When the initial images of the XBLA title TMNT: Out of the Shadows first surfaced, I suspect most would wish they had remained in the shadows due to their unbecoming and grotesque “realistic” look. However, further trailers showing gameplay gave promise that despite how it may look, it could be a solid beat-em-up for the aged 360.
My time with the demo being show at E3 had me switching turtles mid combat, fighting purple dragons, foot soldiers and mousers. All standard fare for any self respecting Turtles game. Unfortunately, while I was pulling off wildly stylish moves, the combat felt very disconnected from the controller input. The basic face buttons are for your light/heavy attacks and to parry/block, but the overall control system feels needlessly complicated, going so far as to require you to hold the right trigger while moving the right analog stick in a half circle motion to pull off a move. That’s right, the same analog stick used to control the camera is used for an attack when the right trigger is depressed.
Continuing with the overly complex controls is with using items in the inventory: the left trigger will cycle through your items, the left bumper will use it. Meanwhile, the D-pad is for dynamically switching between any Turtle at a given time. This may be one of the few positives I can say for the demo, which is that all four Turtles are on screen at once, and moving between them at any given time is smartly handled and does help the repetitive nature of mashing buttons for just one of them.
The Turtles feel slow and lumbering, not exactly the best speed for a ninja. All the Turtles have slight differences; where Leo is well rounded, Donny is slower, Raph is more powerful and Mikey is faster. But regardless of Turtle, the button presses didn’t feel as if they matched up to what was happening on screen. I would guess that the combat was inspired by the Batman Arkham games, where a Turtle would move seamlessly from foe to foe with out missing a beat. But because the attacks feel delayed from the action, if you want to block, you end up blocking three attacks later. The attack animations can’t be canceled out of to perform a block, and makes the action feel a bit unwieldy over all.
The game looks ambitious for a XBLA title, you can tell the team is influenced by the Arkham games down to the “gritty” look and combat. Discussing with the demo rep from Activision, the build was “beta” level, so there is still development time left, but not much before it hits Microsoft’s “Summer of Arcade” promotion. My gut tells me this one may end up being another disappointment like Turtles in Time Re-shelled.
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