Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up Impressions

Those of you that know me, know that I am a huge TMNT fan. As an owner and reader of the comics, and a collector of action figures, DVDs and merch, its only natural that I be the techpeditionist to cover the new Turtles Smash Up game.

Typically Turtles games don’t get much love from developers. Konami released 4 barely passable brawlers a few years back and even the original title by ultra, while a classic, really kinda sucked.. I enjoyed the Ubisoft title released with the movie in 2007, so I was excited to hear that Ubi was touching the TMNT again.

However, after playing the demo, I really have mixed feelings about the title. Its based pretty heavily on the Smash Bros engine. Many of the same team members are working on it. I don’t really doubt the gameplay. What I played was solid. The action is fast and hectic (just like Smash Bros.). The environments are great and destructible and the combo moves are just over the top enough to have you talking major smack with your buds.

My problem with the game comes move from marketing angle Ubisoft and Mirage are trying to take. The game is being billed as pure fan service for the 25th anniversary, with references from the entire TMNT history. I did not get that from the game. The demo had 7 playable characters the 4 Turtles, Splinter, April, and Shredder. Obviously that’s not all of the characters, but the models being used don’t seem to reference anything but the last few years of TMNT.

As a super fan I want to see characters like Nobody, Renet, Bebop, Slash, Null, Ninjara, or Radical and Complete Carnage. As a game, Smash Up should rock, but unless Ubisoft plans to builds upon the ground work seen on this demo, fan service is the wrong word to use. Even without a movie to base this game on, so far it just feels like a decent movie tie in game. Which I guess is unique unto itself.