TMNT Smash-Up [Wii, PS2]

Posted October 20, 2009 by Benjamin Blank in Featured, Featured Home, Reviews, Wii.

Reviewed On The Wii

Forms of media often get compared to each other. It’s through comparison that an example can be explained or an audience can relate to what the critic is talking about. But that does not mean it’s ok to call TMNT Smash-Up a Super Smash Bros clone.

I suppose Ubisoft didn’t really help themselves here. The back of the box says “Prepare for an all-out BRAWL.” The whole advertising campaign seemed to be based around the idea that if the developers say brawl enough people will care, the game even has “smash” in the title. And yeah… TMNT Smash-Up uses the Super Smash Bros Brawl engine.

And from watching this game in motion, it does look like a Smash Bros clone, down to the finer details. But once you spend at least ten minutes with the title, it becomes obvious this is actually much more rewarding than Nintendo’s efforts.

Battles, for example, are a much more precise event. You have no big screen filling attacks that you can use to spam your way to victory, no characters have highly unfair advantages, and everything is very well balanced. Instead you’re forced to rely on a character’s small tweaks and attributes, as well as their basic moves list for combos.

And instead of Smash Bros air based battles, with cheap, over the top moves like turning you into an egg, swallowing you or electrocuting you, Smash-Up is primarily far more ground based, and much more skill oriented. This in turn creates a toned down version of the Smash Bros fighting, and it works superbly. While the action can get pretty intense, and yeah the screen will occasionally zoom ridiculously far out, you’ll rarely lose control of the action.

Along with these more controlled fights, Smash-Up offers an intuitive moves system. The quick attacks and strong attacks return, using the same directional input for different moves to execute, but a grab/throw move has been added. Press both quick and strong attack together and a character will grab the other, press a direction and you’ll pull off a throw in that direction. The throws are used in conjunction with the normal attacks to pull off custom combos. Smash-Up also uses a stamina bar, which, like more traditional fighters, depletes through damage.

This all in turn creates a fighter that keeps the action and intensity of Smash Bros, but brings it right down to a more controllable level, leaving behind all of the frustration and confusion Smash Bros had. Items even make a return but have been refitted as powers the Turtles can use at any given time once obtained. It’s with this that Smash-Up actually feels like a fighting game, and the more you get into it, the less this title feels like Smash Bros at all.

TMNT Smash-Up, although not tied to any particular Turtle timeline, certainly sways more towards one era than another. Remember that pretty good CGI film a few years back? Well that’s where the art direction has come from at least. Everything else seems to be a miss match of post 90s Turtles.

You get your four turtles, as well as Shredder, Splinter, Casey Jones and one or two other well known characters (apparently April can fight now, but at least she still wears yellow). The thing to note here is the absence of key Turtles characters, and the small number of characters available.

From a franchise that’s been as long running as Turtles has it’s just odd that we’ve got the Utrominator instead of Bebop or Rocksteady. And the roster is even filled in with three Raving Rabbids for some godforsaken reason. Although yes, they’re funny, but that’s not the point; they’re not from the Turtles.

The game does look brilliant, however, and is easily better looking then the previous TMNT game on either PS3 or 360. Models are rendered beautifully with extremely slick animations. And levels are full of detail with not an ounce of slow down in sight.

Outside of the fights there’s not much. There’s a survival mode which will hold interest as long as people will care for it. Arcade/story which is acceptable in length and presentation, (the comic book cut scenes will divide fans but they’re excellent fan service to the original comics). And mission mode, which is too simplified and a bit too easy.

The focus is mainly on multiplayer fighting, leaving solo fighters in the dust somewhat. And while there is online, it’s governed by those damn friend codes. The biggest downfall of Smash-Up is that there’s not a lot outside of the fights, and everything can be seen an unlocked in around a day. And for a game that is based on Brawl, it’s a quite a punch in the gut that there’s not more fan service for the universe this game is portraying.

In the end Smash-Up as a fighter is heads above anything else on the Wii, but as an overall package the lack of Turtle fan service, and lasting single player content will make it pale in comparison to Brawl. What Smash-Up does right, it does it better then anyone else, but it doesn’t quite match up to its competitors in everyway.

Tagged as Game Arts, PlaySation 2, Review, Smash-Up, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TMNT, Ubisoft, Wii