With a lack of any sense of nostalgic identity, Re-Shelled reveals itself as a shallow experience stepped in mediocrity.
Re-Shelled seems to have its heart in the right place: an update of a beloved game featuring crisp HD graphics, online play with leaderboards, et cetera, et cetera. Unfortunately it seems that fate would have its cards stacked against this iteration of Turtles in Time - what seems like a good idea inevitably turns out as a poor update at best with several key design errors dooming the game to eternal damnation.
Re-Shelled lacks any kind of nostalgic value for anyone who has ever played any version of Turtles in Time. Most would probably agree that they have the fondest memories of the Super Nintendo version, and Ubisoft's decision to base the remake of the Arcade version - a version which has significantly less content and nostalgic value attached to it - is the first key mistake in this game's untimely demise.
Right off the bat we already have less and poorer quality content by not basing the remake on the superb Super Nintendo version. The second biggest mistake is that for whatever reason - most likely due to legal issues - Ubisoft has decided to forgo including the original music by completely replacing it with a brand new soundtrack. This would be fine if it was an update of the original game's music, but all of the songs in Re-Shelled are brand new tracks allegedly "inspired" by the original themes. Turtles in Time without its iconic soundtrack simply falls flat on its face from an audio perspective. The new tracks fail to impress and barely grasp any motifs from the original tracks, the majority of which are barely even recognizable when heard. The boss theme for example is easily one of the most iconic pieces of music from the game - the new version is completely incoherent and sounds nothing like the original. The new compositions come across as uninspired and halfhearted attempts at best.
In an attempt to modernize the game, a few tweaks have been added; the turtles as well as enemies can now attack in more than two direction rather than just left and right. The AI does not respond particularly well to this change thus making it even easier to mash your way through the hordes of enemies. Most importantly though, is that somewhere in transition the enemies seem to have lost their drive for battle tactics and really just kind of stand around waiting to die. While you could only attack left and right in the original game, you could still move up and down around the playing field to reposition yourself during fights, so the playing field still had quite a bit of depth for a 2D brawler. Unfortunately this strategy has been lost in translation and the enemies that do attack don't really seem to possess any real identifiable attack patterns, save for the boss characters. This makes combat feel relatively uninteresting and mainly just feel like a game of "mash the x button to win".
Most of the turtles' moves have made the transition to re-shelled but a few abilities seem to have been lost along the way for seemingly no apparent reason. While performing a descending jumping attack you can no longer attack multiple times in the air while descending more slowly. You are limited to attacking once prior to hitting the ground, which in certain situations voids attack strategies that existed previously. Slide kicks have also been removed - in the Super Nintendo version of the game you were able to slide on the ground and do a kick attack, something which is completely absent now. Special attacks have had their limitations removed - what were once powerful moves that could knock down or outright kill all enemies in your immediate vicinity have been reduced to weaker versions that come at no life cost penalty whatsoever to the player. Removing life force at the cost of more powerful attacks may very well be a dated gameplay mechanic in the modern age, but the attacks by all means have lost their purpose by becoming infinitely spammable, weaker versions of their former selves.
Turtles in Time Re-Shelled is not a poorly made game; it looks great and it functions as intended - but the game is simply boring. Without the iconic graphics, music or sound - even the somewhat botched gameplay, there's really just nothing here than does anything to impress the player. While stripping the game of all nostalgic value and then failing to add anything substantial to the experience in addition to also basing the game on the inferior arcade version, you're left with a relatively shallow experience that is over just as soon as you bought it. There is little to keep you coming back for more, and even the most hardcore achievement hunters will find little reason to waste their time trying to max out their gamerscore with Turtles in Time Re-Shelled. Not even the 4-player co-op turns out to be much fun.
If you're absolutely desperate to experience a childhood favourite or are a recent fan of the Turtles you may find some temporary enjoyment in this game, but you'll most likely ultimately end up feeling disappointed. Prospective players would be much better off finding a way to replay the fantastic Super Nintendo version of Turtles in Time and saving themselves 800 Microsoft points for something much more worth their hard-earned time and money.