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"Go! Move it, will ya? Aw, you're lettin' him go right by you! Can you BELIEVE this
guy? Come on! Don't just-- NINJA KICK THE DAMN RABBIT!"
When it comes to the treacherous conversion from comic book to television to film, and
finally to our beloved video game medium, the TMNT franchise has comported itself admirably.
Whether it's the classic '80s Arcade beat-em-ups, NES classics like Turtles 2 and The Manhattan
Project, or even the PS2-era adaptations of the wildly underrated mid-2000s Turtles cartoon,
with a few notable exceptions, you can't swing a dead rat without hitting a ***' TMNT
title. That said, apart from a brief monsoon in the form of 2007's CGI Turtles flick, during
the last decade, the amphibian foursome have withered during a bit of a drought.
"You're in a desert. You look down and you see a tortoise, Leon. It's crawling toward
you..." "Tortoise? What's that?"
Enter TMNT: Out of the Shadows. Expectations are inordinately high, considering this is
a $15 Xbox Live Arcade title we're talkin', here. While far from perfect, and with enough
technical issues to be mistaken for the Xbox 360 it's running on, I'm pleased to announce
this is the best TMNT game since the '90s, and a stand-out in the otherwise lackluster
library of downloadable titles. Blood Dragon ***' excluded.
A beat-em-up... let alone one featuring anthropomorphic turtles in Lone Ranger masks wielding feudal
ninja weaponry... has no *** business being this Nietszche ***' deep. I mean...
the skill trees... Riker's beard, the skill trees! In an arcade-style hack & slash, no
less! Every time the pendulous balls of the industry swing too far afield, there's an
inevitable, and massive course-correction that pulls in the opposite direction - usually
in a separate niche of the very same industry. When film noir got too dark and depressing,
bring on the musicals! When the mid-'70s crime film genre ran out of guidos to whack - time
for the big-budget fantasy films of the '80s! And frankly, with how 'proper' RPGs of the
day continue to inch ever closer to the precipice of set-piece-laden action gamery, I'd be shocked
if we didn't encounter even more of this sort of thing from action games in the future.
But frankly... there are times when this game was more of an RPG... than Mass Effect. A
fact as refreshing as it is a centrifuge of perpetual despair.
Juxtaposing the counter-heavy exploits of the Arkham Batman series with a deliberately
piecemeal, strategy-heavy hack & slash game more akin to the Lord of the Rings PS2 and
Gamecube titles, it wouldn't be unfair to say the combat spins against the way it drives.
With the wealth of offense at your disposal, the temptation to mash buttons in perpetuity
can be a difficult siren call to resist. Needless to say, more than a few stray profanities
were uttered at a perfectly innocent Television screen before I finally sledgehammered into
my hapless cranium the fact that you have to take it a bit slower and choose your strikes
carefully in TMNT: Out of the Shadows. If you approach Out of the Darkness as the
Batman: Arkham Asylum 'Part Deux' that the video game press has appraised it as, mashing
the attack buttons until they bond with your fingers at the subatomic level and wondering
why your counter button doesn't stop enemy strikes even when you've fully committed to
a move... frankly, the problem lies with you, and not with the game. It's not Arkham Asylum
and it's not Sleeping Dogs. It's a slower, more deliberate experience with a punishingly
steep learning curve, where skill trees and character upgrades genuinely make a substantive
difference. Initially, I assumed the skills and upgrades were window-dressing. 'Even football
games have experience points' I chortled, waxing my mustache between mouthfuls of fine
English snuff. 'Surely they jest that I should partake in such woolgathering flim-flammery."
5 merciless dickings later, I applied my Ability Points and emerged a much more competent fighter,
humbled to admit that this game is every bit as much of an RPG... as it is a Beat-Em-Up!
Offsetting the godiva richness of the five-course, combat and skill tree buffet is an emaciated
single-player campaign. I've had longer showers, people. Clocking in at a paltry 3-4 hours,
you almost wondered why they bothered in the first ***' place.
The only irredeemable grievance on offer from TMNT: Out of the Shadows is that Activision
elected to shave a few pesos off the miserly development budget by hiring the cinematographer
from Metal Gear Solid: Rising on the cheap. And to him I can only say 'What. The ***.
Are you Looking At?!" It's certainly not me, and it's damn sure not The Foot, as they have
a nasty habit of barrelling into frame from off-screen with an unblockable double-***
of doom that I'd need ***' tea leaves to have foreseen! Seriously, what is it, Sergei
Eisenstein? What is so interesting on the floor?! Hell, I don't even need to control
you if you'd just sit at the proper angle. Just... hover the *** above above me and
occasionally fly past my head! Pretend that you're comedic subtlety... and I'm Angry Joe.
It's a merciless annoyance, and drops frequent enough golden showers on the proverbial parade
that it knocks the game from a '*** yeah' to a mere 'Hell yeah' on The Rageaholic's
non-existent metaphorical rating scale for the furtherance of convoluted analogies. As
IGN has rightly pointed out: Camera problems... KILL hack & slash games... unless of course
you're Metal Gear Rising, in which case, 'Camera Issues?! WHAT camera issues? GAMEOFTHEYEARALLYEARSLULZORN00BL33T!'
A plethora of kickass alternate game modes - virtually all of which outstrip the main
campaign for length, depth and sheer volume of content - pick up the slack left by the
pants-*** cameraman, however. Arcade is a blast, Survival is as frustratingly addictive
as it sounds, and Challenge Mode is xeroxed the *** over from the Arkham series, except
with much greater enemy variety and a handful of boss fights to offer a much-needed break
from the mounting tedium. And they all support synchronized swearing-- *ahem* CO-OP!
This game needs a patch like Robin Thicke needs to go the *** away. With that, it would
easily elevate to the stratosphere it seems to aspire to, and my recommendation would
come caveat-free. It's Batman: Arkham Asylum, except with Turtles,
more moves, greater depth, and a wider variety in the fighting styles of enemy and player
character alike. If that sounds awesome to you - and it *** should - then don't be
a ***, pick it the *** up. I'm RazörFist. God - ***' - SPEED!