The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property is no stranger to beat ’em ups. From older classics like Turtles in Time to more recent ones like Shredder’s Revenge, this is a series that has often shined brightly in this particular genre. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to knock the ball out of the park with each swing of the bat. TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants largely flew under the radar for many when it first launched for arcade machines in 2017, and now, developers Raw Thrills and Cradle Games and publisher GameMill Entertainment are bringing it over to PC and consoles, with new content to boot. And though it’s a functional game in the barest sense, it ends up falling short in some key areas where a beat ’em up can’t really afford to stumble.

Right off the bat, TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants makes that much abundantly clear. On a surface level, and for anyone who’s only looking to engage with the game in casual fashion, there’s certainly some mindless fun to be had here, especially if you play it in local co-op, but the game lacks the sort of depth and mechanical tightness that you’d want from a Turtles beat ’em up. Your moveset, for instance, is surprisingly limited. You can attack enemies using one button, jump up using another, and acquire the occasional pick up or item to throw at nearby foes. You can also unleash a special Turtle Power that attacks all on-screen foes once you’ve filled up a bar- and that’s pretty much it. If you’re looking for meaningful weapon variety, different combos to master, or new moves and abilities to learn, TMNT Arcade will likely let you down with its straightforward offerings.

"And though it’s a functional game in the barest sense, TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants ends up falling short in some key areas where a beat ’em up can’t really afford to stumble."

Weapon pickups in particular are quite disappointing. Ordinarily a staple of the genre that can make or break a game, in TMNT Arcade, the items and weapons that you can pick up during gameplay come from a painfully limited pool, while also lacking imagination and inventiveness. Pickups range from shuriken, garbage cans, exploding barrels, and more to items that temporarily let you spin about the battlefield inside of your shell, or summon allies for momentary aid. In total, however, the amount of options leaves a lot to be desired, and even running through the game’s six levels just once, pickups quickly start feeling repetitive.

Other issues exacerbate the flaws in TMNT Arcade’s lean gameplay core. There are four playable characters with Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo, and Raphael, but virtually all of them play identically. At first glance, they do have some noticeable differences in their special Turtle Powers and the weapons that they use, but it doesn’t take long for it to become clear that all of those changes are purely cosmetic. Turtle Powers all have the exact same effect – all on-screen enemies (barring bosses) are obliterated – even if they each have their own unique animations, while the different weapons each Turtle wields don’t come with any actual differences in terms of range, speed, attack power, or anything of the sort.

Then there’s the fact that the general game feel in TMNT Arcade is probably best described as “sluggish”, which is perhaps its most glaring issue. You expect a beat ’em up to have tight and responsive controls, for it to have crunching and weighty feedback during combat, but all of these things are missing here. Movement feels slow, and especially in moments where you’re expected to quickly get out of the way of an incoming attack or avoid an environmental hazard, the frustratingly lethargic movement can make it feel like you’re wading through molasses. Even more unforgiving is how tame and soft the combat feels- very rarely does a hit connect with any real impact, thanks to the almost complete lack of the sort of weighty crunch that is so crucial to the moment-to-moment experience in any game that’s focused on combat, let alone a beat ’em up.

Clearly, then, there’s a lot of significant issues to contend with in TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants. It’s not all bad though. Bosses, for instance, can be occasionally fun, while the game does have a couple of decently designed stages. One in particular that sees you moving through an amusement park is a genuinely fun one with its charming house of horrors and its unique environmental hazards- or it would be, at least, if the game didn’t have as many major issues in crucial areas as it does. Again, for those who’re just looking to just dip in for a casual jaunt through a straightforward beat ’em up, running through each level once and fighting against their bosses can be enjoyable, but the more you engage with the game, the more frustratingly apparent its issues become.

"Even more unforgiving is how tame and soft the combat feels- very rarely does a hit connect with any real impact, thanks to the almost complete lack of the sort of weighty crunch that is so crucial to the moment-to-moment experience in any game that’s focused on combat, let alone a beat ’em up."

In fact, that feels almost like an inevitability with this game, because of how lean its content offerings are- you can easily blow through all of its levels in an hour (or two at most). Of course, shorter runtimes are par for the course for the vast majority of beat ’em ups, but where the good beat ’em ups encourage you to run through their levels repeatedly to try and maximize your scores, find new secrets, and the like, in TMNT Arcade, what you see is exactly what you get, which means there’s little to no reason to replay the levels. Each playthrough of a level is bound to feel almost exactly the same, with little to no variation to speak of. Yes, you can try and beat high scores to climb higher in the leaderboards, but when the core gameplay foundation is as shallow and flawed as it is here, why exactly would you want to?

Launching at a price of $29.99, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants doesn’t have nearly enough meat on its bones to justify its price of admission. Not only are its content offerings surprisingly lean, it also doesn’t offer too much replay value. On top of that, it commits the even graver error of falling short with its core mechanics. With beat ’em ups, a relative lack of content can be much easier to forgive if the core gameplay is fun, but TMNT Arcade falls short of the mark even in this area. Add to that the bland visuals, a non-existent narrative framework, and polish issues (such as frequently glitchy audio mixing and volume levels), and it becomes increasingly harder to freely recommend this game to anywhere, no matter how big of a fan you are of beat ’em ups or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IP.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.