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It has been a little over a year since Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem arrived in cinemas, and a lot has changed for the heroes in a half-shell. Shredder's Revenge has welcomed not one, but two DLC packs, THQ Nordic has announced a Last Ronin adaptation and, in 2024 alone, the Switch has already landed a pair of new TMNT releases. In short, when Outright Games and developer A Heartful of Games announced they were working on a tie-in to the 2023 movie, our reaction was something along the lines of, "Yeah, that sounds about right."
One year on, and we are quite frankly impressed at how ambitious that tie-in turned out to be. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed packs an entire follow-up story into its 15-hour runtime with wonderful voice acting and far more Persona (yes!) influence than we ever would have expected. It's very much not without its flaws — the combat is repetitive, the plot feels bloated, and the performance on Switch regularly moves at a snail's (or should that be turtle's?) pace — but it does aim for something slightly different, and that deserves praise.
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For those who have seen the 2023 film (and if you haven't and don't want to know what happens at the end, look away now), Mutants Unleashed takes place right where its source material wraps up. After Leo, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie save New York and defeat Super Fly, Mutants are quickly welcomed into society. But as the Fab Four start to experience the joys of high school, friends, relationships, and hobbies, a group of Mutant newbies (or "Mewbies") begin causing uncharacteristic chaos, putting the teens' new-found lifestyle and the reception of all mutants, on the line.
It's a neat enough set-up, and while things veer dangerously into the realm of massively overstuffed by the third act (there were three separate occasions in which we thought we were done, only for a new mission to emerge), we appreciated it amongst the usual plot swathes of 'the Turtles need to protect a society that hates them' or 'time-travelling aliens are causing havoc, again.'
Working through the main storyline follows a simple enough formula: the Turtles have an objective to get to and a group of Mewbies stand in their way. The combat is button-mashy enough that it can easily be played with a younger Player Two (two-player local co-op is available throughout), but there's room for some complex combos thanks to four Turtle-specific skill trees that you'll unlock along the way. The platforming side of this 'Action/Platformer' mash-up provides little challenge, but, again, it's a fine welcome to those new to the genre, and there are a couple of collectibles in each level to keep even the well-versed mildly entertained.
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The problem is that all this grows rather repetitive. There are only so many locales in which these missions take place, and after hitting them up a couple of times to free a captured mutant pal, steal a thingymajig or track down a whatchamacallit, the stream of 'Y'-mashing encounters began to feel like a chore. Combine that with camera controls that are stubborn at best, and the gameplay resembles something closer to the TMNT movie tie-in to some of the better attempts we've seen in recent years.
Fortunately, and here's where that ambition comes into play, Mutants Unleashed is more than just its main story. The plot is the central thrust, of course, but the game employs a Persona-style Day/Night cycle between the main missions with a 'Due Date' countdown before you need to dive into the next. In this downtime, each Turtle has his own side story which unlocks a new skill tree level — Leo takes leadership advice from a young entrepreneur, Mikey starts a podcast, Donnie teaches a kid how to stand up for himself, and, our favourite, Raph comes to terms with his anger while befriending a Paralympic-hopeful swimmer. Alternatively, all four set out on pizza delivery time trials or dojo combat minigames. As long as there are days left on your next mission, you're free to do as you please.
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These side missions have the material bonus of expanding the heroes' skillset, but, more importantly, they break up the cycle of button mashing and provide some much-needed character development in the process.
Each sequence is sold by its voice actors, with Mutant Mayhem's teenage main cast returning to lend each Turtle a touch of child-adjacent whimsy that made the film so joyful. Seriously, after hearing these four in their starring roles again, we're baffled at how the heroes in a half-shell have been in their dark/edgy phase for so long. There are even some nice meta-callbacks peppered throughout, with the Turtles' obsession over a beat 'em up series called Sushi Sharks being a particular highlight.
Unfortunately, and it is a rather large unfortunately, the game's performance on Switch mars these otherwise potentially touching moments. Every line of cutscene dialogue is followed by a lengthy pause which even the quippiest quip from Mikey can't overcome. The visual style, which resembled something close to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in the movie, has not translated well to the game, leaving each character with a dead look behind the eyes in most cutscenes and making them difficult to track in combat encounters, particularly with two-players on-screen at once. Large frame drops are frequent throughout, and we encountered more than a handful of hard crashes which saw the game unexpectedly close and left us to restart the level again.
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And that's not to mention the load screens. These pop up before and after each level, cutscene, and location change, and regularly run in excess of 40 seconds. A day-one patch was released to reduce these times, but we found the changes to be marginal and didn't notice more than a handful come in under 35 seconds.
Normally, this wouldn't be the end of the world, but when the game's most appealing side content (which might amount to a one-to-two-minute cutscene) is wrapped up in at least a minute of staring at a pizza box auto-save icon, it's difficult to find the enthusiasm to dive in.
Conclusion
We'd always rather see something aim high and fall short than settle for another dime-a-dozen action/platforming experience, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed certainly sits closer to the former. A Heartful of Games has made some noble swings here and some of them pay off - heck, nobody expected the Persona mission structure in this TMNT game. Unfortunately, all this ambition is overshadowed by performance issues that make even its most approachable elements feel like a chore. It's a fine welcome for younger fans keen to kick some shell after watching Mutant Mayhem, but this joint requires some serious scrubbing if it is to live up to its big-screen counterpart.
Comments 28
Ah, that's a shame. I was looking forward to this one after hearing whispers about the Persona elements.
is this a port of a ps1 game
Unfortunate but fair review, before people see a middling number and write this off I just want to say there was a lot of love put into it and I think this is a good game, for the asking price $39.99, the amount of content it contains, the general gameplay loop, it's a fun time but it could use a patch or two maybe something to bolster its difficulty level.
I have been playing this quite a bit lately on PS5 and double dipped on Steam because I was that surprised by how much I was enjoying it, Even personally here I think the visuals and presentation manages to shine, I understand what the review is saying about them but honestly if you've ever seen Persona or Yakuza cutscenes, the ones that happen in between most of the moment to moment scenes and not the more complex special event cinematics, it's about the same as those, maybe even slightly more animated tbh.
The main takeaway imo is just not to buy this for Switch, but other platforms if you like TMNT or a decent character action game and one you can play with a buddy even, you could do a lot worse than Mutants Unleashed, This is really the only good game I think Outright has ever published honestly, and I would love to see it get improved upon or followed up.
Again just play this anywhere else besides Switch if you're remotely curious.
Several years from now when this game is old news, you'll see it popping up in video game or licensed game hidden gems videos, Mark my words.
Sounds about right for an Outright Games Licensed title - the stories they make are decent to good, but the gameplay is so horribly executed you don't care. The resurgence of Turtle games makes me want Ubisoft to port Turtles in Time Re-Shelled with some fixes like they did the Scott Pilgrim game. It might seem weird now that the original is widely available, but it works as it's own thing and a neat history piece. I'm sure Ubisoft could use the easy money too.
This is only for the hardest of hardcore TMNT fans, and even then YMMV (your mileage may vary).
TMNT fans, I'd suggest waiting for a sale, i.e. $19.99-$29.99 (max) for this one.
@OorWullie this is not THQ Nordic
@Sylamp Ah right, I see that now. I just skimmed over the review and saw them mentioned. I'll delete my comment.
Removed - harassment
Jank game aside, those redesigns give Sonic Boom a run for its money.
Literally the worst thing you can do to a beloved franshise: try to improve something that was already perfect.
@AlienX In my opinion, these redesigns are quite tame compared to the Michael Bay Turtles, or Rise of the Ninja Turtles. I was never a fan of the 2012 CGI Turtles look either, and while I don't love this one, it does help convey they are awkward teenagers.
Eh, the game doesn't look that bad on PS5 version after I watched from Youtube, thanks to PS5 power to boost the performance to 60 fps and cut the loading time.
Yes the negatives far outweighed the positives for me - the load times especially are too long and too frequent on this Switch version for me to recommend this game to anyone.
After plugging in my preordered cartridge, I waited for a 7min day-one patch download, then played thru maybe 3 stages which were probably 60-70% load times and bland cutscenes, only to error-crash back to the Home Screen. Not a good first impression!
I’ll revisit it again someday to see if they patch it up, (or maybe on Switch Deux, if that’s ever an option) to see if the game marginally improves, but I won’t be rushing to do so. 🤷🏻♀️
It's definitely better played on Series X or PS5. No long loading times there and it's really sharp and looks beautiful.
@Anti-Matter cleaner visuals and faster load times yes but the gameplay is still exactly the same. It's a $20, $30 game at max.
The only thing I think this era of the Turtles has going for me is the art style (at times) can look pretty stunning, and the voice actors. Other than that I hate everything about it.
Yes I’m a grown adult.
Downtime is literally the worst thing it could've taken from Persona... I like the more adult theme, dark story telling Persona does, but the downtime stuff is such a drag. You can make a strong narrative without a calendar system and social sim. Hate so many games are being influenced by that aspect now.
TMNT broke out big again with Shredder's Revenge. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
@Bizzyb
I'm already get to used with $40 for mediocre games but still playable.
Removed - unconstructive
Had a feeling this wasn't going to be that good. Oh well there's always Splintered Fate or Shredder's Revenge as well as the Cowbunga Collection to fall back on.
@Anti-Matter yeah it's definitely better elsewhere. The current gen systems deliver a way cleaner picture and besides some stutters in combat, it runs fluid. The game isn't too bad.
@Anguspuss Yes. It's a port of a PS1 game.
@AlienX My turtles are the 80s turtles and the first movie. Some of the early comics. They've been redesigned so many times by now I can't really keep up. Also, yeah I know the 80s cartoon was basically trash to sell me toys, but I was hella in the market for toys at the time, lol. Some of the more serious takes make me roll my eyes. They seem to miss the joke...
@Anti-Matter If that's your personal preference, that's fine 👍
@AlienX maybe it's just me, but every new TMNT show has a look more childish than the one before.
Thanks for the review, I'll wait to see if patches and/or Switch's successor can improve the technical issues as there are some interesting aspects about this game beneath those (and also the repetitiveness of the main missions, but I think I could deal with that thanks to the rest)!
I guess this wouldn't be brilliant from trailer their legs look like chicken legs. Issue with this, at a guess. working on a game for a more powerful console then trying bro get it to run on one that isn't
It looks like you can buy skins to make the turtles look like the 80s cartoon, with maybe more skins to come in the future. I wonder if that makes the game better if you don't like the way the turtles look.
@GoldenSunRM In all fairness, that's more of something to hold against the overall quality of modern Western animation than the Turtles specifically.
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