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Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

With no deaths and no multiplayer, the new TMNT game lacks reason to play

It's not hard to get a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game right. Have some hack …

There was a lot of promise in the idea of a 360 version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Since it was developed by Ubisoft, we were looking forward to a sort of green Prince of Persia. And since it was the Turtles on the 360, we were also looking forward to playing multiplayer with four wireless controllers. Isn't that why one buys a Turtles game? The only problem is that there is no local or online multiplayer. None. Frank noted this, but I just assumed it was some odd mistake on the part of the developers, and it would be fixed by the time of release. No joy. 

Is there any reason to play this, then? The fighting isn't good enough to look past the lack of multiplayer, and there is also the curious fact that you can't die. You come back to life whenever you lose all your energy, and even falling down a pit doesn't do anything except cause the game to warp you back to where you missed the jump. I have a five year-old here who is starting to love the Turtles, so this could be a good beginner game for him. But I can't see any gamers older than that who are interested in a game where you can't lose.

Maybe it's worth a rental to get the easy 1,000 achievement points. They're all collected by simply beating the levels, and the remaining points are yours if you perform each character's special moves. I was going to write a full review, but really, that's all you need to know. The rest would have been fluff. This is a game that had every chance in the world to be great, and they lost it instantly by not including the one thing that makes every TMNT game notable. At least we still have the arcade game on Xbox Live Arcade.

Disappointing. I'm going to stand here shaking my head at the floor for a few minutes. What were they thinking? At least the game is short: a four-hour playthrough isn't out of the question. The question is: how badly do you need achievement points?

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