A small boy walks down a street in New York City. As he crosses the street he drops and breaks his glass bowl. Inside that bowl was his four pet turtles. Storm water rushes down the side of the street carrying the pets to the sewers, dropping them into green ooze.
A rat, already affected by the ooze, begins to realize he must help the defenseless turtles and gathers them into a can. Dragging the can with the turtles the rat finds a dwelling within the sewer to live. As time passed the rat seems to grow larger and smarter and the same happens to his adopted turtle sons.
Calling himself Splinter, this self-educated rat, decides to train his sons in the martial arts. He gives the turtles the names of the great renaissance artists, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo. Fighting for the greater good, these ninja fight crime in the night and remain invisible during the day.
The game is well put together. It uses entire clips from the television series on the Fox Box and as well as few new scenes to tie up the story plots. The opening to the game is actually the same opening as the television series.
The graphics are cell-shaded. They look more like the cartoon and you have the option to make it more like a comic book by enabling hit effects, such as "BOOM!" and "BAM!" There is only one flaw in some camera angles in tight scenes where there is little room.
The sound is dead on. The voices are those of the television program's actors. However, it gets a bit annoying when the characters repeat the same three phrases when performing moves.
The control is possibly new to the industry. Once you start pressing the attack button and face in any certain direction, you will be able to perform some fantastic combo attacks without much effort. However, you must steer your attack to get the most possible combos. As you advance through the game, you learn new attacks taught to you by Splinter.
This game remains fresh only due to its challenge and secrets. You must play a somewhat different story for each character to unlock all the secrets and in addition, you unlock players for the two-player fighting game feature. It is a class that reminds me of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 for the Nintendo 8-bit.
This game lives as long as you are determined to whip the Shredders bum. It is a challenge on easy. Then again I choose Raphael as my starting character, supposedly the hardest to use effectively.
If you find you need help, at the cost of one of your lives, you can invite a second player to help you through story mode as one of the other turtles. The second player will not be able to help during training sessions, however. The story mode is based upon the first character.
If you like guys in metal suits, guys with huge tattoos and mutants, this game is right up your alley.
