TMNT: Turtles In Time Reshelled Review (XBLA)
One of my all time favourite video games is the Super Nintendo port of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. While it was a port of an arcade game the Super Nintendo version was superior in many ways. True it did not offer 4 player support, but the pros far outweighed the cons. AS a mater of fact Turtles in Time is often regarded as one of the best scrolling beat em ups of all time. So it was with great excitement that gamers greeted the news that Turtles in Time was going to be remade for the Xbox Live Arcade. Sadly the game failed to live up to the sky high expectations that so many people had for it.
From a graphical point of view I think that it is more than fair to say that Turtles in Time Reshelled looks great. Everything from the Ninja Turtles themselves to the great bosses look nice and smooth as do all the various levels. The levels are very varied ranging from city streets, prehistoric earth to a space station. No two levels ever look the same which is great. AS well as everything looking good the animation is really solid as well.
Sadly where the game fails is in the game play department. It is really hard to say exactly what is wrong with this remake, but there is just something off about the whole thing. The original Turtles in Time game was a 2D scrolling beat em up. While you could walk into the foreground and in to the background your Turtle always face side on.
Well Turtles in Time Reshelled changes this up and now your Turtle can face in any direction and so can the enemies. This on paper sounds like it should add much more depth to the game, but the truth is it really does not. It does not make the game any harder or anything like that, but at the same time it loses some of that wonderful charm that the original game had.
One very odd thing is that the developers decided to base the game on the arcade version and not the superior Super Nintendo version. The big difference between the Super Nintendo and the arcade was that the Super Nintendo added some extra levels and changed up the bosses in the game. You would have thought that this remake would have wanted to use every single level, but they did not. So the extra levels that were found in the Super Nintendo are noticeable by there absence here.
One cool thing was the additional game modes supported is up to four player local and online co-op play. As well as this there is the ability to once you have beaten the game play any level that you want with pretty much unlimited lives. This is a great way of practicing certain levels to master the games final mode survival. Survival mode give you one life to try and beat the game or get as far as you can. This mode was a great idea and it certainly is a really cool challenge to try and do.
So while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time Reshelled is not a terrible game at the same time it just feels like there is something missing. It is like the game has no soul. I am sure that newer gamers will fall in love with this game, but for those of us who grew up with the original game on the Super Nintendo there is certainly a great deal of magic lost in this remake.