Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash Up

I have been a Ninja Turtles fan since the 80s and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up was one of my most anticipated games of 2009 when it was released. This was a strange time for Ninja Turtles games. Most people think of Konami when it comes to Ninja Turtles and video games. However, there was a short period of time when Ubisoft had the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and this is one of the few games they released.

Smash-Up or Smash Bros?

The clear inspiration for this game is Super Smash Bros. You can have up to four fighters duking it out to see who is the best. If you have played or seen a Super Smash Bros game before then you know what to expect with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up. I like the premise of this and it was done in a 3D manner with Mutant Melee many years earlier.

Not Quite A Celebration

At the time this was released I was mad as hell! The reason for that was leading into this game we were led to believe that it was a celebration of 25 years of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and it would feature all eras of the Turtles. That was not the case at all! Instead, the game was heavily focused around the 2007 TMNT movie (which is awesome by the way) had they come out and said that this is what the game was based on from the start, I would have been all for it. The fact that the game roster is only 16 characters strong with some of them being freaking Rabbids! I felt that they completely got the game wrong in this regard. Especially when it was touted as a celebration of the history of the franchise.

Get Ready To Fight

One thing that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up does get right is the actual fighting. This is a ton of fun to play, each of the characters does feel unique and that is something I like. Each character has their own special attacks and just like in Smash Bros, this is a game that is easy to pick up and play, but when you really dig deep, you find that there is a great deal of strategy here too. There is a decent amount of game modes on offer here. You can play through an arcade mode with each of the characters to get their own ending. These are really well done in that they look like an old school comic book. You also have mission mode, survival mode, and a lot of fun stuff to do in multiplayer modes as well.

Extras Worth Earning!

While I feel that the core game may not have lived up to the 25th anniversary I thought it would be. The game has some amazing extras for you to unlock if you are a Ninja Turtles fan. These range from action figures to pre-production artwork of the Ninja Turtles movies! As a fan of the franchise, I found this awesome and I went to the effort to unlock everything that the game had to offer. Thankfully, the core gameplay was so much fun I did not mind at all.

Pros:

• The collectibles in this game are fantastic
• The characters look like they do in the 2007 movie
• Gameplay is easy to pick up, but hard to master
• Plenty of game modes to enjoy
• Playing with friends is a lot of fun

Cons:

• The roster is very small
• The game does not celebrate the history of the TMNT as many thought it should