Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up

Whew... need a breather typing that title out.... ok, yeah so I picked up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up last week at Future Shop for $9.99... only last night did I finally get a chance to play it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up is a 2-D style fighting game. At first when I started playing it, it seemed very "meh". I was using only the Wii remote turned sideways, and that was not good. Then I tried the Wii remote + nunchuk and that was better... this game needs to be played using an analogue stick. So finally I used my Wavebird GameCube controller and that seems to be the best controller setup of the 3. The game can also be played using the Wii Classic Controller.

So my initial impressions of the game were not all that good, it's basically a button-mashing-spaz-fest. Fights are fast & furious, ending in probably about a minute or 2. But after playing it some more, it has grown on me. The campaign is short; there simply aren't very many playable characters: the 4 TMNTs, Splinter, Casey & April (April can fight??) and there are a few different modes & some minigames, but not a lot of content overall.

I am a big fan of the original TMNT comics... included with this game is a mini-comic produced by the regular creative team... they also provided the cut-scene art, and while I don't mind it, I'm not sure the casual TMNT fan who only knows the cartoons would be too impressed. But they do use the voice-actors from the cartoons (as far as I can tell) and that's kind of cool.

There are basically 2 attack buttons, a grab button (do we really need a separate button for grab?) and a block button, and while the actions can be button mashed, the combos & move set are surprisingly complicated.

But playing this game gets me all wired up. Maybe it's the nature of fighting games but after all the button mashing & frantic gameplay, I'm left all jangly-feeling-- like I just drank 5 cups of coffee or something.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up is fun in short bursts, but there's not a lot to it.



later
don