Reader Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up

Do you have what it takes to get a review published right here on Kotaku? Steven does, as he orders a Smash Bros. pizza.

Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.

And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD releases.

This review was submitted by the unstoppable Steven Bogos. If you’ve played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up, or just want to ask Steven more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up (Wii)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up is a ‘4-player multi-player brawler,’ and if that sounds familiar it’s because it was created by the team behind Nintendo’s hugely popular and critically acclaimed Smash Bros Brawl. With a very striking similarity to its developer’s former game, Smash Up has a lot of potential to fill.

Loved

Pick up and party: Smash Up, like Smash Bros, has really nailed the ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ mechanic. There are a mere five buttons (light attack, heavy attack, jump, use item and guard) that control everything, meaning anyone can pick up a controller and have a go.

Turtle Power! With a few exceptions that old-school fans of the Turtle’s universe may find baffling (Utrominator? Fugitoid?) all of your favourite characters are here. You can play as the four mutants themselves plus Splinter, Shredder, Casey Jones, April, Kari and more.

Hated

Heroes in a half-assed:
Many of the modes in Smash Up feel like they were slapped together just for the sake of it. The single player arcade mode can be finished in 10 minutes. Most of the characters are slight variations on a couple of templates. The bonus mode is the same six levels with no variations. Combat often feels clunky, not to mention it takes a good five seconds to get up off the ground after being knocked down.

Art Direction: The game seems to borrow from the 2007 CGI movie, which is a fairly baffling move. Surely, a game celebrating 25 years of TMNT would try to mimic an art style to the ’80s cartoon that started it all? The comic book-esque cut scenes are nice, but not enough.

Easy as turtle soup: Even on Very Hard and ‘Shell-Shocked’ difficulty settings, I was able to defeat AI opponents fairly easily. More often than not, you can find a cheap spamable move that renders the AI useless.

Smash Up is a game that is merely average in all regards. You’ll breeze through most of the single player content in a few hours, and when your friends come over to play, the novelty of playing as your favourite Turtle will wear off after a few rounds, and you’ll just end up going back to Smash Bros.

Reviewed by: Steven Bogos

You can have your Reader Review published on Kotaku. Send your review to us at the usual address. Make sure it’s written in the same format as above and in under 300 words – yes, we’ve upped the word limit. We’ll publish the best ones we get and the best of the month will win a Madman DVD prize pack.

Comments


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *