Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed Review (Switch)
It’s been over a year since Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem has arrived in theaters and a lot has changed for the heroes in half-shell. Revenge of the shredder has welcomed not one but two DLC packs, THQ Nordic has announced The Last Ronin adaptation, and in 2024 alone, the Switch has launched a pair of new TMNT releases. In short, when Outright Games and developer A Heartful of Games announced that they were working on a crossover with the 2023 film, our reaction was “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
One year on, we’re really impressed by how ambitious that collaboration is. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed packs the entire sequel story into 15 hours of great voice acting and more personality (yes!) was more influential than we expected. It’s not without its flaws – the combat is repetitive, the plot feels bloated, and the performance on the Switch often moves at a snail’s pace (or it should). turtle?) speed – but it’s aiming for something a little different, and that’s to be commended.
For those who have seen the 2023 film (and if not and do not If you want to know what happens in the end, look away), Mutants Unleashed takes place right where its source material ends. After Leo, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie saved New York and defeated Super Fly, the X-Men were quickly welcomed into society. But as the Fab Four begin to experience the joys of high school, friends, relationships, and hobbies, a new group of mutants (or “Mewbies”) begin to cause unusual chaos, causing the new lifestyle of teenagers and its acceptance by everyone. mutant, on the line.
It’s a neat enough set-up, and while things take a dangerous turn for the field cram too much by the third act (there were three separate times we thought we were done, only for a new mission to appear), we appreciated it among the usual ‘Turtles need to protect a society hates them’ or ‘ time traveling aliens are causing havoc again.”
Throughout the main plot follows a simple enough formula: The Turtles have a goal to achieve and a group of Mewbies stand in their way. The combat is complex enough to be easily played with a younger Second Player (two-player local co-op is available throughout), but there’s still room for some tricky combos thanks to the four skill trees for specifically for Turtles that you’ll unlock along the way. The platforming side of this ‘Action/Platform’ mash offers a bit of a challenge, but, again, is very welcoming to newcomers to the genre and there are a few collectibles in each level to make it easy for even the expert to approach. entertainment.
The problem is that all of this develops quite repetitively. There are only so many locations where these missions take place, and after hitting them a few times to free a captured mutant friend, steal an object, or track down whatchamacallit, ‘Y’ encounters flow -mashing started appearing like a chore. Combine that with the hardest camera controls and the gameplay resembles something closer to TMNT The film ties in with some of the better efforts we’ve seen in recent years.
Luckily, and this is where that ambition comes into play, Mutants Unleashed is more than just its main story. Of course, the plot is the focus, but the game uses a Persona-style Day/Night cycle between main missions with a ‘Due Date’ countdown timer before you need to move on to the next mission. During this downtime, each Turtle has their own side story that opens up new skill tree levels — Leo gets leadership advice from a young entrepreneur, Mikey starts a podcast, Donnie teaches a kid how to stand up for himself and, our favorite, Raph, confronts his anger when he befriends a Paralympic hopeful swimmer. Additionally, all four begin testing pizza delivery times or fighting mini-games in the dojo. As long as there are a few days left for your next mission, you are free to do as you please.
These side quests have the material reward of expanding the heroes’ skill sets, but more importantly, they break the button-mashing cycle and provide some much-needed character development in the process.
Each scene is sold by its voice actors, with Mutant Mayhem’s teenage main cast returning to give each Turtle a kid-friendly whimsy that makes the film playful. Seriously, after listening back to these four in their main roles, we’re confused as to how the heroes in half-cover are in their dark/edgy phase so much. long. There are even some fun meta callbacks throughout, with the Turtles’ obsession with a beat ’em up series called Sushi Sharks being a particular highlight.
Unfortunately, and it’s quite big UnfortunatelyThe game’s performance on Switch creates these potentially touching moments. Each line of cutscene dialogue is followed by a long pause that even Mikey’s funniest quips can’t overcome. Visual style, like something close to Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse in the film, has not translated well to the game, giving each character a death glare behind their eyes during most cutscenes and making them difficult to follow during encounters, especially with two players on the screen picture at the same time. Large frame drops were frequent throughout, and we encountered several severe crashes that caused the game to unexpectedly close and caused us to have to restart the level.
And that’s not even mentioning the loading screens. They pop up before and after each level, cutscenes, and location change, and often run over 40 seconds. A day one patch was released to reduce these times, but we noticed minor changes and didn’t notice many changes taking place under 35 seconds.
Normally, this wouldn’t be the end of the world, but when the game’s most engaging side content (which can stretch to a one- to two-minute cutscene) is packed into at least a minute of staring Staring at the pizza box. autosave icon, it’s hard to find the enthusiasm to take the plunge.
Conclusion
We’d always rather see something that aims high and falls short rather than settling for another costly action/platformer experience, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed certainly falls close to the former. A Heartful of Games made some notable changes here, and some of them have paid off – hell, no one expected Persona’s quest structure in this TMNT game. Unfortunately, all this ambition is overshadowed by performance issues that make even its most accessible elements feel like a chore. It’s a great welcome for young fans looking to decompress after seeing Mutant Mayhem, but this one requires some serious scrubbing if it’s to match its big-screen counterpart.
