Cowabunga, dudes! (TMNT: Shredder's Revenge in review!)

     Hey friends, June has been a wild month, with tons of different games coming out, and with another one coming out literally today, I'm talking about one that came out last week. I've been on a bit of a beat-em-up kick recently, with some fantastic indie titles that came out in the past few years. Dotemu, the publisher of the recent Streets of Rage 4 partnered with Tribute Games, developers of Flinthook along with many other indie titles to make a love letter to the old-school beat-em-up games of yesteryear. While this isn't a new idea, they wanted to specifically pay tribute to the old "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" games, such as Turtles in Time, and I think they really knocked it out of the park with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, which just came out on June 16th. While this isn't the longest game by any means, considering you can do a full playthrough in an hour or two, it's still a really fun time and I just wanted to talk a bit about it this week. Get your half-shells on and your weapon of choice, because it's pizza time!

The Turtles Are Back!

    It's not a secret that the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" have had many different incarnations throughout their history, spanning comics, TV shows, and movies. The surprising thing about this game is that the team at Dotemu and Tribute decided to focus on the version from the 80s, when an arcade game would have been most popular. The art style here is completely inspired by those older arcade titles, hence the fact that this game looks like it could have run on a Super Nintendo or an arcade cabinet. The characters represented in this game are really great. I have to admit that I'm not familiar with a lot of the Turtles' villains and friends other than the main crew, but the variety of enemy types, boss fights, and general hazards is great. Even just the Foot Soldiers, which are the basic enemies in the game, are constantly doing fun and silly things in the background while trying to blend in. My favorite example of this was in the Coney Island level where there were a few ninjas posing as carnival barkers, which got a good laugh out of me. It's not just the visuals that adopt this lovely 80's aesthetic, though, it also sounds like it could have been from that era. Thanks to composer Tee Lopes (also responsible for the incredible soundtrack for Sonic Mania), every level has a great theme that sounds right at home with a game that looks like this. While some of the boss fights have actual lyrical tracks (including one featuring Ghostface Killah and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan), which are also spectacular, those have much better sound quality, but still have that feeling of something you could have heard in the 80's or 90's. While we're on the topic of audio, the characters actually have a lot of voice acting. The original voice actors for the turtles from that 80's cartoon are back on the case, reprising their classic roles and adding even more authenticity than was already here. Unfortunately they didn't get all of the voice actors from that show, so April and Shredder sound different (as James Avery, the voice actor for Shredder passed away back in 2013) but the replacements we have here do a great job. They certainly give their own performances, however, not just trying to do imitations of what came before. The voice acting is a lovely touch on the top of an already delightful love letter to the original, but how does this game play?

It's time to kick some shell!

    This game is so much fun. All of the characters have similar moves, but not completely the same, and because of that, it's just as much fun to replay the game as it is to play it for the first time. This is an especially good thing when the game only takes an hour or so to beat. I started out the game with Leonardo and my brother playing Donatello, then we did another play through where I played as April and he was Raphael. Both of the play throughs were very different and just as fun. Leonardo is the most balanced of all of them, having speed, strength, and range all at two stars, and April is the weakest unit at only one star, but she's also the fastest character at three. On top of them all having different stats, the characters all have different taunts and special moves, which give them a lot of personality. My favorite ones would have to be Donatello who pulls out a gameboy and starts playing, followed by Raphael who spears a piece of pizza on his knife and eats it! I haven't played as all of the characters yet, but I am really excited to try out the rest of the crew. Even without the character specific gameplay, the normal attacks and combos are fantastic, especially when playing with other people. The team-up attacks allow you to slam enemies between the shells of the players, pick up the other player and throw them like a bowling ball, etc. These tricks are a bit harder to pull off, but the times that my brother and I have been able to do them have led to some cheers as we see enemies get bowled over by a turtle-sized bowling ball. This game actually really surprised me with how much depth of combat there was. It wasn't as simple as just pressing the same button over and over, it shares a lot in common with Streets of Rage 4 actually. While it wasn't quite as complex in terms of the different combinations of buttons and joysticks, it shares the same old school vibe of grappling when you get close enough to touch them, but keeps the turtles charm, allowing you to actually throw the enemies into the screen, just like you could in Turtles in Time. Another difference from some older games in the genre, instead of sacrificing health to do special attacks, there is a separate special meter that you can charge up by doing a taunt, or just getting a certain number of attacks without getting hurt yourself.

    This game is great by yourself, but it's especially great with another player or two, which is the same with pretty much every game like this, and I'm so happy to see this genre returning to the spotlight after so long. I loved playing Castle Crashers with my cousin back in the day, and I genuinely hope that we'll get many more great beat-em-ups in the years to come. It looks promising since River City Girls 2 is coming out later this summer after the first one came out a few years ago. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is a great game, and one that I highly suggest that you pick up if you have a system that it plays on (which is basically everything except mobile devices I think), especially since it's only $25 at full price. It pays tribute to the old show as well as classic games of the past in a great way, and it's even better with friends around!

    Thanks so much for reading, friends. I hope you're all doing well and I hope you've enjoyed this mini review for this game that isn't very long. I've been playing a lot of it since last week when it came out and I thought you should all be aware of it, since it's not the most highly publicized game by any means, being an indie game. I hope you all have a great week and I'll talk to you again soon! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, your Teenage Mutant Self-Proclaimed Dreamer, cowabunga!