TMNT: Mutants In Manhattan Review - The Turtles Are Back To Save The Day But Not This Game Unfortunately

Written by Brandon Hofer  on June 03, 2016

Reviews: TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan is your typical licensed game which is more than just a little disappointing.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan is your typical licensed game. There isn’t anything really wrong with it per se but it is very average. Unless you are a huge fan of the franchise you probably shouldn’t pick this up, at least at full price. It is a fairly short adventure where they recycle assets for some of the levels and clearing out groups of enemies has the “rinse, repeat” feeling to it. There is online co-op available here so you can play with friends which would take away some of the repetitiveness and boredom that will set in while going through the story but that can only do so much. There is no couch co-op though which is a disappointment. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are turtles in a half shell and, unfortunately, this game kind of feels half baked as well.

The campaign for TMNT: Mutants in Manhattans spans across nine levels which each level ending in a boss fight with one of villains from the universe. Bebop is in the first level, for example, and then other levels feature Slash, Armaggon, Wingnut and more. The levels themselves are fairly short. I was able to go through some of them in under 20 minutes while some others barely took me 30 minutes to go through. The thing is, as I mentioned above, a lot of it is recycled and it can start to get a bit boring after the first 30-60 minutes of playing the game. There are two levels, for example, that are in the sewers and they are back to back. So I traverse the sewers and do what needs to be done and then the next level I am pretty much back at the same place. The only real difference was that the enemies were a tad tougher and the current was stronger so I had to be a bit more careful about falling in the water but even then I could jump quick enough whereas the current was basically a non-factor.



One of the big things April would tell you repeatedly is to find enemies. This should obviously be self explanatory but I guess the development team felt the need to tell you every so often. You to have something you can use that will let you see through walls somewhat and determine where the enemies are or the general direction you needed to be headed in which was definitely appreciated. A few of the levels are open world-esque and I didn’t really want to run around that world for a long time looking for enemies to wipe out, especially given the fact that a lot of that times you had a time limit.

Going through the game you can play as whatever turtle you want. You can start out with Leonardo but then quickly change to Michelangelo by just pushing a couple of buttons. Each one obviously uses a different weapon but they have different special attacks as well called “ninjutsu”. My favorite “ninjutsu” powers to use belonged to Leonardo where you could use a combo attack as well as “Turtle Time” where time seemed to slow down for everyone except you which means you could inflict significant and serious damage to your enemies in that time. As you progress through the game you will see green orbs all over the place that you can collect which will give you items along with accruing battle points as you vanquish your enemies. You can use battle points to buy items to help you in battle and then once you beat a level you will also receive training points which allows you to upgrade your “ninjutsu” powers among other things. Upgrades include less cooldown time for your powers, unlocking new moves altogether, being able to use a decoy in fights and more. You also have charms that you can use and equip that will give you different effects such as giving you a 10% boost in the item drop rate for enemies and using will power which will prevent you from getting knocked out as long as you have a pizza slice left (your health in the game).



There really isn’t a whole lot else to say. There is a tutorial you should probably play before jumping in just so you have all of the mechanics down, plus you will get an achievement for completing the tutorial. There are collectibles throughout the game that you can find which are TMNT comics. You can look at them in the collectibles menu but only the covers. I couldn’t find a way to actually read those comics which seems like a missed opportunity here. There is also a movie gallery that you can visit where you can rewatch cutscenes after you have experienced them in the game.

TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan is your average licensed game. There is nothing spectacular here and some of it feels half baked, such as how they recycled the assets for the stages and even the fights. If you are a huge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan then you might get a kick out of this game but I recommend you rent this game first to see whether you like it. That way if you like it then you can buy the game and enjoy but if you find out you don’t like it you only wasted a couple of dollars instead of paying full price. This could have been a great game to sit down and play with younger members of your family as well but unfortunately couch co-op is not available. Overall there are much better ways to spend your time but if you want to experience this latest TMNT adventure then you can do so over the course of an evening. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat some pizza that isn’t half baked.