They're the world's most fearsome fighting team!

For the dozen of you kind people who visit this website, you may recall I have been anticipating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up! Which is a Ninja Turtles fighter shooting to be something of a spiritual sequel to Super Smash Bros. Brawl. But did it achieve its goal of becoming the next Smash Bros.? And did it live up to my expectations?

I’ll start by saying that when this game says it wants to be Smash Bros., it really wants to be Smash Bros. As if including the word ’smash’ in the title wasn’t evidence enough, within minutes of turning the game on you are bound to notice more then a few striking similarities. Even the character select screen is reminiscent to that of  Smash Bros.

You know that announcer guy from Brawl who says the names of the selected characters? Imagine that they got that guy’s brother to do the announcing for this game and you begin to have an idea where TMNT: Smash Up is going.

If there is a word to describe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up!, the word would be approximation.

And indeed, nearly everything about the game feels like an approximation of Super Smash Bros. Yes, I obviously knew that it was trying to be a Smash Bros-esque experience, but I was thinking there would be more to it then ripping it off. You will notice the battles are almost identical to those of Brawl, except without the time and dedication, and nowhere near the polish and replayability. Now don’t get me wrong, TMNT: Smash Up! isn’t a bad game, but it lacks any sense of originality and feels quite rushed.

Like I said, the action feels like an approximation of the fighting from Super Smash Bros. The only real difference is that TMNT doesn’t use ’sumo rules’ like Smash Bros., which requires one to knock their opponents off of the screen after dealing considerable damage, and instead opts for a more traditional health bar. This does make the game feel ever so slightly less like Smash Bros., but at the same time makes it feel more like a basic fighter (though some would compare it to Jump Superstars for the Nintendo DS).

Another aspect of the fighting system that feels dumbed down from Smash Bros. are the special attacks of each character. In Smash Bros., every character has a wide array of attacks, including four special attacks, with each of those four special attacks being unique unto themselves. The four special attacks concept is still present in Smash Up, but here each character really only seems to have one special move stretched out into four (i.e. Shredder has an energy sword, and each of his specials is just a variant of him swinging said energy sword, similarly, Casey Jones swings a hockey stick, Leonardo throws his katana, ect.). The lack of variety in the character’s special attacks takes away a lot of the excitement from the matches and removes a lot of potential charm from the characters.

And speaking of the characters, I feel the roster could have been better chosen. Yes, the primary favorite Ninjs Turtles are there, like The Shredder, Splinter, Casey Jones, April O’neal and of course the four turtles themselves, but aside of them the rest of the character line up feels incredibly basic, maybe even a little generic. There are a few “surprise” secret characters that can be unlocked, but their presence in the game feels forced (by Ubisoft) and they don’t really mesh in with the other characters.

Of course you couldn’t expect the same kind of variety of characters as Smash Bros., seeing as that series is based around Nintendo’s many franchises whilst Smash Up is based soley on Ninja Turtles (save for the aforementioned surprise characters), but even still the roster feels incomplete compared to what it could be.

And the characters that are there seem terribly imbalanced. Casey Jones and The Shredder almost seem broken with how much easier they make a fight. And poor little Foot Ninja seems barely able to hold his own.

And I hate to admit it, but the whole Ninja Turtles motif feels a little tacked on, as the game doesn’t really seem to invoke nostalgia or fond memories of the franchise. Once again, Smash Bros. succeeds because it gives us a grand sense of atmosphere of the worlds of Nintendo, but Smash Up makes us feel like the Ninja Turtles are nothing but shallow avatars that are present for the sake of merchandising. It almost makes the Ninja Turtles seem dated and maybe even irrelevant, when instead it should have done the exact opposite.

If you compare that with the feeling Smash Bros. gives us, it leaves this message: Mario = timeless. Ninja Turtles = 80s.

I personally greatly like the Ninja Turtles franchise and I believe the series deserves better treatment. The previously mentioned Jump Superstars also does a better job at celebrating its franchises (the franchises of Shonen Jump for those who don’t know).

The Wii version of the game, once again like Smash Bros., invokes four different control variants, Wiimote, Wiimote and Nunchuck combo, Classic controller or Gamecube controller. I personally recommend the Gamecube or classic controllers as the game feels much more fluid when using those control schemes.

There are several different game modes, from versus matches, single player arcade mode, tag team mode (a Marvel vs Capcom-esque character swapping mode), a few sub games (once again akin to Smash Bros’ sub games) and an online mode, among others.

The online mode is fun and the load times can be incredibly quick (Brawl’s only weakness), but once again it offer very little in variety. When playing against others online your matches are limited in time and can be made even briefer if one player can manage to claim three knockouts in that time. You could say they crammed Brawl’s time and stock matches into one thing.

And as for the single player Arcade Mode… Well… It is basically just a few quick and easy matches (with a few Smash Bros-esque mini games after every few rounds) with a shamefully laughable storyline dumped over it.

I know I often times don’t linger on the story aspects of video games, since they are an artistic medium built on such things as Tetris (which is devoid of characters let alone story) and I usually focus on the gameplay aspects of a title, but TMNT: Smash Up boasts that its storyline was co-written by one of the writers of the 2007 TMNT movie, yet the story we receive is truly bad, and as I said, laughable. The story in question is presented with brief, generic dialogue and low quality storyboard-esque animations. Thankfully, the Arcade mode takes no longer then a few minutes to beat and mainly just serves as a means to unlock most of the hidden characters, though repeated playthroughs are required to unlock other characters, you can at least skip the cut scenes. I think maybe there was supposed to be more to this story, but that the game got a little rushed in development. It shows.

And as for the music… Well… If you keep your ears open you are bound to hear a few immatations of Brawl’s magnificent score.

Yes, I know I just keep saying “Smash Bros. did this better” and “Smash Up immatates that from Smash Bros.” But I’m sorry, there really isn’t a way to avoid it. The game is a clone of Smash Bros. Like I said, I knew from the beginning that it was supposed to be like Smash Bros., but the sad truth is that I don’t feel Smash Up has an identity of its own.

With that said, Smash Up is a good and fun game. You’re sure to get some good fun out of it for a while, and probably will enjoy playing as the different characters and trying out the different game modes. When looking at TMNT: Smash Up as its own game it is a solid fighter, but it just shares far so many similarities with Smash Bros. that it is difficult to look at it as its own game. And it is harder to appreciate when Smash Bros. already does everything so much better.

All in all, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up is good in its own way and I do recommend it to anyone who enjoys fighting games and Ninja Turtles, the fighting is decent and the level designs are imaginative and it isn’t exactly bad in most departments (except that Arcade Mode…for shame!), but when one has the option of playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, then Smash Up just feels like a warm up. Still good though.

Heroes in a half shell, turtle power!

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 10, rated)

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