The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had a long video game history. Their gaming legacy started with the arcade cabinets to the NES and so on to the Wii release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up in late September. It’s only natural that one of the classic side-scrolling beat’em ups from decades past is remade, which it has. The game is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-shelled, a downloadable game that’s a throwback to the reptilian quartet’s 1991 video game TMNT: Turtles in Time.
Like the original, Re-shelled our four heroes are tasked with saving New York yet again from the vise-like grip of Shredder. Players will pick their favorite turtle and button mash their through the rather short levels until they reach the boss. Once players negotiate the boss’ demise they are thrust into another level. Rinse and repeat until credits roll.
A huge improvement for Re-shelled has over the original is the graphics. Re-shelled has colorful 3-D models of the four turtles and their enemies on top of an equally colorful world as opposed to the original’s 16-bit era sprites. Unfortunately, the graphics of the game are the high point while everything else falls into monotony.
There are three modes for Re-shelled: single player, survival, and quick play along with a multiplayer option for each. Each mode is very similar because they all work off of the story-driven single player. So, if you beat the single player, which takes about two hours, you’ve seen the entire game. A plus is that there are difficulty settings for ranging from easy to hardcore. But it’s evident that this is your little brother’s TMNT game because none of the four difficulties are very hard. The difference being that on the harder difficulties the enemies are more numerous instead of more aggressive.
The enemies in Re-shelled are dumb. How dumb? Let’s just say the foot clan ninjas make the hordes of endless baddies in the Dynasty Warriors franchise look smart. Like the original, enemy ninjas, robots, and golems come in a rainbow of colors each with a different attack and weapon than the last. Problem is the melee enemies are easily wiped out while the ranged opponents pose the most threat--the word threat is used loosely in this review. On top of the lackluster henchmen are the equally lackluster bosses. The same rules apply for these fights as it did back in the ‘90s: mash thumbs into controller until boss is defeated
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