Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time Re-Shelled (XBLA)
I’m going to start out by saying Turtles in Time is one of my favorite side-scrolling brawlers, so I had been looking forward to the remake/remix for quite some time. For once Xbox has brought one of my childhood brawling games to 3D, and is giving me the chance to play it with other people across the world. Needless to say, I was ready for the game…but leave to the new age of gaming to make me take them to (and pay for) dinner and a movie, and chocolate shakes afterward…and not even get a few minutes of make-out time.
The game started off to my liking. With the all too familiar words of “Big Apple: 3:00 AM” ringing in my ears at the loading screen. I picked Donatello, being that he was always my choice in the original, and had the longest reach. So here come the foot soldiers…just like the original, but in sweet new graphics. So they attacked me, and I attacked them…or at least I tried. The aiming and turning in this new game makes you feel like you’ve got the depth perception of a dead fish. I immediately am a bit bothered, but I continue to play happily. The first game was easy enough with 3-4 lives, but I look up at the top of the screen and see a ridiculous seven lives from the start! I figure it must be because the game is a lot harder…but once again I was wrong.
I beat the first two levels with hardly any complaints. When you get knocked down, it takes about a half an hour to get up, but I got over that pretty quickly when I got to see how kick ass the two first bosses looked. So I start the third level, laughing at Donny scream “Ow! My toes! My toes!” as he trips over some spiked water mines…I kill some foot soldiers, some aliens, and I’m ready to face the Rat King!…oh wait…for some reason they decided it would make the game better if they just skipped the boss completely, and sucked you back through time to the next level. Hmmm. I am now kind of aggravated.
From here on out, my dream ends and nightmare begins. On the boat level, because of the shadows, you can’t even see which boards are messed up, so almost all of your life is drained immediately. This is where I lost the most lives. (and probably why they gave you four extra ones) So I’m being surrounded by the foot and decide to take a little life loss (like the original) and do the desperation attack to get them off my shell. What!? It doesn’t take off any life to do a desperation move! You mean I could’ve been doing this the whole time? Damn you Ubisoft!!!
They decided to change the bosses for several of the levels, change the enemies in a few of them, and they even left out the Techno-drome level (and my favorite) where you throw the enemies into Shredder’s machine! Are you serious? I thought this was a remake, not a demo! I even paused the game to make sure I indeed did pay the $12.95 to purchase 1000 MS points (since you can’t get just 800).
To make things short, I beat the game in about thirty minutes. i unlocked half of the achievements the first play through, and oh yeah, had to stick with Donatello the whole time…because unlike the original, after you die you cannot choose a different turtle. Not only that, but if your friend walks in the door any you’re playing (as I was), they cannot jump in and join you like the true arcade brawler.
Sorry Donny, looks like we’re stuck together.
What We Loved:
- The first two levels.
- The new graphics.
- The online multi-player ability.
What We Disliked:
- The fact that I couldn’t tell where I was hitting. The jump attack never hit the target.
- The changes of enemies and bosses.
- The fact that they left bosses and entire levels out of the game completely.
- The desperation attack isn’t so desperately needed anymore.
- They made a short game even shorter.
- No ability to jump in mid-game, and no changing your character after you’ve selected them.
- Too expensive.
All in all, if you were a hardcore fan of the original, then you probably will be as disappointed in this remake/remix as I was. If you have a ton of extra MS points, and you feel like spending 800 of them on a 30-minute game, then go ahead, because I’m not saying it isn’t fun. But if you are slim-pickings on money and are picky about the buttload of it they charge for arcade games, then I would stick to something that is going to fill your void a little more, like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 or Castle Crashers.
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