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What differentiates this
game further from its roots is that it is most explicitly a puzzle game rather
than a full-fledged adventure. There is practically no plot development in game;
the premise (something about dimensional teleports, saving a talking robot from
thugs, and, of course, collecting crystals) is established in a lengthy cut scene
at the beginning, and then mostly forgotten, so much so that I hadn't realized
that the actual objective was to collect a certain amount of crystals to proceed
to the next area. Instead of featuring a cohesive dungeon, the game is broken
up into areas, which are then broken up into stages. Aside from cosmetic similarities,
there is no continuity between them: at the beginning of each level, your turtle
finds himself yet again without a weapon. In a charming touch of old school videogame
logic, some of the stages inexplicably wrap horizontally. If you were to remove
the turtles and the combat, you would be more or less left with a puzzle game.
The weapon-hiding mechanic, for instance, is really just a puzzle piece
in itself: once you find your weapon, taking out the guards is no problem, allowing
you to access previously unavailable areas. Towards the later stages, fighting
them becomes a bit more difficult, but never requires more than a hit/dodge/hit
strategy (which is a shame, because some of the combat abilities of the Turtles
would allow for some exciting combat possibilities). As such, it's hard to say
that the game is about fighting at all, thus my shunning of the beat-em-up label.
The levels themselves tend to consist of a series of stealth and acrobatic challenges;
you spend most of your time hiding from guards, avoiding traps, and finding crystals.
Obstacles come in the form of guards and blocks (which can only be broken with
your weapon) and locked doors (which can only be opened with keys). The challenge
lies then in finding your weapon, finding the necessary keys, collecting enough
crystals on the way, and getting to the exit. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The
problem with this game ultimately lies with its identity: it is structured like
a puzzle game, yet it plays like an action-adventure. So we must do all the things
we do in an action-adventure game: running about, pressing various button combinations
to navigate through narrow passageways and mazes, hacking through enemies. We
must do all those things for the sake of unraveling the puzzle mechanics of each
level, which, again, involve finding the right weapon/key to make it to the exit.
Trouble is, without an overarching plot or continuous world to progress through,
these individual actions quickly become tedious. They feel as though they serve
no purpose but to pad the amount of time between accessing keys and going through
obstacles, and as the game's difficulty ramps up towards the end, you'll find
yourself dying a lot more frequently, and having to repeat them even more. All
this, and you still have a quota of crystals to find. It gets asinine pretty quickly.
Part of this problem is the level design. Pretty early in the game, all
the stock elements of the gameplay are introduced. We encounter about 2 or 3 different
kinds of traps, obstacles, and guard creatures, and that's it. Every subsequent
level consists of rearrangement of the same stock elements, only more of them,
and creatures feature longer life bars and more powerful attacks. There is no
attempt to make these elements specific to their area's theme aside from giving
them slightly different sprites. Of course, this wouldn't necessarily be a problem
if the game was structured like a real action adventure game, such as Prince
of Persia. If our heroes were progressing through an organically designed
dungeon, castle, computer simulated Japanese dojo, or whatever setting you like,
with the puzzles growing more complex and difficult as you progress deeper into
the gameworld, it might have made for a more compelling game. As such, it is more
comparable to the Metal Gear Solid VR Missions, a series of well-designed
but meaningless gameplay vignettes, which were released as a standalone title
for the PSX. It's worth noting that in the end, the mini-games are more enjoyable
and memorable of an experience than the actual levels, which could easily be replaced
with the black and grey cubes of the VR Missions without significantly altering
the experience.
Overall: 4/10
What this all adds up to is a well-designed puzzle engine draped over an
empty, joyless action game, with the confounding crystal-collecting mechanic thrown
in to make the game feel longer. The basic elements of design are solid enough,
but this game barely satisfies as a distraction because of its inappropriate structure
and pacing. The mini-games are notably more entertaining than the game proper,
and some of them have relatively satisfying competitive multiplayer modes, which
helps if you have a few friends who also picked up the title. If you are a die-hard
Turtles fan, add a point or two to the score, and see if you can't find
a used copy. Do yourself a favor and find the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
2 (subtitled: The Arcade Game) for the NES, a superb beat-em-up and
still one of the best Turtles games ever made.
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