Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredders Revenge: Summer of Beat-Em-Ups, Part 3

 

Forward

Yo, dudes and dudettes!  Let me tell you about a totally radical franchise that touched just about every form of media and product in my childhood!

Okay, real talk; you probably have already heard of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  I'd be surprised if anyone ever to have been a child since their debut has not heard of them, and adults who are parents of such children are also likely to have heard of them.  However, there is probably no time before or since the height of their first animated series that these turtles were so popular and so ubiquitous, and it's kind of ironic in retrospect, because that show...had issues.  

Make no mistake; it was very creative, the sitcom-like dynamic between not only its heroes but (especially) its villains was both funny and very unique among cartoons, and its seemingly endless well of absurd story premises worked well to deliver on the random madness the title "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" seemed to tease, but the show usually couldn't deliver well on the "ninja" part of its premise.  TMNT actually began life as an indie graphic novel, aiming older and thus unafraid to get violent and bloody, and the Murakami Wolf Swenson company couldn't exactly translate that into an acceptable children's show in the conservative 1980s and achieve anything beyond surface-level accuracy to the source material.  Naturally, many children then were totally unaware of that source material, so accuracy was a non-issue for them, but even children inevitably noticed that these ostensible ninjas who carried around melee weapons very rarely used them in that first cartoon; instead usually "fighting" their enemies with a bunch of slapstick and prop comedy.

So why did we forgive it so much?  Why did we still love these turtles?  I think it's because, while the 1987 show had become central to the brand's image, it wasn't alone.  Early on, we got action figures, tie-in books, and tie-in graphic novels (known as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures and published by Archie) to help satiate our desire for a tougher and more adventure-oriented take on the turtles, but even beyond all of that, we could experience the martial arts skills of these turtles on full display in the realm of video games.  Konami would create and continually refine an iconic style of beat-em-up gameplay for the brand, and its games from that era are still remembered fondly.  

However, TMNT's popularity waned in the second half of the 1990s, and though it would see several rebirths on TV, at least some of them good, the games made based on those newer incarnations never fully translated the feeling of the older games to 3D. (There is a lot to analyze about why, and I might do it in a future blog entry.)  But with the recent resurgence in popularity that side-scrolling, semi-3D beat-em-ups have experienced, Dotemu and Tribute Games have returned both to the world of the 1987 TMNT cartoon and the style of video games made based on it, and the result is simultaneously an accurate throwback in all of the ways that count, and a commendable upgrade in the ways more modern gamers would like.  It's scenario, meanwhile, is a pretty underwhelming one, but I'm definitely left wanting more rather than less.

At a Glance

 

Similar to many other retro-styled games released recently, TMNTSR goes for 2D(ish) gameplay and surreal, pixel-based graphics, while also taking good advantage of modern technology to do what the games that inspired it never could have.  In this game's case, that tends to mean bridging the (sometimes wide) gap between the classic Konami games and the cartoon they were based on.

 

Two of the first things you'll notice carrying over from the show are the Turtles' friends, Splinter and April.  While they have been playable in TMNT games before, this is the first time they're playable in this sort of TMNT game, and their addition is welcome.  It adds variety to the gameplay, but not so much you'll have to fight your own muscle memory when switching characters, and the increased attention to superb sprite work really helps bring all of the characters to life.

 

The relatively limitless color pallet has let its sprite graphics resemble the cartoon's art-style much more, with some famous clips of animation directly recreated in pixel form.  Facial expressions are also a lot of fun to see here, although some people won't like how more contemporary "bean smile" expressions have gotten into the mix for some frames.  Most amusingly, many of your enemies will pass the time in a variety of surprisingly unmenacing ways before engaging you in combat, a true flex of the modern ability to include all of the animations a character would normally need and then some.

 

I mentioned that one of cool things about the old video games is that compared to the cartoon, they let the turtles fight like the super ninja warriors they were.  That is still true here, but just for a laugh, this game also includes moments where you can use items in your environment to conk some enemies out, akin to the slapstick you knew and probably didn't love from the cartoon.  Don't worry; these aren't anywhere near common enough to undermine this as a fighting game, and except for completing some bonus mission objectives, you never have to use them.  

 

The Konami TMNT games already had an impressive amount of voice acting for the time, and there is more of that here, though not much by modern standards.  The original actors for the turtles are all back, also voicing those villains they doubled as in the show, and while none of the other actors returned, they don't have enough voice lines to make that a big deal.  Besides, voice work in this game will inevitably be upstaged by its fantastic soundtrack.

Rock, dude!

 

Tee Lopes, his talent already well-established by Sonic Mania, Streets of Rage 4, and a very underrated remix of the River City Ransom theme, has returned to helm (most of) this game's soundtrack, and it's probably his greatest work yet.  While you will likely notice a few of his signature tropes in places, most notably during a mall stage whose music sounds fairly reminiscent of Studiopolis from Sonic Mania (but that still makes it a great song), it doesn't stop him from incorporating loads of delightful influence from both the first Ninja Turtles cartoon and the Konami video games; mostly Turtles in Time.  Early on you'll notice the Channel 6 News theme spin off into a fantastic horn-driven tune, a new song with the same swing beat as "Alleycat Blues", and a solo that almost certainly is intended to reference "Sewer Surfing".  Oh yeah; there are solos in many of these songs, and the songs have a sufficient length that you won't tire of them.  Despite how formidable Tee Lopes is on his own, he's also joined by a number of talented musicians, singers and rappers to take the soundtrack even further, incorporating the sort of cheesy but unforgettable early-90s hiphop that drove the first two live-action Ninja Turtles movies, and a rock song that could have come straight from the infamous Coming Out of Their Shells Tour.  Unfortunately, for whatever reason the fun wanes a bit towards the end of the game, as when you leave New York to go to the villains' home turf, the music becomes more ambient and menacing, but it's worth soldiering through because after you beat the game, probably the most glorious TMNT rap song ever is waiting for you in the credits.

 

Back to the Grind

 

As much fun as this game is to see and hear, the story feels disappointingly thin. 
 

Now, as stated in the first part of this review series, I understand that beat-em-ups don't tend to have very complex plots.  However, Ninja Turtles as a brand is treasured for how its scenarios get outlandish, and the previous beat-em-ups followed suit.  The first beat-em-up indeed had a fairly straightforward scenario, but the second involved Manhattan being cut out of the ground and levitated into the air, while the third involved Krang stealing the Statue of Liberty (presumably it's easy to do when you already have the technology to steal the whole city) and also the turtles time-traveling.  

 

In this game, the Statue is once again stolen, but this time there is no time travel, and in fact, nothing much beyond a standard beat-em-up in a messy city.  Most level tropes are ones you've already seen from the series.  Despite the name, there isn't all that much Shredder in this game, and he doesn't seem to be getting much revenge.  I figured a revenge would entail a scheme targeting the turtles directly, but instead, it's standard villain antics that heroes react to.  Most of the game, your heroes are chasing Krang's goons as they bring him back his android body. (If that sentence didn't make sense to you, you haven't seen this show.)  The cutscenes about this can be fun, but they're short, and it never feels like very much is ever at stake.  There is a nice twist at the very end, but it still leaves this game feeling hollow compared to the past two. You also get unique ending screens for each character you beat the game with (that is, if it's Player One), but they, too, are underwhelming.

But again, this genre isn't really about deep plots; it's about fighting, and fortunately in that realm, this game easily outdoes any of its predecessors.

Let's Kick Shell!

 

People who have fond memories of the first arcade TMNT game are apt to say things like "Man; I had so much fun sinking quarters into that machine."  To these people, let me be frank: If you enjoy the act of losing money, you might be masochists, and arcade games made purposefully shallow and unfair for the purpose of maximizing profits are not objectively commendable.  Fortunately, Konami's TMNT games did not stay in that undesirable spot; they gradually gained depth, and Shredder's Revenge follows suit with more depth still.  

 

At its base, though, this game maintains the gameplay recognizable from that overrated arcade game and its better sequels, meaning there is only one basic attack button.  This, however, has a great deal of flexibility, as when you press the button, where you press the button, what else you're pressing when you press the button and how long you press the button all affect what attacks your character does.  So while you can just mash the attack button and be sure that something will happen, there's a great deal more depth to doing this optimally.  The above also applied to past TMNT games, but it's in the move options beyond that base that TMNTSR comes into its own.  

 

Past games like this handled special attacks by pressing the attack and jump button at the same time, draining HP while doing them, and this game is quite different in that regard.  You now have a dedicated special attack button, but instead of taxing your HP, it's limited to a small number of uses.  Small, yes, but you can earn more uses by hitting enemies enough times without them (or anything else dangerous) hitting you in the process.  Or if that's too hard, you can also taunt to earn one special attack use, provided you don't get hit during that taunt motion.  Most of this special attack system is well-balanced but that last part does feel overpowered once you learn that you can also taunt in those periods when there are no enemies onscreen and the game is prompting you to go forward to where there are more.  It breaks the pace, though not much, and it can get annoying to hear April asking "Any comments?" to the air multiple times in succession.

Still, the special attacks themselves are great to have.  Most are some form of "area of effect" blast, but there's still enough variety between them--with your current character adding more variety still--that their presence adds depth.  The best way to sum them up is that their mere presence makes things easier, but it'll take skill with them to make things much easier.  They also add personality to the fight, as every character has several of their own, complete with unique animations and voice clips.

Easily the most important addition to this game is the dodge button.  This allows characters to flip backwards quickly, or forwards quickly if you press in that direction, and characters are also momentarily invincible while doing it.  It's likely that most of the "skill ceiling" of this game entails mastering that dodge mechanic, as ultimately this sort of game is about draining your opponents' HP before they can do the same to you, and to test just how good you've gotten at that mechanic, there's an Arcade mode that challenges you to through the whole game without losing all of your lives.  With as simple as the move itself is to do, it does sometimes seem like most of the depth to using it correctly is in memorizing when to press the button for every moment of the game, and so I can see many people finding that annoying.  But the dodge in itself is still a lot of fun, so I'm glad it's there.  It seems to fit ninjas a lot better than a simple block would, and keeps fights from degenerating too much into crass button-mashing to brute-force through.

 

You Were Expecting, Maybe, The Adams Family?

 

All of the above innovations to the gameplay definitely help breathe new life into a beloved old experience, but boss battles feel like kind of an afterthought.  The handful of TMNT beat-em-ups that inspired this one were in themselves known for repeating bosses from game-to-game, although their patterns did vary somewhat between them.  This game, rather than taking advantage of our heightened technology to surprise players with interesting new twists on the concept of a TMNT boss, instead seems intent on upholding that tradition, as if going down a checklist of the rogues gallery we've (mostly) seen before, complete with very similar moves and tactics on some of them.  

 

To be fair, there does exist some reason to do this in the current context; we've had a long break from this sort of TMNT beat-em-up and this universe in TMNT beat-em-ups, so perhaps it's considered an obligation to bring back as many things from them as possible.  I can definitely understand why some nostalgic players would feel slighted if their old favorites weren't in this game.  But compared to games like Sonic Mania and River City Girls--and inevitably, this game will be compared to those games--this game's bosses lack the creativity to truly wow returning players.  The game also doesn't really have enough plot or voice acting to make these bosses appealing for who they are.  There's a fun running joke about how after the Foot Clan takes over Channel 6 news, Bebop has a blast making a bunch of shows starring himself, but no other character is anywhere close to as fleshed out.

I can't help but wonder if part of the reason this game's design is a bit too conservative in spots is because of how much more poorly-received TMNT games were that have dared to be anything besides this sort of old-fashioned beat-em-ups.  Having not played many of those other TMNT games, I cannot weigh in on that.  But it's a shame, even so.

Closing Thoughts

 

Of the games I've played for the Summer of Beat-Em-Ups so far, I'm pleased to say this one is the least flawed.  It looks, plays, and sounds great, and manages to feel a lot like beloved old games without reviving many of their flaws.  Having seen just about everything this game has to offer by now--much of it many times over--I'm definitely ready to call this the best TMNT beat-em-up ever made.  In fact, it's so good that it might be genuinely hard to go back and play the games that inspired it.  Perhaps Konami should have released The Cowabunga Collection before this game!

 

However, should we really be so impressed that a game made now is so much better than ones made several decades ago?  There's actually no reason to suspect that wouldn't be the case, given the increased technology and hindsight.  Given that potential, I'm almost more tempted to resent that this game isn't even better than it already is, and while it's not fair to demand depth from a beat-em-up plot, I think that from this series, it's reasonable to expect more scope.  I still hope that before this resurgence of beat-em-up popularity burns out, we get another TMNT game that plays like this and is set in this universe, but also commits to telling a new story with more new characters and new locations.  After that, I might even accept a bit more experimentation with gameplay.

 

But meanwhile, you should still totally buy this one, dudes and dudettes!

River City Knights of Justice: Summer of Beat-Em-Ups, Part 2

 

Forward

In the early 1990s, as the Nintendo Entertainment System was on its way out to make way for 16-bit gaming, a game called River City Ransom came out for that dying console.  It wasn't a big hit at the time, but subsequently it became a cult classic.  And why not?  The game's unique mix of beat-em-up and RPG elements meant that there was no other game like it...or so people outside of Japan thought.  That all changed with the release of River City Tokyo Rumble, which we covered last time.  But the series hadn't been all that able to capitalize on the original game's cult status to become an even bigger sensation, and I think part of the issue was that making any more beat-em-up/RPG hybrids diluted the uniqueness that had been River City's hallmark.  With no one game in the series being able to rely on that uniqueness anymore, something else had to be done to surpass expectations and make newer entries a success, and ARC chose to go in deeper with the RPG side of the formula.  As I said last time, though, it's tricky to get that right without bogging things down more than it's worth, and unfortunately River City Knights of Justice bogs down, hard.

At a Glance

The most immediately obvious sign that this game is going in deep with the RPG stuff is its setting.  While (most of) the character sprites are still the blocky, chibi things we know from Super Dodgeball and River City Ransom, they've left the modern urban setting behind in favor of a generic fairy tale world, the likes of which most RPGs inhabit.  As you trek across this medieval Europe-inspired world, you'll fight your fair share of humans but also ogres, ghosts, some rather unmenacing blobs and even the occasional dragon.  You can still punch, kick and grapple, but you also get to equip a lot of swords, magical staves, potions and other fantasy RPG tropes, which have a variety of effects.

Welcome to River City--I Mean, Riverandia

We've moved the plot from a city to a whole country.  Actually, maybe several countries, depending on how you define them.  This being a generic fairy tale world somewhat modeled on medieval Europe, they're arguably fiefdoms.  

 

Interestingly enough, unlike the other ARC-developed River City games, this one has been localized using character names that are based on the western localization of River City Ransom, but more...formal, maybe?  So Kunio is now Alexander, Riki is now Reinhold, Hasebe is now Roxanas, etc.  It's a strange choice, but maybe one that makes some sense in that this sort of fantasy is, again, loosely based on medieval Europe.  Japanese-sounding names would detract from that fantasy, so I'm fine with the change.  

 

However, this is not an overall well-written fantasy.  It's toned down the bratty attitude that bugged me in last game I reviewed, and there's the occasional funny line, but much of the dialogue you read is strictly functional at best and a bunch of small-talk from bystanders at worst.  To be fair, it's not like this isn't true of many medieval fantasy RPGs, but it'd be nice if this frequently silly series gave us better.

 

Either way, the expanded (maybe?) scope has changed how you navigate the world, and it takes some getting used to.  You get what looks like a world map to choose your destination, some being towns, others dungeons, and some random spots of the countryside you can choose to visit.  You might suspect this works akin to such maps in games like Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World, and Donkey Kong Country, with your character being the moving cursor that selects your destination and enters.  This isn't so, however.  Instead, after you select a destination, Alexander must move there from his current location, and he can get jumped on the way in potentially hostile areas of the map.  This triggers fights in those locations, as if you'd gone in intentionally.  Fortunately, you can flee the area and continue on your trip, and you can also stop your trip by pressing B.  So don't make the same mistake I initially did with this game; don't try to get anywhere more than a few spaces away in one stretch--at least not until you've leveled your character up a lot. Speaking of which...

 

Lots and Lots of Loot

...except not really.  While in many regards this game ups the RPG components, there's actually no leveling up this time around.  Nor does food consumed in restaurants increase stats.  Instead, this game's designers got way too enthusiastic about their new inventory system and decided to tie a lot of game mechanics to it, stats included.  To power up your character, you obtain and equip items.  There's a slot for gloves, a slot for shoes, (both of which increase your stats) and ten slots collectively dedicated to scrolls, rings and charms.  Including scrolls lets you do special moves (one per-scroll), while rings and charms increase stats like the gloves and shoes.  You can also boost your stats further with gems, which have the advantage of not taking up any slot, but are harder to get.

Then there is everything else...a lot of it.  You'll visit lots of towns in this game, wherein you can buy many objects, and some are useful, such as potions, but others are as mundane as literal cardboard boxes, whose main purpose is to be used as macguffins in fetch-quests.  There are also restaurants where you can go eat a wide variety of suitably medieval things (Monster Meat being my favorite) to restore hit points, mana points, or both, but it's actually all pointless because the towns also have inns that completely refill both, and cost less.  I think this has to be an oversight on the developer's part; perhaps they didn't spend enough time analyzing every option, or perhaps they originally intended for these restaurant items to increase stats, only to leave them pointless as equipable items took over that role, but either way, their immediate obsolescence definitely lessens the narrative fun that this world should have.  But worse is that a similar lack of planning also affects this game's vast arsenal of weapons, because when you get into battle, the game is unfortunately at its very clumsiest.

En Garde!  Oops, I Slipped; Hold Up!

Right off the bat--no, make that club--there's one big inherent problem with making a River City game that's so heavily focused on the use of weapons, and that problem is that frankly, weapon use in this series has always kind of sucked.  The moment you pick up a weapon in most River City games, the punch button that formerly could do a wide variety of attacks depending on context gets taken up with just one style of simply bonking foes with that unblockable and often unbreakable stick/pole/whatever, while kicks are also disabled as the kick button is used to throw the weapon.  To be fair, some of the games do attempt to make the use of weapons a bit more nuanced with special moves that utilize them, and this is one of those games.  Among others, you can get a scroll to do an attack where you jump into the air with a sword and slice through a whole bunch of enemies, and that's fun and cool.  But it's still essentially a castle in quicksand, as basic melee weapon combat remains a clunky ordeal of both you and your allies mashing the punch button to bonk each other while neither of you can block the other.  Yes; in an otherwise standard medieval fantasy world, where many people have swords and armor, nobody has ever thought of using a shield, nor turning a sword to block another sword. 

There are magic weapons too, usually staffs.  These can also bonk people like the melee weapons, but that isn't really the point; the point is to press the new "use" button to activate their special abilities.  These abilities are often more powerful but consume mana, and in some cases, they can be pretty cool. Unfortunately, this combat is not all that well suited to them, either.  Some magical abilities, such as becoming invisible or confusing your opponents, can be consistently useful, but as most of them rely on an "area of effect", they tend to be complicated by how everyone is constantly running around in this game and there isn't much aiming.  You might shoot a bunch of fireballs only to miss enemies that move north or south out of the way, move north or south after them to line up another shot, and hope they don't move out of the way again.  Despite that, the most frequently useless item I have found is the healing staff.  It spawns magical circles on the ground, which can heal you and your teammates, but because they, like your enemies, almost never stand still, good luck getting them to stand in them long enough to heal.  You can switch which of your team mates you control, but it's more awkward than anything else, as it tends to result in an abrupt shift around the screen during chaotic battles. (We'll come back to this mechanic, and with a vengeance.)

To make this already highly randomized mess more annoying, characters frequently drop their weapons.  All of the weapons have two stats (plus some, mostly the magic ones, having special abilities), related to how much damage they do and how easy they are to hold onto.  And with everyone tramping back and forth across the battlefield after each other, a dropped weapon is often less than a second away from being picked up by an opponent.  Soon after battles end, the scene fades and you go back to the "level select" screen, meaning you might very well not retain a weapon you brought to the fight, so don't get too attached to it. (Incidentally, this fade out is also problematic because it prevents you from picking up all of the money your opponents drop.) Conversely, you have the ability to jack opponents' weapons and add them to your inventory, so it's possible you're better off not even bothering to buy weapons in stores.  This is a good time to transition to the game's inventory system, which is also bad.

 

That Deserves Repeating: This Game's Inventory System is Really Bad

To go with this game's increased focus on weapons, it allows you to build up a huge inventory of them, as well as some other items like food and potions.  From this you can create a mini-inventory of "favorites", which you can select on the fly during battle.  It sounds convenient on paper, but in practice it's anything but.  

 

Last review, I complained about how the ability to pause and consume healing items lets you cheese your way through the longer fights, and that with how absurdly much HP some bosses had, that was essentially the only viable solution.  This game's designers seemed to share my complaint but swung way too far in the opposite direction.  Now the favorites menu is the only thing that you can select items from during battles, meaning no stopping time to consume a bunch of healing items at once, and to be fair, this time none of the bosses are so inflated that I couldn't beat them without that cheat.  

 

Unfortunately, the real-time selection is cumbersome, especially in the thick of battle.  The only form of selection you get is one shoulder button to cycle left-to-right through the list, looping to the start when you pass the end.  Is the item you need too far to the right to access it immediately?  Tough, you just need to cycle through and hope it'll still be needed when you get there...assuming your character is still conscious, of course  Did you cycle through too fast and pass the item you needed?  Tough, you don't get a button to cycle leftwards because the other shoulder button is used to switch party members.

Now, that might be a reasonable sacrifice in many RPGs.  In many RPGs, your party members tend to have very different, and mutually exclusive abilities, so switching between them may well be necessary to finish battles.  But in this game, while different party members may play as different RPG archetypes like paladins and wizards, beneath it all a character's abilities are defined by what items that character has.  Because HP and mana stats are determined by equipped gear, the special moves your character knows are determined by equipped scrolls, and most of the attacks you can do in any given battle are dictated by the items in that favorites menu, Alexander himself can just swap between serving any of those functions via that menu.  So given there isn't any good reason to switch which character you're controlling, it would have been better had they not included that ability and instead used the other shoulder button to cycle through the favorites menu in another direction.

Yet even if you could do so in two directions, cycling through a menu still isn't the ideal way to fast-select items, and that brings us to the most truly inexcusable thing about this inventory system.  Despite that this is a 3DS game and that the favorites menu is on the lower screen, there is no touch-select functionality!  While the menu we got is really too small to work with anything but a stylus and it's not convenient to use a stylus and buttons at the same time, because the favorites menu is the only part of the inventory system you can actually use during battle, they could have omitted the rest and enlarged the slots on the favorites menu, making it easy to press with one's fingers.  How nobody thought to do this sort of thing when it is not only a huge quality-of-life improvement, but present in pretty much any other DS and 3DS game, is almost mind-boggling.

Closing Thoughts

Last time on Summer of Beat-Em-Ups, I concluded that River City Tokyo Rumble was serviceable, a follow-up to River City Ransom that played a lot like that game, for both better and worse, which stumbled over its attempts to have more plot but didn't become totally unpalatable as a result.  Knights of Justice expands on the formula, but for every step forward there are many more steps back.  It's not fair to say this game's combat is never fun, but there's scarcely any point when it doesn't feel unpleasantly messy.  What's particularly sad is that this game's big problems are all tied to its expansion into more RPG-like territory, which in theory seemed like a good fit.  It's possible to imagine a River City game that puts a greater emphasis on items, and is better for it...but this isn't that game.  Instead, this game's items are poorly balanced and poorly implemented, and that actively detracts from the gameplay.  You're better off playing the original River City Ransom or playing any number of other fantasy RPGs.

But look on the bright side: Next time on Summer of Beat-Em-Ups, things get good!