Customer Reviews

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A lot of reviewers have compared Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and I think the comparison is pretty good. The gameplay feels a lot like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, even going so far as incorporating strong "A button" moves. I think if you like Smash and want more, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up would be a good addition.

A lot of reviewers have criticized this game for not having a lot of characters. I think there's some truth to that, but not a whole lot. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up does have fewer characters initially, but there are at least 10 secret characters. Some of these have been revealed online, but a few haven't (if you look at the game website, you'll see at least 6 question marks for additional secret characters). I have no idea if these secret characters are going to be exciting additions, like Leatherhead but it's too early to tell.

Also, let's remember that Super Smash Bros. Brawl had more characters, but less than half were even decent and most were lousy. Whenever I played with my friends, we tended to only use about 3 characters each. Frankly, adding a bunch of Jigglypuffs to the character roster did not really do much for me. By contrast, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up, I get the sense that most of the characters are roughly equivalent and good to play with.

This game also has a few innovations not seen in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I like the stages a lot better. More room to fight, as well as more interaction between the stage and the characters. In one stage, a giant alligator will eat your character if you're not careful. Also, the characters can hang onto walls.

At the end of the day, is this game as good as Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Probably not. Smash was a unique game. However, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up is fun in its own right and worth trying if you want more Smash-style playing or different characters.

I've been a fan of the Turtles since I was a kid. As somebody who grew up with the cheesy 80's cartoon show, had boxes of the action figures, and owned just about any Turtles game he could get his hands on I was elated when the Turltes got a new series several years ago. I bought the games for that, which were pretty darned good. Probably the only one I missed was Mutant Melee. I even picked up the fairly decent TMNT movie based game for PC and for the Gameboy Advance. I have a Michelangelo figure from a Happy Meal sitting on my desk right now. I AM A FAN!

Now take 25 years worth of material, dozens of characters from the series, a beautiful promo video, and a developer that has made some truly incredible games in the past and...it's mostly squandered. Playing the game for just a few minutes will leave you saying "This is it?" In story mode, you have the four turtles, Casey Jones, April O'Neil, and Splinter. That's it. Splinter is hosting a tournament to see which of them is the strongest. You don't even fight everybody before you're suddenly declared the winner, but the Fugitoid has been captured by Shredder so you'll have to go fight the foot. It literally took me 15 minutes to beat the game on my first try. You get a short unique ending for each of the characters. They didn't bother to change video in the middle, so if you're playing as Splinter you still congratulate the Turtles on winning.

Characters all pretty much fight the same with minor differences. It's mostly just mashing the weak or strong attack button, throwing, blocking, and using power-ups. I think the game is mostly designed as a party game for a group of people who may not be able/willing to learn complex fighter controls; if you have 4 people willing to play and a PlayStation 2 Multitap you could probably have a lot of fun with it. I do hear it's got some glitches occasionally marking the wrong player as the winner, but if you're playing with friends who cares?

You can unlock the characters to use in VS battles (Shredder, Karai, Foot Soldier, a Utrom, and Raph as Nightwatcher), though not in the story mode. If you're expecting tons of characters from either of the cartoons, you'll be disappointed. No Bebop. No Rocksteady. No Rat King. No Rock soldiers, Foot-tech ninjas, or giant mousers. Not even a Triceraton makes an appearance. It's truly inexplicable why they left out so many possible choices. With simplified controls and no custom backgrounds for them it's not like they didn't have room on the disk to include a lot more. I'd have rated this game MUCH higher if only for another five characters and a few more battlegrounds.

In the Wii version you can unlock Fugitoid (anybody care?) and three Rabbids from the Rayman series (for some reason?) and a really cool Technodrome stage. Nobody's review tells you this, but that was all cut in the PS2 version! I've tried the codes, unlocked all the missions, and you don't get any more than 12 total characters. The Ubisoft website still highlights slots for 20 characters, but even the Wii version only has 16. I know I'll never pre-order any Ubisoft stuff again.

Battlegrounds are well designed and many have hazards to use and avoid. For example some levels you can toss enemies off the roof to their death, while others have breakable objects or floors. There are even a couple like the train level where you have to keep progressing forward as the screen moves or you can fall off and die. The levels are well designed. The only one I didn't like was an especially flashy level with explosions going off which made it kind of hard to see my character to continue the fight.

To sum things up, if this is meant as a party game for you and some friends then it'd be a great rental that you could have hours of fun with. If you're getting this to play a true Ninja Turtles fighting game, it's probably one to skip. From the lack of content, the limited number of unlockables, and the comic book style animation (which just happens to be much cheaper to animate...) it just doesn't feel like any real effort went into creating this thing. It's not horrible by any means and the fighting is enjoyable, but the cast is tiny and at least for single player it's average at best. I'd suggest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 to get your Turtles fix. It's older, but a lot more fun.

This game is a whole lotta fun. my favorite character to fight with is mike. if you are a fan of TMNT then you'll love this game.

my son has wanted this specific game for some time now, and it took some time to locate it at a good price and for the PS2. He loves it. and it shipped for free!