Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan is available now on Xbox One and is priced at £39.99.I always put the Xbox (or PSN) store price in at the top of my reviews, as it doesn't change as often as instore or online prices do. The Xbox Store price will usually be the most expensive way to get the game and this is especially true with games like this. A quick Google search shows copies for £10 less already and this is sure to drop lower soon. With that in mind let's get to the review!
We're a household of Turtle fans here and we have been dying to play a good Turtles game. Every time one comes out we get ourselves all psyched up for it, buy it straight away and then sit back and wait for the feeling of utterly crushing disappointment to set in. Unfortunately none of them have ever managed to capture the magic and fun that a Turtles game should be. Luckily TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan changes that, well, slightly anyway.
Platinum haven't reinvented the wheel, but they have put together a really fun brawler. The cel-shaded graphics are amazing and the music in the game is perfect. The controls are responsive and the ability to switch between the turtles with the tap of a button (in single player anyway) is brilliant. It can fall into the slightly more button-masher-y category at times but for the most part I found it to be a fairly deep experience. No, I've not lost my mind, I know a brawler isn't deep, but I found myself having to think about tactics by pretty much the second boss fight when I was playing in single player.
I have to admit to being disappointed that it wasn't truly an open world setup. Instead you get a bunch of open levels that all revolve around one particular baddie from TMNT. Each of these big bads have numerous life bars you have to deplete before you can finish them off and a number of tricks up their sleeves to make sure you don't do that. I breezed through the first one (Bebop) with ease in single player and worried a little about how easy the game seemed to be but Rocksteady soon shown me the error of my ways. It looks me an hour to beat him...*hangs head in shame*
In single player mode though you do have the chance to play as each of the heroes in a half shell. I started off as Leo (duh) but as my son was watching my play I was soon switching between them faster than I'd have liked. The great thing about being able to switch between the turtles is that you are then in control of all of they special moves, and when used correctly these will literally mean the difference between winning or losing. All of the turtles have four abilities, which can be changed as you unlock more and upgraded as you level up. Getting the right combination of abilities is key to a successful boss mission. I found the Pizza Power one and the Cheerleader one to be of particular use in my many battles against Rocksteady (Pizza Power gives all of the turtles some health and Cheerleader speeds up the recharge time on all of the turtles abilities. They are a GODSEND).
The co-op mode is brilliant but unfortunately I found the lobbies to be pretty dead already. luckily I have two XB1's and a digital copy so we fired it up and played it together. Make sure you choose your favourite turtle at the beginning of the level because there is no swapping when playing multiplayer, which makes sense really as obviously they were hoping for teams of our to play. I don;t know why the lobbies were so quiet, I can only hope that once the game gets cheaper more people will jump on board.
The price is really the only crux of this game. It is a really fun game, which honestly did surprise me. But as fun as it is it, I can't imagine that it would have been anymore than £17.99 on the previous get, it'd have been one of the "premium" arcade games in my opinion. The price is what has scared people of, and who can blame them?! For £40 (and less) now you can get hundreds upon hundreds of hours with a game and this would really not keep anyone interested for that long. But honestly guys, when it drops to £20 JUMP on it, because it really is a right laugh to play.
7/10 TRY IT!
A code was provided for the purpose of this review.
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