Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for PlayStation 2

When I see the name Konami, I think of the side scrolling fighting games I used to play in the arcades as a kid. They were a lot of fun, especially if you got some friends to play with you. This game reminds me a lot of those coin-op fighters with it's colourful graphics, rock music and simplified control scheme. With another person playing with you in co-op mode or against you in VS mode, it really captures the coin op experience.

I play a lot of different kinds of games, but I tend to play RTS and tactical shooters the most. Sometimes, though I'm in the mood for a little mindless beat 'em up or hack and slash action. So, I like to have a few games like this one and Kung Fu Chaos around. I like the complex games, but sometimes it's a nice change of pace to play a game that's fairly straight forward.

This game follows the new TMNT cartoon series on Fox Box rather than the original series or the earlier comic books which I'm more familiar with. But, watching the cartoon cut scenes which are quite good and are tv show quality, caught me up on the changes made for the new generation quite adequately. I don't mind most of the changes as they still kept the things that made the original so cool. I do kind of wish they'd kept the old theme song though. "Heroes in a half shell" is a better tag line than "Turtles count it off". If you've seen the cut scenes already, you can skip them by hitting the x button, a nice feature.

The game does a good job of making you feel like you're inside a comic book with it's cel shading, bright colours and the hit effects that you see when you strike a bad guy. There are also comic book-like intros to each scene that transition between the cartoon cut scene and the actual gameplay that use talk baloons and frame in frame techniques like you see in comics. You can also fast forward through these with the X button. The voice acting, sound effects and music are well done and pretty much what I expected from a fighting game based on a comic and cartoon. I'm not bothered by the repetitve comments and movements in this game because that's the way the old Konami coin-ops were.

For a change, I can actually say that the camera movement is well done. Usually in third person games, camera problems are one of the cons of the game. In this case, though I've yet to lose sight of my character or find myself unsure of where I'm going. This is a problem that even relatively new third person action games like The Two Towers has. There's also a little radar screen in the lower right corner that shows where the bad guys are when they are off screen so you know which way to move to engage them, very nice.

I like being able to pick which of the turtles I want to play as each has a different feel to them. Leonardo and Donatello have a more slow paced, strategic feel to them while Raphael and Michelangelo are more frenitic and fast paced. Donatello's bo staff has the slowest but most powerful attack that can take out bad guys in fewer hits, while Michelangelo's nunchaku is fast but weaker so it takes more hits to get a ko. Leonardo's katana seems to be the balance between speed and power and I like playing him the best.

Each turtle can also throw shuriken which come in handy in places where there are bad guys with ranged attacks, like the ninjas with shuriken in the later levels and where there are explosive drums. You can use a shuiken to blow up a drum and knock out a bunch of enemies at once if they are close enough to it. There are three kinds of shiriken, standard (which stun enemies), electrical which shock and cause damage and explosive which, you guessed it, blow enemies up. You don't see the last two kinds until later levels and there aren't a lot of power ups with them on a level, so use them sparingly. You can also take out multiple enemies by hitting a fire hydrant which sends out a spray that knocks them over or by hitting a car until it explodes.

The other power ups are four different levels of health that go along well with the TMNT theme: soda, sushi, hamburger and pizza with pizza being the best as it give full health. There are also power ups that temporarily give you more hit points, make you move faster or make your attacks more powerful.

Each turtle has three attacks: a weak but fast attack, a stronger but slower attack that affects multiple enemies and a blocking attack. Then theres the ranged attack if you find shuriken. You can also find Makimono scrolls that unlock additional attacks and combos. There's also an ability to dash quickly which comes in handy when you're being mobbed or under fire from ranged attacks. You can also jump which I recommend for jumping over enemies when they've got you cornered. If you hit the jump button twice quickly, you can jump higher. Sometimes, you have to jump to get to a power up or up to where an enemy is. You can also jump on top of cars and crates to escape an enemy's mele attack.

I'd also like to mention the neat instruction book that comes with the game. Unlike many books these days, this one is in full colour and does a good job of explaining how to play the game. It even has a short comic book in the back.

The only problem I really have with this game is that the game saving system is a little difficult to figure out. I'll think I've saved my game, only to come back and play it later and find that I have to start back further than I thought I'd saved it.