Hands-on: TMNT Turtles in Time Re-shelled (XBLA)
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Excuse us as we take a deep breath in order to introduce one of XBLA's upcoming titles for the "Summer of Arcade" -- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-shelled. The ridiculously long-titled downloadable is a complete HD remake of the classic Konami arcade brawler, coming first to the Xbox 360 (a PS3 version is in the works).
Our time with Ubisoft's TMNT update was brief, but only because the game suffers from what all arcade brawlers in downloadable form do -- the levels are extremely short. Coming from an age where difficulty was ramped up to suck as many quarters as it could from a player's pocket, the new version of TMNT allowed us to quickly blaze through two levels of the game without pumping another 25 cent piece into the Xbox 360 console.
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While the game will no doubt be beaten in less time than it takes for your local pizza joint to deliver an a fresh pie, it includes online co-op support for up to four characters to lengthen the experience. Sadly, the demo we played suffered from odd bouts of slowdown during gameplay. Button presses usually resulted in delayed reactions from our selected shelled hero, making gameplay frustrating.
While we think the new graphical style added to the game fits well, we worry the upgrade will result in a launch price that may not warrant a purchase for the amount of gameplay we expect. The overall experience could be fun if the bugs are ironed out, but we'd feel better if we didn't know the game will probably only last us a few hours before being forgotten on our hard drives.
Ed. Note: References to specific enemies have been removed to maintain accuracy between the Arcade and SNES versions of the Turtles in Time. Film enemies Tokka and Rahzar did appear in the original arcade title, replaced by original TMNT foes Bebop and Rocksteady in the SNES version. Tokka and Razhar later appeared as mini-bosses in an exclusive SNES level. Also, to be clear -- Tokka and Rahzar are still completely lame.
