Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare DS Review

     After the Turtles' franchise revival in the early 2000's there were loads of games released- all pretty much similar, and this one is no different.  In fact this is just an extension of TMNT 2: Battle Nexus on Game Boy Advance (GBA).

     Although this one eliminates the awful stealth the last game tried to implement.  But they also had not struck the gold mine Konami created back in the early 90's with the amazing arcade games and 16 bit beat-'em-ups.

     For Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare the fearsome four are sent through a highly repetitive 4 levels with 6 sections each.  But between the level's first segment and last each turtle gets their own individual pathway to follow- with slight story changes to fit, which include different endings.  Regardless of which Turtle you pick, you get to fight the same hordes of palette swapped enemy, broken by the occasional recognizable bosses such as their long time nemesis The Shredder.

     Somehow ignoring the inclusion of all the extra DS buttons we are treated to the usual special, attack, and jump buttons.  Causing predictable combos and special team-up moves.  Like I said earlier- this game is pretty much an extension of the last game with just barely enhanced graphics and sound.  They did however tack on some touch screen additives to make it DS compatible.  At context sensitive points a sound occurs signaling you may tap the turtle pictured and one of the non-played brothers appears to assist with an attack.
     Near as I could tell- the controls are just as frustrating and unresponsive as the last game.  Enemies can hit you without problem, but some of your attacks will go unregistered through them.  Plus there is the massive problem of never knowing which of your attacks will hit multiple enemies, and which will leave you wide open for a retaliatory beat down from an angry Triceraton.

     There are also touch screen mini games of a sort that appear throughout a few of the levels and cause players to scramble for the stylus.  Sometimes you need to rotate a handle or slide electronic puzzle pieces back and forth in a short amount of time (or suffer injury and time loss) to proceed.  All of them feel out of place in what should be a straightforward action game.

     Another part of the game that feels way off key is the escort missions that crop up (which have time limits for no explicable reason).  One of them you are tasked with escorting Fugitoid and have to pick him up and carry him around.  Another you have to solve mini-puzzles and open doors with Leatherneck.  They are downright annoying- slowing down game progress while you figure out what you're supposed to do because most of the mini portions have no instructions.  Most are simple to solve but a couple are off because they don't tell you what the goal is.
     Sure, they did great in adding the extra characters, but at the cost of escort missions?  Not worth it in my book.

     I might add there is a multiplayer mode, that I sadly could find no one to join, and the second time a "Battle Mode" is misnamed.  Battle Mode is once again a crystal collecting challenge set of missions.

     At most this is mild entertainment for a TMNT fan, at worst a dull and forgettable 2d Turtles game.  Mutant Nightmare is another trip to platforming and puzzle solving with small bouts of combat instead of returning to the tried and true brawlers that made the Turtle games great in the 90's.  One might've thought that Konami would've learned that these kinds of TMNT games aren't what the players are looking for.


     For more of my Turtle posts: [ TMNT ]

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