Making us feel like we have all the powers and skills of our most beloved fictional characters is one of the most often-broken promises licensed video games make, and indeed, TMNT: Out of the Shadows barely gets out of the gate before that familiar feeling of disappointment sets in. As I clumsily lurched through the tutorial, clipping through doors while the frame rate struggled to keep up, it was hard to shake the feeling that I was in for an unmitigated disaster. But once I settled into the decidedly off-beat groove of its combat, TMNTOOTS pulled its nose up a bit, comfortably averting a crash, but without ever truly soaring either.
Developer Red Fly’s unabashed love of Turtle Power is the best thing about TMNTOOTS, and it shines through in every Mikey one-liner and in the many nuances baked into the combat system. Each turtle's personality is conveyed clearly through their diverse fighting styles, and their seemingly endless number of customizable skills. Seriously, beat-'em-ups have no business being this deep. There's more character progression in TMNTOOTS than in a lot of modern RPGs I could name, and deciding how to build each turtle out is surprisingly tough and rewarding.
All that back-end decision making pays off when swords start swinging too. When you first start out it all feels like a bad Batman: Arkham Asylum impression, but as you delve deeper into the various skill trees, things open up considerably. Street Fighter-esque specials come with a whole range of properties, and an unbelievable array of team moves really sell the idea of the turtles as a fighting unit rather than just individuals. You could vault over a teammate with a flying kick, block and counter two enemy attacks at once, and then alley-oop a third into the air for Donny to leap up and crack back down to the ground with his bo staff. Top it off with a team taunt and it's stat boosts for all. When it all works, it captures the TMNT vibe perfectly.But that’s when it all works, meaning it doesn't always, and therein lies the problem. Getting to those moments where I could become one with my inner turtle required putting up with a whole lot of issues, not the least of which is a pervasive clunkiness that makes engaging with the combat difficult. Leo and the gang are decidedly more turtle than ninja in the speed department, and some moves, like counters and evasive rolls, feel like they're coming out way behind your inputs. Combined with a camera that has a penchant for disobedience and some extremely questionable collision detection, you get fights that can feel awfully disjointed at times.
Traversing the bare-bones environments feels equally rough. The camera jerks awkwardly about as you vault over low walls, fighting any attempts to keep it pointed where you're headed. Garishly colored lights clash with the predominantly grey and beige environments, and when in dimly lit areas you can expect to take a pummeling as you try to make out your friends from your foes. The simplistic stealth and hacking mechanics seem like just as much of an afterthought as the cutscenes, which are really just a series of reused stills with voice-overs. Essentially, nothing in TMNTOOTS' roughly four-hour campaign looks or feels quite like a finished product ought to.
At least there's an appreciable number of additional modes and content to explore once you finish the story mode. Aside from a handful of challenge maps, you can play the entire story cooperatively with four players over Xbox Live, or even two locally, but the latter is tough to enjoy given the split-screen implementation. Each player gets a small, 4:3 view with much of the rest of the screen cropped off and filled with nothing but empty space, leaving you with a pretty tiny play area unless you have a really big TV.Perhaps the best extra feature is the “classic” Arcade mode, which is a side-scrolling adaptation of the main story levels with nothing but the combat. All your character progression carries over, but sadly, so do all the issues. Four-player couch co-op will make this mode a standout for many, but only with three friends who are as willing to put up with TMNTOOTS’ shortcomings as they are.
