Review: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANTS UNLEASHED Heroes in an incomplete game

A few weeks ago, Outright Games released the developed Aheartfulofgames project Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed. It is a 3D platform fighting game available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4/5 and Xbox consoles.

I was really excited because I had fun Mutant chaos as well as my son who loves turtles and this offered the chance to create more bonding while we played. I want to thank Outright Games for providing me with a code for the Nintendo Switch, although all thoughts below are my own.

Set in the aftermath of Paramount Pictures’ acclaimed 2023 film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, play as the four brothers to uncover the mystery behind a new kind of threat that is wreaking havoc across New York City.

Take on 10 all-new mutants, or “Mewbies” for short, each with 5 different forms of mutation set to level up the challenge. Boasting high-energy gameplay, it utilizes the Turtles’ unique weapons and fighting styles, from Mikey’s brawler-style melee attacks to Donnie’s ability to wield the bō staff.

The game also sees the return of the titular brothers’ voice actors, with Nicolas Cantu as Leonardo, Brady Noon as Raphael, Micah Abbey as Donatello and Shamon Brown Jr. as Michelangelo, as the quartet reprises their film roles .

Mutants unleashed it’s pretty much what you’d expect at first glance. Multi-level games that have some light platforming elements with lots of beat ’em up gameplay.

You can play as any of the four turtles (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello or Raphael) of the Mutant chaos universe with other characters such as Splinter and April appearing as NPCs.

As you progress through the levels, you will gain experience that you can spend at home to get different abilities for each turtle. In addition to the fighting part of the game, you will have story elements where you have to travel to certain locations by activating dialogue with NPCs which will then unlock additional abilities for the turtles.

It’s definitely a game that has core gameplay that some players might jump into and really be on a different level.

While the game works in most cases, it’s really hard to recommend it, at least on Nintendo Switch. The overall aesthetic of the game works well and matches the movie, but if you don’t like the aesthetic, it doesn’t matter.

The gameplay is fun and works for the most part with most performance issues occurring during dialogue and loading screens. Unfortunately, the loading screens are terrible and there are too many of them. When I first loaded the game, it seemed to be pretty slow loading and it was so bad that not only did I get bored and frustrated, but my son also got bored waiting to play with me.

Next, I started timing the loading screens and the fastest one was around 38 seconds while the longest one was around 1 minute and 30 seconds! I’ve also had others that seemed even longer than this.

Combine these long loading times with the fact that a good portion of the game consists of choosing a level, waiting for the loading screen, having a dialogue/cutscene occur with durations probably ranging from 1-3 minutes, waiting a ‘another loading screen and then you can play the levels which are all quite short and you spend most of your time not even playing. This doesn’t make me feel good.

Also, I know the Switch isn’t powerful and the art style is very stylized, but there are still areas of the graphics that don’t look great. The low poly count, the staring and soulless eyes, the cropping of the model, etc. they all contribute to a truly disappointing presentation.

Overall, I really think the writing of Mutants unleashed it’s very well made and does a great job of capturing the same tone as Mutant chaos. Honestly, the writing is probably the game’s biggest strength.

Unfortunately, this leads to another problem I have. Some dialogue scenes are voiced, but many of them (particularly those that don’t lead to a fighting game level) are not voiced.

If you have these levels designed solely to present conversations that develop relationships between characters and those are the ones without voice recordings, I think that’s a huge misstep.

If that wasn’t enough, I noticed some bugs. First, little windows pop up to show you how to use new moves and abilities, and sometimes they don’t want to disappear. Secondly, there was one level that I got about halfway through and then the camera went back to the previous area and then I had to restart the entire level to continue it.

One area that isn’t a problem in itself but is useful to know about is this Mutants unleashed only supports up to two players. You can’t have a group together playing while all four turtles take on bad guys.

On the bright side, most, if not all, of the issues I mentioned should be things that could be fixed via patches. Better optimization could lead to much better loading times and performance. Audio lines can be recorded and linked into a still image. Graphical improvements can also be made, to some extent. Unfortunately, I don’t expect any patch to actually fix these issues.

If Aheartfulofgames patches Mutants unleashed to at least make the loading times bearable, then perhaps I could recommend the game on Switch. Who knows, maybe the new Nintendo console will be able to play games without any of these problems. Perhaps the overall experience is better on other platforms. For Nintendo Switch, however, this game is very poor.