Forgetting about the long-winded title, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled for XBLA, is a re-make of Konami’s classic 1991 arcade game. This side-scrolling brawler has been ‘Re-Shelled’ so to speak in 3D HD glory and all the other D’s too. Don’t forget that it will also make its way towards PSN later this year. If you can stand the difficulty, TMNT:TIT:RS goes by as fast as you can say Cowabunga!
The entire story is pretty much shown in the first 30 seconds of the game. The intro has one of Shredder’s allies, Krang, fly off with the Statue of Liberty. Enter Leonardo, Michelangelo (my favourite), Raphael and Donatello to restore the Big Apple’s most important icon. For a couple seconds you can even spot April and Master Splinter! Showing that the story was built around the game and not the other way around. Don’t forget that’s how most games were back then! After a few levels hologram Shredder will appear, creating a vortex that sucks the turtles back in time. As well as a gazillion foot soldiers and pizzas so it seems. Foot soldiers riding fire breathing dino’s is not an uncommon occurrence in prehistoric times. Who cares if it’s not grounded in reality? Besides, they’re giant, talking, ninja turtles for crying out loud! The turtles will travel to other destinations forward in time and eventually reach the year 2020 where everyone will ride a hover-board on a big super highway in the sky. If I haven’t stated it already, this game is short. Really short. It will probably take you under an hour to finish it. It was made for the arcades, where games were fast paced and people focused more on scores than deep butt-moulding-into-a-couch experiences.
First off it’s the graphics that make this a re-make worth making. Re-done in oozingly pretty 3D, it looks like you could reach into the screen and grab one of the delicious looking, gummy-like turtles. Every stage is bright and colourful along with new music and the voicecast from the cartoon. It certainly doesn’t forget it’s comic book roots, with onomatopoeic sayings such as FTOOM! KABOOM! and SLASH! The Achievements are pretty varied, two of which you can get on the first level alone just by getting injured. Although you are beating the snot out of your foes, there’s no blood, it’s all done in a cartoony style and most enemies simply implode when you kill them. So it’s not too bad for the little ones to play as their favourite turtle.
The main game modes are Story, Survival and Quickplay. Story is obviously the main focus, you have a limited set of lives depending on your difficulty (and you can’t get any more). You can continue from the furthest level you reached. Survival gives you just one life to complete the entire game! You’d have to be pretty skilled even to get through on Normal. Before you can play a level in Quickplay you need to unlock it first by reaching that level in Story mode. Quickplay gives you a whopping 99 lives, so you can have a go at Hardcore without a care in the world. The multiplayer has the same game modes but is for up to four players, also including online. Single player Story mode has a continue option but co-op for some bizarre reason does not. I know games were supposed to be brutal punishment in the arcades, but it’s 2009 c’mon! At least give me the option of continuing from the start of the level, otherwise it’s just a party downer. This makes single player fairly easy and co-op a hell of a lot harder. Not to mention the fact that there is usually only one pizza box (health) at a time that you’ll have to fight or come to some democratic decision over. There is a running score throughout, and you can keep a tabs on each other with the scoreboard a the end of each level. Sadly for a game like this there is no drop-in or drop-out support. You can’t have someone new join in the middle of a session. Ubisoft might not have included it for fear off offsetting the lives balance. But perhaps giving the new player the same number of lives as the lowest person could have worked?
Even though it’s a re-make, it’s only fair to talk about the gameplay. You only have three main buttons to push. Jump, attack and special attack. There’s no defend button and that’s about it for your moves apart from the jump and slash, and pretty satisfying rush attack. There’s just not enough variation in the attacks, not even some long range shurikens. But you can slam kart-wheeling foot soldiers into the ground and even throw them towards the screen. All the turtles are selectable at the start and each have a different array of stats including speed, range, defence, rush attack and special attack. The turtle’s signature weapons are present including Leonardo’s swords, Michelangelo’s nunchucks, Raphael’s daggers and Donatello’s staff. As well as the typical foot soldier, the end-of-level bosses that you’ve come to love over the years have not disappeared. The final boss, Shredder – no surprises there, takes an incredible amount of damage before finally hitting the dust. Now the traps. Oh the traps. They start off okay in the earlier levels with a few hidden pits here and a few giant demolition balls there. Then they start to get ridiculous, having poor old Michelangelo shouting out for mercy, his defenceless nose or toes getting injured about every two seconds.
Closing Comments
Overall Turtles in Time is graphically polished and challenging, although terribly short. For 800 Microsoft points I would’ve expected a bit more out of it including the fact that they completely left out the original game! A pretty poor move on Ubisoft Singapore’s part. As it stands, Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled is a mildly fun Sunday afternoon brawler.
Note: The press screenshots were taken early on in development and really don’t do the game justice!
Released 5/9/09 for 800 MS Points. Download from Xbox Marketplace.
