and whatever else you want. The one catch is, this game needs to do well enough for that game to get the greenlight – so, my advice to you is to overlook the general fanboy nitpicking of this game, and go out and pick it up because it’s a fun game (a little short, but still fun), and maybe the sequel get made, and make everybody happy.

Rating:

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up” was developed by Game Arts and published by Ubisoft for the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 2 to on September 22, 2009. This review is based on the Wii version of the game.

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