TMNT has some fun platforming but the motion controlled combat is repetitive and outright boring...
The story line is basically the same as the movie except for a few little details and it's told through each different characters perspectives throughout this short story. Nothing special here, and if you haven't seen the movie you will still need to see it after playing because alot of the scenes are way different than they are in the movie. That's basically how all movie games are anyway so theres no suprise here. Gameplay wise is the true reason why this game fails, and it's a shame because when you play you will see that there is alot of potential left untouched. There are three different things to do throughout the game and they come at almost the exact same order each time. First off, you will have to run and jump to get to the next area of enemys. Suprisingly, this is where the game truely shines. The platforming allows you to do some great ninja-esque moves, allows you to be stealthy, lets you wall climb, wall-walk, jump from wall to wall sort of mario-esque and it all feels fluent. It's pretty fun to perform all of the various runs and jumps and it's really the best part of the game. IF the combat would have faired better, this game would have scored alot higher. Once you finally get to the next set of enemys, the game becomes boring, down-right stupid and very repetitive. There are only two ways to attack, to constantly swing the wii-mote to watch your character attack for you, or to shake the nunchuck and perform a spinning kick. Other than that all you can do is an occasional special or brother move and those barely last for more than a few seconds. Your arm will get very tired and you will get frustrated and doing nothing but swinging the wii-mote over and over again. I don't see how you can mess up a game ALL ABOUT NINJA'S and give it horrible, brain-dead combat. The third thing you get to do in this game is fight bosses and well, it's the exact same way as fighting regular enemys except for the fact that the thing your fighting now has a health bar. Whatever challenge that might have been here was stripped away because it's impossible to die and get a gameover because each time a turtle loses all his health, guess what you have to do to revive him...you gotta SWING THE WII-MOTE! Imagine that...Now that you know that you can't die unless you fall off an edge(which is rare)you might be wondering if theres any difficulty at all. I'll answer this simply...no there isn't. You will never get lost because if you need to climb a wall, it glows red. If you need to walk straight and then turn, there is some indication of this in the ground. There is never a time you will get stuck, or lost and you can't die in combat so all you have to do is put up with horrible combat and it's difficult to actually sit through this. Graphically, the game sucks as well. It doesn't even look as good as Gamecube games do and most of the objects, characters, enemys, weapons or anything at all look blurry and down-right bad. This game is just a step-above playstation graphics and that's just no acceptable these days. The Wii isn't built for graphics but we KNOW that it can handle WAY better than this. Sound wise, it's just as bad as the rest of the game. 9/10'th of the time, enemys don't make a sound when you hit them, which makes no sense one way or the other. The same sound effects are used over and over and the characters all say the same lines over and over as well. The voice-acting is alright considering they used the actors from the movie or people that sounded REALLY close them. Mainly mindless-rock music is played in the background or just nothing at all. There are a few extras you can unlock in the game by collecting the turtle-coins that are NEVER hidden in any of the stages, such as artwork, scenes from the movie and so on. You will also unlock minigames if you do well in the stages and you can also use the shells you collect to purchase "cheats". None of the cheats do anything major to the game but they can be comical sometimes. The mini-games range from pointless to broken and you wont try them more than once unless you are really, really bored.
Overall, the TMNT game on the Wii is the worst game I've played on the system and is down right a chore to play. I wouldn't even reccomend fans of the movie to play this, even little children will have a hard time liking this game. If you have any respect for the turtles, stay far away from this title...very far away...