Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

There seem to be the beginnings of some good ideas in TMNT: Out of the Shadows, but none of them are properly fleshed out. Instead, these shortcomings are simply covered up with more half-followed-through mechanics, resulting in a mess of a game.

It may have a few good ideas, but all of them are poorly executed.

Terrible, and offers nothing as a video game or even as a piece of nostalgia. The ugly turtle models didn’t bring back any memories of the fun cartoon of my youth, and the gameplay is among the most unenjoyable experiences I’ve had during my time as a gamer. There is no circumstance under which anyone should play this train wreck of a game.

Ninja Turtles are back from hell with their new TV show. But if the expectations for a well-crafted game were high, everything went wrong. Graphics, animations, bugs... the game reminded us of the poorest hours of the bad videogame age. Turtles fans, keep your memories from Turtles in Time on Super NES, it's clearly another dimension.

Activision is wasting good potential with this unfinished mess of a Turtles game. It isn't even worth the time of trying out the demo.

Game-breaking glitches and a poor camera make TMNT: Out of the Shadows a bruised and battered shell of what it could have been.

To be a turtle trapped in a game this bad is a truly wretched fate...The game barely functions on a basic level.

If Turtles are your thing, you might want to put aside the concerns for the bugs and pull down the demo from Xbox Live. It is more than playable, just don’t expect to have a smooth ride. On the other hand, the story is light but so is the source material – it would have been nice to see episodic content come out for an otherwise compelling realization of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Inexcusable glitches, unresponsive controls, broken combat, bizarre gameplay design (hacking games, really?), unfair enemies and completely unnecessary loading times make for a monumental disappointment.

Out of the Shadows has all the trimmings of a fantastic brawler, but none of it works as it should. For every highlight the game showcases there are multiple failures: shoddy controls, a complicated combat system, and far too many glitches.

Despite the brevity and repetition, plenty of bugs plague these turtles. From low-level quirks like characters getting caught on objects in the environment, to high-level issues like A.I. partners abandoning us or a hacking minigame causing freezes, the amount of glitches in Out of the Shadows is pretty alarming.

Avoid like you would a corpse flower. [Nov 2013, p.95]

Bugs like this render the game almost unplayable. With patience and no small amount of luck, it is possible to progress in the game, but it's simply not worth it.

What we are left with is a dull, broken button-masher of a campaign, a risible, barely playable multiplayer game, and a couch co-op which puts most players on a level playing field with Mr. Magoo.

How can such a bad game be part of the Summer of Arcade? Those games need to be special. This Turtles game is definitely not.