CHENNAI: Last week, I played a game that reimagines famous Renaissance Era artists as turtles that love pizza. Unlike their real-life animal counterparts, the mutant turtles also pack a mean punch. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge had me longing to feel nostalgic about a franchise that I was never sold on as a child. It is a fast-paced, no-frills beat-em-up game. TMNT Shredder’s Revenge has almost everything I like in a videogame. Let me explain.
Shredder’s Revenge has a classic, arcade game vibe. An extension of the simple and colourful artstyle, the gameplay itself is also very approachable. There are only a few things that the turtles can do. Turtles can jump. Turtles can roll. Turtles can punch. Turtles can hurl the enemy across the room like a basketball. There are around four operable buttons in whole. But the loading screen displays 20 different control combinations that employ interesting attacks to the enemies on screen. The approachability of the game lies in the fact that you end up seeing something cool on screen no matter the order in which you smash the buttons. It’s a switch-off-your-brain-and-play kinda game.
There is hardly any strategy in combat, and once you catch the rhythm in the combat, it feels like a wild dance-fight with the ninja enemies. It also packs in one of the best features of a classic arcade game — it’s short. If you are good enough, you can finish the entire game in a single sitting. The game has a total of 16 levels. It has a sufficiently involving story, with short cutscenes that describe the spiral of chaos. But most importantly, co-operative gameplay exists, with up to six players battling simultaneously!
Multiple players can make the screen seem cramped and make the gameplay confusing. But it’s nice to destroy the bosses in a jiffy. It also helps that the game tracks knock-out stats, so there’s potential for healthy competition between your co-op buddies.
If you’re done with the campaign story and have not had enough of the game, TMNT has a second mode. The arcade mode has limited continues and no checkpoints — so if you’re a master of the beat-em-up genre, this should be easy. TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge developed by Tribute Games released just last month, and is available for the PC, Xbox, PlayStation and the Switch. You can catch it for free with the Xbox game pass now.