Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan Reviews
Perhaps after such goodness in licensed games such as 'Arkham' and 'Mordor' I have become spoiled, but I really thought Platinum could deliver a great (or at least good) Ninja Turtles title, especially after their decent work with the Transformers. Sadly, I was mistaken. This is a very short and very weak rendition of the Turtles. With the exception of perhaps the youngest and most devoted fans of the pizza-loving reptilian brothers, it can be easily skipped.
Overall, Mutants in Manhattan just feels a little lazy, one of the very last levels recycles all the previous bosses you have fought and you have to beat each one again before moving on. They are exactly the same, but much easier now that you have upgraded. Whilst the combat is fun at first it quickly grows old, there are a lot of small missed opportunities which could have made this game really fun. Sadly what we are left with is the bare bones of a hack and slash game with the Turtles branding.
The boss battles help to alleviate the repetition and there are some secret ones that can be unlocked if you meet particular criteria that serve as the primary reason to replay levels. Admittedly, some of these were pretty cool and gave me a nice sense of satisfaction when they occurred, but at the end of the day Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan is little more than a visually stylized button masher with little of the heart that has made the Turtles so enduring over the years. I love most of the titles that PlatinumGames produces, but TMNT is a rare miss for the developer.
There is no way to justify TMNT: Mutanti a Manhattan: the combats are noisy and puzzling, it looks like the system has been made to confuse the players, and it keeps reminding how shallow the game developing has been. The few good aspects just fade away in front of its low-level production.
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this is the longest short game I've ever played
Aside from the graphics, everything here stinks, which makes sense because a lot of the game takes place in the sewers, and also because this game is crap.
The only positive point I can make is that I didn’t completely hate it.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan's greatest sin isn't that it's a bad game that feels like the result of minimum effort. It's that it takes a great concept, and makes it unrelentingly boring in every way possible.
It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that this game is utter garbage of the hottest variety.
The developers veer beyond the cartoonish nature of the TMNT television series and straight into the absurd.
There is absolutely no reason to turtle up the $50 for this game.
Platinum Games and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might be a dream pairing, but a co-op focus makes for a game that's strangely compromised.
In the end, Platinum didn't need to do much to make Mutants in Manhattan a worthwhile experience. All it had to do was respect the source material, create some satisfying combat mechanics, and honor the series' local multiplayer origins. It failed largely at all three.