"Go!
Move it, will ya?
Aw, you're lettin' him go right by you!
Can you BELIEVE this guy?
Come on!
Don't just-- NINJA KICK THE DAMN RABBIT!"
When it comes to the treacherous conversion from comic book to television to film, and
finally to our beloved video game medium, the TMNT franchise has comported itself admirably.
Whether it's the classic '80s Arcade beat-em-ups, NES classics like Turtles 2 and The Manhattan
Project, or even the PS2-era adaptations of the wildly underrated mid-2000s Turtles cartoon,
with a few notable exceptions, you can't swing a dead rat without hitting a bitchin' TMNT
title.
That said, apart from a brief monsoon in the form of 2007's CGI Turtles flick, during the
last decade, the amphibian foursome have withered during a bit of a drought.
"You're in a desert.
You look down and you see a tortoise, Leon.
It's crawling toward you..."
"Tortoise?
What's that?"
Enter TMNT: Out of the Shadows.
Expectations are inordinately high, considering this is a $15 Xbox Live Arcade title we're
talkin', here.
While far from perfect, and with enough technical issues to be mistaken for the Xbox 360 it's
running on, I'm pleased to announce this is the best TMNT game since the '90s, and a stand-out
in the otherwise lackluster library of downloadable titles.
Blood Dragon motherfuckin' excluded.
A beat-em-up... let alone one featuring anthropomorphic turtles in Lone Ranger masks wielding feudal
ninja weaponry... has no goddamn business being this Nietszche fuckin' deep.
I mean... the skill trees...
Riker's beard, the skill trees!
In an arcade-style hack & slash, no less!
Every time the pendulous balls of the industry swing too far afield, there's an inevitable,
and massive course-correction that pulls in the opposite direction - usually in a separate
niche of the very same industry.
When film noir got too dark and depressing, bring on the musicals!
When the mid-'70s crime film genre ran out of guidos to whack - time for the big-budget
fantasy films of the '80s!
And frankly, with how 'proper' RPGs of the day continue to inch ever closer to the precipice
of set-piece-laden action gamery, I'd be shocked if we didn't encounter even more of this sort
of thing from action games in the future.
But frankly...
there are times when this game was more of an RPG... than Mass Effect.
A fact as refreshing as it is a centrifuge of perpetual despair.
Juxtaposing the counter-heavy exploits of the Arkham Batman series with a deliberately
piecemeal, strategy-heavy hack & slash game more akin to the Lord of the Rings PS2 and
Gamecube titles, it wouldn't be unfair to say the combat spins against the way it drives.
With the wealth of offense at your disposal, the temptation to mash buttons in perpetuity
can be a difficult siren call to resist.
Needless to say, more than a few stray profanities were uttered at a perfectly innocent Television
screen before I finally sledgehammered into my hapless cranium the fact that you have
to take it a bit slower and choose your strikes carefully in TMNT: Out of the Shadows.
If you approach Out of the Darkness as the Batman: Arkham Asylum 'Part Deux' that the
video game press has appraised it as, mashing the attack buttons until they bond with your
fingers at the subatomic level and wondering why your counter button doesn't stop enemy
strikes even when you've fully committed to a move... frankly, the problem lies with you,
and not with the game.
It's not Arkham Asylum and it's not Sleeping Dogs.
It's a slower, more deliberate experience with a punishingly steep learning curve, where
skill trees and character upgrades genuinely make a substantive difference.
Initially, I assumed the skills and upgrades were window-dressing.
'Even football games have experience points' I chortled, waxing my mustache between mouthfuls
of fine English snuff.
'Surely they jest that I should partake in such woolgathering flim-flammery." 5 merciless
dickings later, I applied my Ability Points and emerged a much more competent fighter,
humbled to admit that this game is every bit as much of an RPG... as it is a Beat-Em-Up!
Offsetting the godiva richness of the five-course, combat and skill tree buffet is an emaciated
single-player campaign.
I've had longer showers, people.
Clocking in at a paltry 3-4 hours, you almost wondered why they bothered in the first fuckin'
place.
The only irredeemable grievance on offer from TMNT: Out of the Shadows is that Activision
elected to shave a few pesos off the miserly development budget by hiring the cinematographer
from Metal Gear Solid: Rising on the cheap.
And to him I can only say 'What.
The FUCK.
Are you Looking At?!"
It's certainly not me, and it's damn sure not The Foot, as they have a nasty habit of
barrelling into frame from off-screen with an unblockable double-dong of doom that I'd
need motherfuckin' tea leaves to have foreseen!
Seriously, what is it, Sergei Eisenstein?
What is so interesting on the floor?!
Hell, I don't even need to control you if you'd just sit at the proper angle.
Just... hover the fuck above above me and occasionally fly past my head!
Pretend that you're comedic subtlety... and I'm Angry Joe.
It's a merciless annoyance, and drops frequent enough golden showers on the proverbial parade
that it knocks the game from a 'Fuck yeah' to a mere 'Hell yeah' on The Rageaholic's
non-existent metaphorical rating scale for the furtherance of convoluted analogies.
As IGN has rightly pointed out: Camera problems... KILL hack & slash games... unless of course
you're Metal Gear Rising, in which case, 'Camera Issues?!
WHAT camera issues?
GAMEOFTHEYEARALLYEARSLULZORN00BL33T!'
A plethora of kickass alternate game modes - virtually all of which outstrip the main
campaign for length, depth and sheer volume of content - pick up the slack left by the
pants-shitting cameraman, however.
Arcade is a blast, Survival is as frustratingly addictive as it sounds, and Challenge Mode
is xeroxed the fuck over from the Arkham series, except with much greater enemy variety and
a handful of boss fights to offer a much-needed break from the mounting tedium.
And they all support synchronized swearing-- *ahem* CO-OP!
This game needs a patch like Robin Thicke needs to go the fuck away.
With that, it would easily elevate to the stratosphere it seems to aspire to, and my
recommendation would come caveat-free.
It's Batman: Arkham Asylum, except with Turtles, more moves, greater depth, and a wider variety
in the fighting styles of enemy and player character alike.
If that sounds awesome to you - and it fucking should - then don't be a bitch, pick it the
fuck up.
I'm RazörFist.
God - fuckin' - SPEED!