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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Can you ever truly have too much of a good thing? If you’re a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan, this question must have sprung to mind at least once in recent years. Because in truth, the good things have been coming thick and fast.

2022 brought arguably the series' best beat 'em up ever in Shredder's Revenge and gave us a trip down memory lane with Konami's excellent Cowabunga Collection. Then last year saw things were taken in a brave new direction on the big screen with Mutant Mayhem, the Dimension Shellshock DLC brought roguelike action to Shredder's Revenge, and we got confirmation that a Last Ronin game was in development at THQ Nordic (albeit not for Switch). In short, the phrase "I love being a Turtle" had never rung truer.

Such a high calibre of news and releases had to slow down at some point. Introducing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants — a game that is by no means the series at rock bottom, but it's far from the shell-kicking highs of the recent past.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Wrath of the Mutants started life as an arcade cabinet in 2017 from Cruis’n Blast developer Raw Thrills. Inspired by Turtles in Time and set in the world of the 2012 Nickelodeon TMNT animated series, the cabinet was a nice enough throwback to the heroes in a half-shell’s beat-'em-up origins, albeit one that was never going to set the world on fire with its originality.

Seven years later, the original developer has teamed up with Cradle Games and publisher GameMill Entertainment to bring this shiny side-scroller to consoles. Before you jump to any conclusions based on the names involved, no, this is not a ‘GameMill Joint’ as far as performance is concerned. Things run pretty smoothly. There are no spelling mistakes (okay, the text jumps between ‘Krang’ and ‘Kraang’ now and then, but even the comics are guilty of that). The visuals are okay — if you’re a fan of the 2012 animated stylings, that is.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

From the likes of GameMill and Cradle Games (the developer of 2020’s Hellpoint), we’d count this as a win. But from Raw Thrills? The team behind one of the best arcade reimaginings in recent memory? It’s a bit of a cowabummer.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Wrath of the Mutants, like the long line of Turtles beat 'em ups that precede it, sees you playing as one of the four titular heroes, slashing through bad guys and taking on bosses with the help of items, power-ups, and ‘Turtle Power’ special attacks. There are five full stages to be tacked in any order (an improvement on the cabinet’s original three) each of which takes the battle to a different location that will be familiar to any Turtles fan: Dimension X, T.C.R.I, the Sewers, you get the picture.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Indeed, if you have never been lucky enough to play a Turtles game before, then this is probably about as inoffensive an introduction as you could get. The level of challenge leans towards the easier side of things, though you will notice enemies getting unfair jabs in on all three difficulty settings. Nothing is particularly broken. The 2012 voice cast even returns for some new lines of dialogue.

If you have no idea how good this franchise has been, then Wrath of the Mutants is just fine. But to those who have seen the glowing peaks of previous entries, this fineness grows to become the game’s biggest downfall.

Right off the bat, Wrath of the Mutants offers one game mode, ‘Play’. Notice how it’s not called ‘Story or ‘Campaign’? That’s because there’s little in the way of either (bar some still images and speech bubbles upon defeating the final boss). The advantage of having levels playable in any order is that you can start wherever you want. The disadvantage is that there’s little reason to come back for more.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

Here lies a rather big issue. Without any sense of replayability, Wrath of the Mutants is a $29.99 / £24.99 game that can be polished off in 90 minutes. Sure, there is some fun to be had in four-player couch co-op — show us a functional side-scrolling beat ‘em up where this isn’t the case — and the end-level leaderboard might ignite some sense of competition in you, but after seeing everything that it has to offer, we had no desire to dive back in for one more go.

This all comes down to the feeling of repetition that is drilled into the game from the get-go. The stages themselves, while expanded from the arcade original, all play exactly the same. Sure, you might be walking through another dimension or navigating the streets of New York City, but the enemy types stay pretty consistent, with not even a location-specific reskin being enough to hide the crossover.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Wrath of the Mutants’ boss encounters (two of which appear on each level). While it is nice to see a wide variety of TMNT mainstays make an appearance, the battles are near identical — Rocksteady fires his flamethrower before doing a ground pound, Tiger Claw throws out sharp spikes before doing a ground pound, Krang shoots a laser before... oh, you get the picture. Again.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

And the repetition doesn’t end there. The original cabinet housed three buttons (jump, attack, and ‘Turtle Power’), all of which faithfully find their way onto the console version. While this keeps things simple from a learning perspective, it also means that the combat can never hit the ‘pass me another quarter’ level of addictive gamefeel that a beat 'em up like this so desperately needs. Turtles in Time had even fewer buttons and still managed to produce a deeper combat system.

You might think that playing through the ‘campaign’ with another Turtle could mix things up a bit, but aside from a changed ‘Turtle Power’ animation, all of which serve to eliminate every enemy on the screen, each hero behaves exactly the same. You’re not going to defeat more Foot soldiers with Donnie’s increased range or Raph’s increased strength because no such definition exists — again, remember that the arcade releases were doing just this 30 years ago.

Without an underlying sense of fun, the cracks begin to show. As we said, Wrath of the Mutants runs just fine but you will notice an input delay that makes timing attacks and jumps harder than it needs to be. The voice cast’s new dialogue is a nice touch though the phrases are repeated so often that the threat of hearing Sean Astin shout "Pizza Time!" again is enough to make us flinch. The levels contain a lot of interactive objects, but none that are particularly satisfying enough to use. Come on, how can throwing a trash can at a robot not produce a dopamine rush?

Conclusion

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is not the steaming cash grab that you might have assumed by seeing the publisher involved. Neither is it anything close to the action-packed highs that we have seen from the heroes in a half-shell in recent years. Instead, we are left with a game that is perfectly serviceable but ultimately forgettable, let down by repetitive levels and combat and lacking any reason to go back for more. If, for some unknown reason, this is the only Turtles beat ‘em up that you can access, then you will likely have a perfectly fine 90 minutes of playtime. But the alternatives on Switch deliver much more memorable, satisfying TMNT experiences.

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