TMNT: Smash Up

by Camjo-Z on Sep 30th, 2014

Sm·ash·Clone 
/soom’ASH-clone/

Noun
1. A game that blatantly rips off Super Smash Bros.

Day 1: Hello, my future readers. Through a series of very (in?)convenient events I have been stranded on a deserted island with nothing but a Wii, a TV, a generator and a copy of TMNT: Smash Up to my name. I don’t know when I’m going to be rescued, but I have decided to keep a journal of my time playing this game to while away the hours now that I have collected enough food and supplies to last me a few months. My undertaking begins tomorrow.

Day 2: Today I decided to play through the game’s vast wealth of single player content. To kick things off I began with the Arcade Mode, where you can guide the four Turtles as well as Casey Jones and April ‘O Neal (who is now a ninja too apparently) through a brand new story. The back of the game’s box touts it as being “co-written by one of TMNT’s creators, Peter Laird!” I suspect that the addendum “whilst in a coma” was left out, because there is nothing interesting, unique, or even exciting about this game’s plot.

A summary: The Turtles and their friends are all hanging out and decide to beat the shit out of each other for laughs, and then Shredder and his niece show up so they beat them up too. If you manage to slog through the entire thing, you’ll get a throwaway unique ending for each character as well as the option to unlock a new playable fighter. I should add that the story mode cutscenes and endings are little more than cheap black and white drawings that make Zelda CD-i cutscenes look lush and gorgeous by comparison.

The only way I can describe the gameplay is “stiff”. Every character moves like they have arthritis, attacks are extremely static and visually similar making it difficult to discern what the opponent is doing, and cheap tactics are abundant, such as repeatedly grabbing onto poles and spamming blazing fast kick attacks. This is going to be painful.

Oh, and everybody glows. What a lazy solution to the problem of all the characters being too dull and dark.

Day 5: I heard a noise outside my hut today. When I went to investigate, I came upon a sprightly young chimp! I invited him in and he quickly took notice of TMNT: Smash Up. When I asked him if he was interested in playing the game, he instantly grabbed a Wiimote and joined in the “fun”. We played a few matches, and to my surprise he beat me every time despite having just started! It’s almost as if the game requires no skill at all!

Day 7: The chimp and I tried a new stage today, called The Sewers. When you touch the floor, a gator pops up and instantly kills you. I am sure that the developers thought this was hilarious when they were making it. Coincidentally, I think it would be hilarious if they too were eaten by gators.

Day 8: We tried another new stage today. The Jungle. They reused the gator thing again. I noticed the corner of the chimp’s mouth visibly twitch when he was eaten for the fifth time.

Day 9: We tried a third stage today. The Cruise Liner. There are no gators.

They added sharks instead.

The chimp left the hut upon seeing this. He hasn’t returned. I do not blame him.

Day 14: I finally unlocked all of the stages, two of which are based on Rabbids Go Home and Splinter Cell. In comparison, there is exactly one stage based on a recognizable location from the TMNT series: the Technodrome. However, I did not know about this stage until today when a passing seagull happened to drop a scrap of paper with a code on it. When I input this code into the game, the stage unlocked.

Let me repeat: the sole way to unlock the only stage actually from the TMNT franchise is with a secret code – a code not obtainable in the game itself, might I add.

Day 27: Out of boredom I decided to try unlocking all of the characters. Here are just a few of the classic choices they have included:

• Foot Ninja, one the generic thugs that never wins a single fight in any incarnation of the Ninja Turtles

• Nightwatcher, who is actually just Raphael cosplaying as a goth Samus Aran

• Utrominator, who looks like Krang but isn’t and has appeared once in the entire TMNT series

• A Raving Rabbid™ from Ubisoft’s Raving Rabbids™ series

• A second Raving Rabbid™ from Ubisoft’s Raving Rabbids™ series dressed as a Ninja Turtle

• A third Raving Rabbid™from Ubisoft’s Raving Rabbids™ series dressed as Sam Fisher™ from Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell™ series

As you can see much time and care was put into lovingly crafting the roster for the fans.

Here’s a funny story for you: this picture is on Smash Up’s official website, supposedly representing the full roster. See those 7 question marks? Yeah, 3 of those are just the aforementioned Rabbids, and the other 4 are lies since the game only has 16 characters.

Day 43: I dedicated the day to trying out the trophy mode. Similar to Brawl’s trophy system (and by similar I mean it’s the same fucking thing) you can play a shitty minigame where you have to aim golden turds at moving trophies to unlock them in the gallery. You can also build your own generic trophies to give away to anyone who beats you in the game’s Wi-Fi battle mode. Since the Nintendo Wi-Fi service is long dead and nobody in their right mind would have played online anyway, this feature is worthless, much like the game itself.

Day 60: If you are reading this message, it means I have likely killed myself. Despite being worked on by some of the staff from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, TMNT: Smash Up actually manages to play worse than any other Smash clone I’ve ever seen. This could be overlooked if the license was at least used to some effect, but instead we get a big middle finger to TMNT fans with a roster selected by brain dead orangutans and a whole bunch of unwanted guest characters and stages put in solely to shill more Ubisoft games.

I no longer wish to be rescued, for I cannot bear to exist on the same spectral plane as this abomination of a game. Goodbye cruel world, and fuck you Ubisoft.

Categories: Reviews