Frankly, I wanted to do a “The Games That Didn’t” post with this one. But I decided to be fair with it and do a normal full review for it.

Don’t be too surprised if the review is on the negative side though. This game was advertised as a game that would be just as good as Super Smash Brothers Brawl, sporting similar gameplay and the same developers(or at least part of the team). So despite being quite skeptical about it, I still had a bit of hype. Some early impressions from people who played the game at conferences and such brought my hype down though.

So should I have left my hype up, or did it deserve any hype at all? Read on!

Developer: Game Arts
Publisher: Ubisoft
Date of Release: September 22, 2009
Platforms: Wii

Genre:Fighting
Players: 1-4

Looks and sounds
The graphics are not too bad. The character models look nice and smooth, the animation is relatively good. The characters look like their new cartoon/3D movie counterparts. I have not much to complain about character-wise. The levels look generic, and other than 2 or 3 of the levels, not very TMNT-like. Now this doesn’t really change that the levels look okay and are actually pretty fun to play in, but they might as well be in ANY game.

The sound quality is all over the placed. Some things like the double jump sound lame, other things are good enough. The voice acting, or at least the little of it there is, is not too bad. The turtles sound like they always did, the other characters have fitting voices. No big problem here. And the music, other than just a few tracks, is lame, mostly consisting of lame 4 second loops, and don’t have that TMNT feel to them.

Gameplay
I’ll not be like any of this game’s fanboys and say that it doesn’t play like the Super Smash Bros series. Because it does. The only difference here is that you have to drop your opponents’ life bars to zero instead of kicking them out of the arena. There are some stages that have ring-outs, of course, but it’s not the main focus of the game.

Fighting
You have a few moves you can do. Light attacks, strong attacks and throws, with different moves when you “smash” or hold a direction while pressing the button. And pressing the light attack and strong attack buttons in succession will make you do combo attacks. Other than that you can jump, run, and use items. You can also use the C button on the Wii Remote+nunchuk (not sure how it works with just the remote or the gamecube controller) to point at the screen and destroy certain destructible objects by pressing A. One thing I should mention is that this game is a LOT more floaty than Brawl. Characters stay in the air for a stupidly long amount of time.

The comboing works similarily to SSBB, but it’s a lot less free-form and it’s really limited. When you send someone flying with an attack, you can maybe manage to land one or 2 hits before the become invincible while falling back to the ground. When you hit the ground, you stay there unable to move for like a second, sometimes more. And your invincibility in that state will stop out of nowhere sometimes as well, making you an easy target. You can attack when you get up, though that can sometimes leave you vulnerable. Invincibility frames are also really easy to see since the character’s contrast completely changes when they’re invincible.

The other big element is items(or “ninja powers”). Similar to the Smash Bros games, items fall out at random and you can pick them up. This puts them in “storage” on your character and you can use them whenever you wants. You can only hold 1 item type at a time, so picking a new item while you have another in storage will remove the one you’re storing.. Mostly projectiles and traps, though there’s a few other things. The problem with items is that they’re crazy overpowered. Or at least some of them. Victory can pretty much get attained by getting the right items. Thankfully you can deactivate items in mutliplayer…

I could mention that the stages are actually not too bad. All but one of them have interactive elements, and sometimes even multiple areas in them. Some of them are kinda badly handled, like the Castle stage which has a really bad transition when it goes up in flames. And the train level is pretty lame…. I like the idea, but there’s an invisible wall that is constantly closing in on you and hits you, which is incredibly stupid. And 2 levels have a crocodile just coming out and eating one of the players, and that’s just stupid and annoying. But otherwise I kinda like how they’re done. Some things you can hit will affect the area, or transfer you to other areas, and some parts can be destroyed to trap your opponents or damage them and such. The levels, despite the game not having that many, are entertaining.

Modes
The arcade mode is a crappy story, where you can only choose the basic good guys and nothing else, and story-wise only the ending changes. Basically you just fight all the good guys other than yourself, then 2 foot ninjas, Karai, Utrominator+1 foot ninja and finally Shredder with 2 foot ninjas by his side. SOMETIMES Karai and Utrominator are switched. In-between some of the battles you can play a crappy mini-game(6 in total). You might have to reach a goal, just survive for a while, dodge projectiles, find pizza or hitting blocks and then wonder what you were supposed to do. Overall it’s crappy and boring.

The mission mode is pretty interesting. It’s basically the same as Event mode in Melee and Brawl. You’re given an objective and you win if you do it right, unlocking Fugitoid when you get them all. Survival mode is… just like survival mode in any other fighting game.

The final mode is where you spend shells you win from mini-games in the arcade mode. You can either buy trophy parts that you can use in mini-tournaments online or something like that. Or there’s a shooting gallery (that sucks) where you can get trophy parts, and you can look at the trophies afterwards. Lame.

Roster
The 4 turtles
Splinter
Shredder
April (new version)
Casey
Foot Ninja
Karai
Nightwatcher
Utrominator
Fugitoid
3 lame rabbids

Wow. The roster is pathetic. There’s a total of 16 characters, though only 13 of them are TMNT characters, and it features none of the classic vilains (other than Shredder, of course). The other 3…. are RABBIDS. Those retarded rabbits from the Rayman mini-game-fests? Yeah… I don’t get it. There’s TONS of TMNT characters that were omitted. There’s no Bebop, no Rocksteady, no LeatherHead, no Rat King, no Krang(Utrominator definitely doesn’t count), not one Triceraton(and those are represented in the newer series as well)… I could go on. Nothing representing the old cartoon(which most TMNT fans come from at all) is there. Instead we have 3 fucking rabbits that have nothing to do with anything.

This is an insult really, and an incredibly stupid addition required by Ubisoft for some random reason… Doesn’t TMNT as a franchise have enough characters? Ubisoft were just being arrogant assholes forcing Game Arts to add their characters in the game despite them not fitting at all.

The other big problem here is the variety. Despite having some minor differences in strength, jump height, attack range and speed, each character plays pretty much the same. Combos aren’t any different whoever you’re playing with, and most characters have really similar attacks. There’s nothing much that makes them really unique.

Overall
The fighting is a lot like Brawl, but it’s much slower paced, the comboing isn’t as fun, it’s much floatier and it overall isn’t even near as fun.

Add to that the lack of modes and the awful roster… It’s not really worth more than a rental unless you’re a big TMNT fan.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Okay presentation
- The gameplay isn’t too bad and it’s fun to play with friends
- It’s the Ninja Turtles

Cons
- Items are way overpowered
- It’s like Brawl, but much slower and much less fun to play
- Bad roster

The Save Factor
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles: Smash-Up has a starting price of $50. It’s worth a rental at most, and if you REALLY want to buy it, I’d say it’s worth no more than $15.

So that’s the Save Factor for this one: $15

jobocan Console, Games, Review, wii