Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows Review (PC) A Casual Review

I’ve grown up with The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Right from the eighties cartoon show, to that horrible Saban produced series, to the rebooted version that is currently on Nickelodeon.  They haven’t made a decent turtles game in a long time, and i mean a really long time.  Still no matter how horrible each iteration can be I am always willing to give the turtles a chance.

Let’s just jump straight into it.  The level’s seem poorly designed with no clear indication of which way you’re supposed to be heading and interactive objects aren’t clearly marked, making levels that are actually easy into one annoying chore.  While running between checkpoints on the levels, everything feels rather stiff.  Ninja turtles are supposed to be fast and swift  but these guys are just clunky occasionally  getting stuck next to each other, or getting caught between a rock and a hard place.  then they’ll just stand there looking like four green idiots.  Space bar, left click and right click are going to be the most common of combinations.  Space bar to do everything, slide, roll, jump, wall run, evade.  Left click for primary attack and right click for kicks, no seriously for kicking.  While that is pretty much the way to do it, It just doesn’t feel right, almost like Rocksteady had a baby that was actually engineered in a test tube, it broke out, fell on it’s head ,it’s brain splattered on the floor and then it tried to make a game… 

The combat has some great potential, mimicking that of Batman:  Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, except without the fine tuning and polish.  You’re attacks feel very sluggish and delayed and counters have to be precise in order to keep your combo up.  Speaking of keeping your combos up, IT IS SERIOUSLY HARD TO KEEP YOUR COMBOS UP!  You’re timing has to be perfect.   They should maybe have implemented a lock on camera of sorts, or tried zooming the camera out slightly so you can see all your targets. When you are surrounded by a group of enemies, it is difficult to see at what point you have to counter because all bad guys are standing on top of you.  When an enemy is about to attack they either flash white which means you can counter or orange to counter multiple attacks from the same enemy to red which means you need to jump out the way.   You can also pull off team take downs and things but they are so difficult to setup, one with getting the combo’s high and the other is that your turtle brothers end up doing their own thing which also adds to the frustration.

Further more the boss battles are highly annoying and it’s a button mashing extravaganza.  One big boss, and all the minions to attack you at the same time.  Frustrations through the roof and I’ve played Ninja Gaiden.  

Visually the game looks good, not great but perfect for what the developers were going for.  New York feels dark, dank and dirty.  Just the sort of place you would expect four giant mutant sized turtles who happen to be trained in martial arts to roam.  The graphics are nothing really impressive.  Combining slight cell shading with traditional 3d makes it look interesting but nothing special.  They could have gone in one direction and the outcome would have been the same.  I heard there were a few frame rate issues on the console counterpart and there are definitely frame rate problems on the PC as well.  Nothing game breaking mind you but they are there.

The story is as generic as it could get.  April gets kidnapped, turtles have to save her, fighting a whole bunch of new enemies and old enemies.  Trust me, you’ve been through this before.

It is with a heavy heart that this game gets a low score because i really wanted to enjoy it.  I honestly could not, due to the shitty controls, bad level designs, stiff combat and in general just bad energy from this game.   Read how this rating is given after the score.

Gameplay  :  1

Story           :  1

Graphics     :  2

Bullshit       :  0

4/10

My rating as a test is based on one of United We Game’s bloggers, Dean Mozian who presented this idea of how to review games.  Without further adieu, i present to you The Bullshit Review Scale. Explained in his own words:

“Scores are based on three categories:

Gameplay
Story
Graphics

Each of these categories gives a max of 3 points which can total as much as 9. The 10th point comes from what I like to call a “bullshit” point…

Bullshit:

This idea of this point is to award the games you especially liked. It can be because all of the pieces came together really well or maybe the game has a special lasting appeal that keeps you coming back.  It could even be just because you’re a fan of the developer.  Really, any reason whatsoever.”

Leave a comment if you think the scoring is wrong, if the method works up to a point, or if you enjoyed the game.  ‘Till next time.

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