Platinum's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Game is Nostalgia Made New

When I think "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "video game," I think of old arcade cabinets lining the back wall of a pizza parlor. Konami's Turtles in Time, to be precise. That was when TMNT video games were at their best: the comics were yet a decade old, the television cartoon I watched with gusto every weekend even younger, and the whole idea was still fresh. More than 20 years later, the pizza-gobbling Turtles themselves are still popular, with varying degrees of success in the gaming department.

It's easy to be hesitant about Platinum Games' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan based on the disastrous turnout of some more recent TMNT games, including 2013's Out of the Shadows. But publisher Activision has done the franchise a boon by handing it to the action game masters at Platinum, the result being a high-energy brawler with a generous helping of vivid color, satisfying combat, and pun-laden banter.

Mutants in Manhattan may be the best use of the TMNT property in video games since the Konami days. Players can forge ahead solo or in online co-op with up to four other players, scouring Manhattan for series baddies like the pink rockabilly hog Bebop. When playing solo, you can switch between Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, and Leonardo on the fly, making use of their various special abilities. In co-op, each of you chooses a turtle to stick with.

Together, you can jump, climb buildings, slide along rooftop railings, and use your shell as a parasail to get across the city. Spunky reporter April O'Neil shouts objectives at you as you traverse the map, crunching through hordes of bad guys and seeking out the ringleader. Fights and cutscenes are accompanied by banter that feels pulled straight from the old cartoons--which makes sense, considering the script was penned by Tom Waltz, the lead writer on IWD Publishing's present line of TMNT comics.

The whole package feels organic, and although it is heavily inspired by the more recent Nickelodeon cartoon and comics, Mutants in Manhattan feels like it's been plucked right out of the Turtles' past. It's a heady mixture of action and nostalgia, a relic but also something new. It's what TMNT in video games needed.