bodaciously bad
Bogus! Dude! Bodacious! You will not hear those words uttered by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) in the new game, published by Ubisoft, for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld system. Fans of the four heroes in a half-shell will be disappointed in what is easily the worst game for the PSP so far this year.
TMNT was released in conjunction with the 3G, computer-generated animation Ninja Turtle movie of the same name, produced by Hong Kong-based studio Imagi International. The film, a box office hit, provides the source material but the game suffers from a host of problems.
There is no audio during the short full-motion video sequences, which serve as lead-ins to each level. And the witty 'surfer dude' banter fans have come to expect from Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello is glaringly absent. The game's soundtrack does not stand out and the sound effects of bangs and crashes are boringly predictable.
Game play is so simple that Splinter, the elderly mutant rat who is the turtles' master, would have no problem getting to grips with it. Its basic controls include three jump buttons - a square, triangle and circle - which are used to navigate through the 3D environment. A player must press the relevant button to reach a glowing blue orb. Adding a modicum of interest is an X button, used for swinging on horizontal poles and from ropes and sliding down surfaces but these moves quickly become tedious when a player has to repeat them in all 15 levels.
At the end of a stage, the player must fight a wave of foot soldiers or a boss character. These battles are pathetic. The fighting mechanics boil down to a single attack button capable of chaining together a maximum of only three hits. If that isn't bad enough, there is an annoying lag after each chain attack, leaving your Ninja Turtle exposed to an assault by the bad guys before he can initiate another foray.
The charge attack that allegedly blasts away nearby opponents doesn't seem to inflict any damage. If your Ninja Turtle is in a jam, you can call his brothers to help out with a so-called 'unstoppable attack', which beats the tar out of the opponent. However, this 'phone-a-friend' offensive is dependent on the points earned by a player through turtle tag, those laborious jumping session endured at each game level.
Battles with the bosses are easy too; a simple tactic used in all these confrontations results in a quick win. The fight with the final boss is marginally more difficult but if a player uses that single trick to beat the preceding bosses, saving all his available phone-a-friend attacks for the showdown, the final boss can be defeated easily.
TMNT for the PSP is a 'bummer' all round in Ninja Turtle speak.
Pros: Uses the movie for full-motion video sequences and screen shots.
Cons: Poor game play and devoid of good-humoured Ninja Turtle banter.