Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare
Score: 80% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: Konami Developer: Konami Media: GCD/2 Players: 1 - 4 Genre: Action
Graphics & Sound: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare continues the TMNT action game series and puts the fighting foursome against a race of alien dinosaurs known as the Triceratons. As the green-brothers move through the city streets, buildings, and other environments, you can't help but notice that though each type of area looks drastically different than the others, all of the streets and alleyways start to blend together, just like the various surroundings while inside a building or a lab. This hurt early on when one of the first missions was to roam the streets looking for Triceraton landing ships and destroy them. There were several times when either I thought I was needlessly backtracking and wasn't, or times when I really was going in circles. As for the characters, they all look pretty good. Friend and foe alike resemble their TV-series counterparts, but there were plenty of times that I found myself following the wrong turtle with my eyes. Though all four wear their traditional colors of blue, red, orange and purple and carry the appropriate weapons, I still ended up losing track of which turtle in the green mass of attacks I was controlling. Mutant Nightmare's sound department wasn't lacking and got the job done. The game's music, both the theme and in-game tunes, came off clear and sounded like some of the background music you would hear from the Saturday morning cartoon series. Another note is the fact that while in the heat of battle, the characters, both good and bad, don't really say much. From what I understand, this is a welcome change from this game's predecessors where the turtles would spout out the same few lines and battle cries over and over again to the point of annoyance.
Gameplay: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare lets you and up to three friends join forces in an all out arcade-style action game in an attempt to stop the Triceraton invasion. The game is broken up into three episodes, and each episode has several missions that will have you attacking anything that moves (and a few things that don't). This game is mostly mindless hack-n-slash that is good for those afternoons when you just want to put your brain on hold for a little while. Typically, you will run down a street or into a room, kill the dozen or so enemies that are thrown at you, and move onto another alley or part of the building only to do it all over again. Every now and then, you will find yourself in a slightly different scenario where you will have to pilot a vehicle or do something that takes you out of the hack-n-slash mentality, but these moments are infrequent and can actually get you out of the melee mood you probably just got settled into. All in all, each turtle is the same as the next. Sure, one might have a longer weapon and slightly different normal attack, but in general, they all move and act the same. As you take down enemies, you will collect various crystals that can be used to help power up specific turtles and their special attacks. But again, if you keep your green heroes at about the same level, there isn't much difference between Mikey's nun chucks, Ralph's sais, Leo's katana and Don's bo. In fact, the only real difference is their special Ougi moves. These are stronger attacks that require you to build up a meter. But I found that I rarely used both these and group attacks (co-op attacks that deal more damage, but are tricky to pull off) because I was too set into the standard hack-n-slash mode and didn't feel like I really needed the stronger attacks. As you complete missions, you may be given a password. Thankfully, this isn't to replace saving or anything like that (this is a console game after all). These passwords are used to do things like letting you always have a full Ougi gauge or not taking any damage. And for some reason, these codes can also do things like increase opponents’ strength or defense, or other effects that make the game harder. Since this is for the GameCube, Konami will also occasionally supply you a code or two for the DS game of the same name. An added bonus to TMNT 3 is the inclusion of the classic arcade game, Turtles In Time, the older TMNT 3 title. For those who don't know or don't remember this game, it was one of the best arcade action titles of its time, and I spent many hours and quarters with my friends working our way through the game's different time zones. For those of you wanting to relive these memories, you have to beat the first episode.
Difficulty: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare's difficulty is pretty steady throughout the game. The game doesn't get any easier or harder as you progress. What you see at the beginning is what you will see at the end. What typically happens is that you will find yourself in an area trying to work your way to some specific goal, when the game will just throw enemies at you hoping to overwhelm your forces. There is no tricky A.I. involved and, in general, the baddies will just try to swarm you. If you keep yourself out of the middle of a bunch of bad guys and just button mash, you will be able to clean the area up without much trouble. The only difficult parts come up when facing a boss, but these enemies' patterns can be quickly identified and what challenge they might have had at first quickly goes away.
Game Mechanics: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare uses a simple control scheme, but I still found myself stumbling over a few of the buttons when I would try to perform some of the lesser used moves. Most of the time, you will be jumping (A button) and using your basic attack (B button), strong attack (Y button) or throwing shuriken (X button). But every now and then, you will have built up enough power to execute a Ougi move, and this is where my fingers would start fumbling. To use your super moves, you press both the R and X buttons at the same time. Since this was something that I rarely did, I kept hitting either the L and X or R and Y or some other combination of almost correct buttons. Of course, when I would hit the wrong button combo, I would execute something other than what I was expecting and mess that up. For instance, you hit the R and Y buttons to initiate one of the group attacks. But you must follow that up with a series of D-Pad presses in order to actually complete the maneuver. Well, if I was thinking that I was going to use my Ougi move, I surely wasn't expecting to use the D-Pad. This got frustrating fast and is the main reason why I rarely used these more powerful attacks. Well, that and the fact that the regular weak and strong moves did the job more times than not. In general, this game is geared towards the younger audience more than the older gamers. Maybe that's why they decided to include Turtles in Time since that alone will probably cause a couple of retro-gamers’ ears to perk up. So is Mutant Nightmare worth the 30 bucks? If you are a fan of the current incarnation of the turtles, or are really aching to play the classic arcade game, then yes. Otherwise, give it a rent before you decide to buy it.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
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