Publisher: Strange Scaffold
Developer: Strange Scaffold
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: Not Rated
It’s pretty impressive how versatile the Ninja Turtles are when it comes to games. In recent years we’ve had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate, a Hades-esque rogue-like; Mutants Unleashed, a terrible 3D action game; Shredder’s Revenge, a throwback to the ‘90s-style beat-’em-ups that older gamers may remember; and now, Tactical Takedown, which is nothing like any of those other games. Say what you will about the wildly varying quality of all those games, but not many franchises lend themselves as well to so many different genres.
As you can probably guess from its title, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown finds the heroes in a half-shell venturing into the world of turn-based tactics. And on some level, it’s a bit of an odd fit. After all, pretty much every other TMNT game focuses on straightforward action – constantly moving and attacking enemies. Here, by contrast, Tactical Takedown requires you to move slowly and think strategically. Blundering into attacks will just whittle down your precious health bar, and the name of the game is more surviving to the end of each level than battering every Foot Clan member and M.O.U.S.E.R. robot that gets in your way.
What’s more, not only is it an odd fit, it also seems like a fairly awkward fit, in part because the game is so barebones in terms of telling you how to play it. You’ll eventually figure out that the key is to stay away from enemies as much as possible, but before you get to that point, you’re likely to lose all kinds of hearts and lives as you get faced with more and more enemies. Similarly, Tactical Takedown leaves it up to you to figure out how the different Turtles work – what their strengths and weaknesses are, how you can upgrade them, and so on – so there’s a fair amount of trial and error as you work everything out.
That said, when you piece it all together, it becomes a lot more enjoyable. You may not be constantly smashing skulls with nunchucks and slicing through robots with katanas, but the game still doles out action in smaller chunks, move by move by move. It’s also fun to think strategically, figuring out how you can dance across the board without sustaining too much damage while also taking out key enemies along the way.
Of course, I shouldn’t have expected anything less from a developer like Strange Scaffold. Whether it’s games about airports run by dogs, match-3 games based on a franchise that doesn’t exist, or a horror-infused homage to Max Payne, they know how to give their games a spark of originality. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown shows that even when they’re working with a more known quantity, they’re still adept at finding an approach that no one has ever taken before – and at making that work.
Strange Scaffold provided us with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown
PC code for review purposes.
