TMNT lovers reunite! It’s hard to believe that it’s been 14 years since the last TMNT movie. But I’m not going to lie, I own all of the TMNT films. Nevertheless, with the popular trend of rebooting older franchises lately TMNT will be getting its star treatment with an upcoming new theater-released CGI movie and a video game tie-in. Set for release a week before its counterpart film, the TMNT video game will be settling the hearts of TMNT fanatics, and many gamers in general. Unlike the previous titles, Ubisoft will be handling the development and publishing instead of Konami. TMNT will be hitting the PS2, PSP, PC, GBA, DS, Wii and 360 on March 13th.
The game follows the movie’s storyline. After beating Shredder, the turtles have grown apart as a family. Leonardo has been traveling the world, Raphael has been prowling the streets at night as a loner and Donatello and Michelangelo have been entertaining kids’ parties. With a new evil rising up, Splinter has the turtles reunite. A demo was released recently, which samples only 8 minutes of gameplay. The 294 MB download acts as a tutorial, with the turtles playing a simple game of ninja-tag. In other words, you’ll just be trotting around various rooftops to try out the controls. From these few moments, the gameplay is fairly strong and the humor seems intact.
The TMNT video game plays largely like your standard adventure-platformer these days. Each turtle can run up walls, run alongside walls, wall jump, make impossible leaps and have large and exquisite battle sequences. Since the game is being developed and published by Ubisoft, fans can guess that the gameplay is largely similar to Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and its sequels. It is fairly similar, but instead of fancy deserts, you got the gritty streets of New York. The camera and item placements (coins) act as your tour guide and for the most part, you’ll need to take the whole environment as your playground. You’ll be running up building walls and leaping across gaps to access new areas.
Controlling all four turtles is relatively painless. From how the demo was portrayed, you’ll start out with only one turtle — Leonardo in the tutorial, for instance. As you progress through the level, the other turtles will have a progressing corresponding bar that’ll fill up till you can control them. You can switch in-between the four, and each has their relatively distinct fighting style. Donatello, for example, has his bo staff, which is slower but has a larger area of attack. While you can fight baddies with just one turtle, you can use your brothers for team attacks. Note that once you use a team attack, it gives up one of your turtles temporally. Combat is straightforward: block attacks and strike when opponents are left open.
The mainstream TMNT franchises have been known for their humor, and the game appears to retain some of it. While the film seems to be progressing towards a slightly darker phase (a la the source material), the turtles still have some of their flair left. Through various in-game sequences, you can hear the turtles exchange banter. Tough guy Raphael will talk back, while Michelangelo will be the laid-back and more humorous one.
While the demo was incredibly short, it does give a good sign of not only what the new TMNT movie will be like, but also how Ubisoft will handle the game. The similarities to Sands of Time are pretty glaring, but combine that stylized gameplay with the turtles and it’s pretty fun.
