Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants – Review

It’s not that long ago we had our hands on the fantastic TMNT: Shredders Revenge and it’s DLC, but back in February when Wrath of the Mutants was announced, I was a little hesitant over the different art-style, and what looked like a more 3-dimensional approach rather than the side-scrolling 2D nature of the classics like Turtles in Time.

Thankfully jumping back into our favourite half-shells, familiarity resumed and the gameplay instantly felt closer to what we were hoping for, rather than expecting.
The art-style might suggest more depth, but the core gameplay definitely remains that more typical side-scrolling action we’ve come to love and expect from a TMNT brawler.

Jumping past the main menu, you’re given character select screen which sadly only allows the choice of the four turtles, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo. There is 4-play co-op so as long as you can avoid the arguments over who’s who this joins the line of great couch co-op titles to put your relationships to the test.

Into the main game, and you’re given a selection of 5 areas, which you can approach in any order, when all 5 have been completed, you’ll open up the final area with Shredder which ends with a difficult battle against everyone’s favourite villain.
Through the stage’s there’s typically a mid-level and end-level boss, but on normal difficulty while a welcome challenge, it was never impossible to progress.
This obviously all changed with Shredder, when only our 8-year-old was left standing, and after managing to beat Shredder herself, his second form, left us all agreeing she didn’t have to sleep in the garden for failing to carry us all to victory.
It’s fair to say there’s a decent balance throughout the game, but if you want to get through it and not die at the final boss, needing to replay the whole level again, you might want to head in on the easy difficulty first time around.

As you might expect the general TMNT side-scrolling beat-em-up gameplay rings true once again, head from left to right, as groups of goons enter the screen and need a good kicking until they’re dead and you’re free to move forward.

There are a few differences, such as getting an assist from characters like Metal Head, who roll or smash around the screen to clear the bad-guys, and each character has their own power-bar which once full, allows you to enable their own special attack which will again clear the screen of enemies.
When possible, you quickly learn that most general goons really aren’t worth the hassle, especially when playing with friends and you can spread out to cover any sneak-attacks, so those special abilities were best saved for the boss battles to deal some significant damage to the big guys.

As with many titles, built around the roots of an old arcade brawler, there’s naturally plenty of familiarity which teeters between nostalgia and repetition, the double-edged sword is, if it takes too long to get through it starts to feel too repetitive, but if it’s too short the value suffers.
Fortunately, doesn’t suffer too much, but some levels do feel a little too familiar, with nothing more than a fresh lick of paint, the bad news is, the main reason it doesn’t feel too bad, is because it does feel quite short and we were able to play through the entire game in one sitting.
The time it does last, was more than enough to keep our youngest entertained, which is impressive for someone with the attention span of a goldfish, but none of us wanted to retry that first defeat to shredder instantly, and I don’t think we’d ever willingly choose to replay the same base levels before the final showdown.

The overall presentation is pretty good, it looks like Turtles (in the more recent direction, not the classic “Cartoons”) but for me, I always preferred the original look, that I used to sit and watch at 6am in the morning as a youngster, not the differences the children of today have to endure (such as a Beebop who looks more like a drowned rat, than a warthog).
But it’s all true to TMNT’s current state, sounds spot-on and runs perfectly fluently even with 4 characters and a screen full of enemies.
Overall, I enjoyed our time with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants, and will happily play again, but it’s shorter length and difficult ending means we might not be as quick to return as many other couch co-op titles.