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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™: Mutants in Manhattan – PC Review – Let Down, After Let Down , by Draul
Genre: Action, Adventure
Developer: PlatinumGames Publisher: Activision
Release Date: May 24, 2016
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutants in Manhattan is the newest action game by PlatinumGames. Through the years PlatinumGames has made a lot of these 3D beat-em ups. Most of their games are very similar to one another and Mutants In Manhattan is really no different… Sort of. The one thing I can never figure out is how they go from making Bayonetta to making something like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutants in Manhattan. It isn’t just the style or IP in question it is the quality. Last year we had Transformers Devastation and it was a pretty decent game. The action was fun and kind of flowed together. This year however we have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutants in Manhattan and things are so much the same… that they aren’t… Let me explain.
With every Platinum Games, game you have the heavy action game with combos, dodging, jumping, parrying, blocking, and consumables. EVERY SINGLE game by Platinum is like that. They all also have some sort of character progression be it skills, new abilities, or items. None of that changes in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutants in Manhattan. However the problem is the combat doesn’t really flow all that well together, and it isn’t nearly as fun to watch. In Transformers Devastation you have giant robots using big weapons and yet somehow they manage to feel faster, and move better than the NINJA Turtles do. Yes, Turtles, but… Ninjas ? Eh, maybe I should focus on the turtle part, but anyone who has ever watched TMNT knows that they are more Ninja than turtle… Well that and pizza loving maniacs.
On the very first mission it is a semi open world level where you can move around the map, fight foot ninja’s and explore. There are a few collectibles to grab but ultimately your using your T’Glass to find the mission targets and defeat them to trigger the Boss Encounter. The first boss being Bebop. Now I was playing on Normal and I am pretty use to Platinum Games so I am no slouch when it comes to combat. Yet Bebop has 7 bars of health! SEVEN! It takes freaking forever to beat him. I’m not really dying. It isn’t difficult. It is just bland. After about three health bars it just gets old.
Then you realize right from the start you can skip around missions in any order. Right from the very beginning. So when I was playing with twitch partner ReclaimJoey we went from Bebop to Shredder. From the first boss to the last one. To get to shredder we did this 15 minute elevator ride where we fought the same 3 or 4 mobs then finally got to the tower to fight Shredder himself. He was easier than Bebop was. Seemingly that you don’t need any real progression to fight any boss. Ultimately making the entire progression system rather pointless. We would have beaten Shredder to if not for having lost connection while playing. Then the kicker there is when I got disconnected it sent him to a continue screen without warning and it happened so fast he ended up pushing do not continue or cancel. Thus if we wanted to fight Shredder again we would have to do that very boring 15 minute elevator ride all over again.
The music for the game got so extremely repetitive I would rather have jabbed screwdrivers into my ear lobes than having to listen to the music again. Now the dialogue isn’t to bad, and honestly might be the best part of the game. They managed to capture the essence of every Turtle and villain very well in the game. It very much reminded me of the ORIGINAL TMNT cartoon back when i was a kid.
The game as I mentioned does have online co-op. I did the first mission with Bebop two or three times and never really had any issue. However once I tried playing with friends then the connection issues began. Which I mean it worked about 70% of the time which is more than I can say for the last TMNT game that came to steam. Then finally we have something a lot of gamers hate. They decided lets lock the games frame rate to 30 fps. WHY?! I mean sure It doesn’t bother me all that much because for several years my hardware didn’t let me play games for more than 30 fps anyway. However with the new technology there is no reason to do that so I would love to hear some sort of explanation on why devs still do this.
I was very excited for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutants in Manhattan because it brought me some nostalgia from when I was a child. I was a huge TMNT fan. I had the van they drove, all the action figures and play sets. My friends and I would set up this elaborate play sessions. It was amazing. The cartoon was amazing, however the game… just let down after let down. I have never really felt so disappointed with a video game until I played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutants in Manhattan. I think, no I KNOW Platinum could have done better. Just look at Bayonetta 2. Hell even The Legend of Korra was a good game. Heads and tails better than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutants in Manhattan, and Korra was like 15$ at launch. So there is no way in hell that I can recommend Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutants in Manhattan to anyone at the price of 39.99. This is a 15$ game at best and even then I am not to sure.
Pros:
Captures the Essence of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Franchise
Co-op
Double Team Combos
Cons:
Music is annoying
Combat is repetitive
Bosses are way to long
Graphics are not all that great
Locked 30FPS
OVERPRICED
Draul gives Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutants in Manhattan a Drastik Measure 4 out of 10 (40)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/338400/
