For the last half of the game, the cannon fodder Foot soldiers disappear, and Krang’s Rock Soldiers become the common minion opponents. These fellows are stupidly tough’ the Turtles’ attacks barely dent them. Compounding the problem are rocket launchers, miniature Krang UFOs shooting stasis bubbles, and random blasts of lightning from the sky. Slogging through this is the opposite of fun; I’d say I reverted to shell form (lost all my health) twenty to thirty times on the first level these Rock Soldiers appear. One of the last levels has you literally riding in an elevator as wave after wave of these brutal minions appear. In the close quarters, you can hardly avoid being smashed over and over again before dying. It was like the scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier where Cap beats up all the Hydra agents in the elevator, except a giant purple Rock Soldier was Cap and I was the bad guy.
Even worse than the poor game balance and level design are the bugs. At one point, a switch I was supposed to use did not spawn, and so I was stuck fighting Rock Soldiers for ten minutes until time expired… at which point, the game moved on as if I had pulled the switch. One cut scene repeated itself after every boss, while another entire scene had no character voices. The final cut scene in the game cuts off early, even when viewed in the movie gallery menu afterward. I’ll never know if the Turtles saved the city! There’s some weirdness with boss fights as well; once, in the Rocksteady fight, Bebop appeared halfway through, and we died. Retrying it, Bebop never appeared, leaving only Rocksteady. The last boss in the game was so easy that I suspected it was a fakeout, and the real one would appear, or it would be a multi-stage boss. It wasn’t. I can’t say I was disappointed because I was ready to be done, but still, what a letdown.
If all this wasn’t bad enough, Mutants in Manhattan let me down one more time, and that’s with the implementation of co-op. There is no local co-op, only online. You cannot drop in and out of a game, either. Your turtle’s items and levels from co-op carry over into story mode, but your level progression doesn’t. There are team-up attacks, and you can revive one another, but these don’t feel very cooperative since you can do the same thing with the computer controlled turtles anyway. It’s basically the bare minimum implementation of co-op.
Mutants in Manhattan is an overall disappointment. The foundation for a nice little co-op brawler is there, but the bugs, extreme spikes in difficulty, poor level design, and the ineffectiveness of the Turtles in general make the whole experience a bad one. If you relish a challenge, and don’t mind the repetitiveness, you might find something to like here. For most gamers, especially the casual and younger ones the game is likely to appeal to, TMNT Mutants in Manhattan is best avoided.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Play together as one of the four iconic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as you take on Shredder and the rest of the Foot Clan
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.