Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed review — Our heroes in a half-shell return in a … light RPG?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed is not what I expected. I fully admit that is my issue, as 30+ years of TMNT games have conditioned me to expect beat ‘em ups, which is not a good summary of Mutants Unleashed, despite having a decent amount of combat. Instead, what I got was a light RPG set in the TMNT universe, complete with ally bonds to form and strengthen, unlockable skills, photos to take, art to learn about, and a surprisingly long, albeit simple, story.

Mutants Unleashed takes place soon after the events of the Mutant Mayhem movie, with our heroes moving out of the shadows and into the limelight, alongside other mutants who have flocked to New York to live what they hope to be a judgment-free existence. Unfortunately, coexistence proves to be harder than anticipated, as many mutants begin behaving erratically, leading to a curfew being imposed in various sections of the city. Upset by this turn of events, April O’Neil and our heroes in a half shell take it upon themselves to figure out the cause of the disturbance and how to again achieve harmony. 

Gameplay takes place over nearly two months, with a night and day cycle that is triggered by completing missions, participating in bonding and training sessions, or activating power-ups. Your sewer lair serves as a central hub where you can use XP earned from missions to upgrade abilities, train in the dojo, and speak with a revolving door of characters throughout the game. Leaving the sewers takes you to a world map, which highlights locations available to fast travel to, along with which locations have active ally bonding conversations, special missions, and your current story mission. Since the story missions must be completed within a specific in-game timeframe, time management key, as early on you will not have enough time to participate in all available ally talks and training sessions before your mission deadline. Thankfully, later missions provide a much wider berth of time to complete tasks.

Most ally missions are aligned with specific turtles and completing them will unlock new ability tiers for that turtle, so your central focus at first will most likely be on participating in missions that allow you to upgrade the turtle you plan to use most. A few ally missions do unlock upgrades for all turtles, as well as new enhancers such as enemies dealing less damage or being able to revive upon death, or just mutagens which may grant more health, higher attack damage, etc. The bulk of your gameplay will stem from the main missions though, so let’s discuss those.

Main missions progress the overarching story and lead you to many different settings. These missions are relatively short and typically consist of finding collectibles such as VHS tapes which increase XP, fighting off a few stray enemies, and tackling harder enemies in graded fights. Graded fights typically consist of multiple enemies, often in a few waves, which grade you based on your performance. The higher the grade, the more XP earned at the end of the mission. After a mission is complete, you’ll find yourself back in the sewer with some time to prepare for upcoming missions. 

So, this is a different approach to TMNT games, and one that many might say is long overdue. But is it any good? Well, yes and no. I fully appreciate what the game is going for but found myself constantly anxious to move on to the next set piece, rather than partake in more bonding talks and cutscenes. It doesn’t help that the pacing of conversations is awkward, with longer than necessary silence between lines which kills any momentum the game might otherwise have. Unfortunately, the combat itself is also rather lackluster, with unimpressive enemy designs and battles which end far too quickly. 

If it sounds like I am being harsh, I don’t mean to be. I do actually respect Mutants Unleashed and found the game surprisingly endearing the more I played, but I just feel that the whole experience could have been fleshed out more. Ally missions are a unique concept but are mainly limited to simple conversations in which the player is not able to participate, aside from one fighting mission per ally. Allowing the player to choose from a dialogue tree would have benefited the proceedings immensely, or even allowing the player to participate in mini games with the allies. You tend to meet them in specific areas where events are taking place, such as flying a drone, swimming, podcasting, etc. It would have been nice to be able to play a mini game at these events to feel like an active participant, rather than sit through a few line exchanges and then leave. I did enjoy some of the moments that stemmed from the ally missions, but ultimately most feel like filler rather than integral parts of the story.

The variety of areas you explore is nice, but the constant barrage of invisible barriers and fixed camera angles hell-bent on not showing you anything of importance, essentially means you will do nothing but be funneled down a linear path, ultimately participating in a few mandatory graded fights, and then the mission ends. There is very little exploration, which is unfortunate in levels that normally look enticing to explore and are designed to feel large. Eventually, you’ll find yourself ignoring nearly everything aside from what is directly in front of you. There are a few small areas where you can stray from the beaten path, especially to find art, tokens, or various canisters, but these normally are very small diversions and are few and far between.

All of this would be salvageable if the combat was impressive. On the surface, it would seem as if combat would be the highlight here, especially with an unlockable skill tree with various abilities and a parry/block system that rewards good timing. But in theory, you’ll find yourself simply mashing buttons as one unimpressive mutant after another assaults you. There’s rarely a need for strategy, aside from ensuring you are never in a position to be ganged up on, and despite all the moves you can unlock a simple basic attack usually will suffice if spammed enough. Sure, there’s depth here for those who have the patience to learn the intricacies of the unlockable abilities, but fights are over so quickly that I never saw the point. Again, the choice to have fixed camera angles interferes here, often obscuring enemies or leaving you attacking an enemy far away from the camera, unable to fully distinguish what is occurring. The further you progress into the game, the more frustrating the camera issues become. Don’t get me started on the sheer number of times I fell off of platforms while fighting because the camera angle obscured the edges.

That said, each turtle does have a distinct fighting style, and the game’s initial missions do a great job of putting you in the shoes of each turtle for a few moments, thus allowing you to get a feel for their combat style. This is important as later the game opens up, allowing you to choose any turtle you’d like when you begin a mission. I feel players will get the most out of the combat if they stick with one turtle and focus on that turtle’s upgrades and learning their skill set, in hopes of achieving the S rank for all fights. During fights, players can also call on their brothers to help, which is a neat gimmick, though while I expected the brother to come in with fists flying, I instead was met with items being dropped for me or a simple quick, but powerful, attack.

Mutant Mayhem boasts about having a two-player couch co-op, of which I am normally a huge fan, but much of the game is not really laid out for a good co-op experience. The ally missions, constant cutscenes, and sewer lair seem all based around only one player. The main missions make more sense with two players, but the condensed spaces, short fights, and lack of memorable situations mean that co-op isn’t that fun. I always appreciate the addition of co-op, so I don’t want to talk down on it much, but aside from young children, I’m not sure who will enjoy playing this game with a friend.

All said, there is quite a bit of game here, totaling nearly 15 hours for a first playthrough. This includes the main missions, ally bonds to fully flesh out, canisters to find that can upgrade damage, health, and your brother assist charges, tokens that unlock fortunes which then serve as bonuses during missions, civilian missions, contagion missions, pizza delivery missions, a photo app, a digimutants app which allows you to scan mutants and learn more about them, a wide variety of abilities to unlock for each turtle, and art pieces scattered throughout which you can snap a picture of to learn about from Mondo. Aside from skill unlocks I didn’t find myself too terribly thrilled with uncovering any of these items, but I am always happy when a game adds collectibles in to entice players to explore or replay.

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