"Where's the radical Pizza dudeshell turtles?!"

Fans of the Smash Bros. series looking for a new fix will be happy to hear that Ubisoft’s newest addition to the long line of TMNT games, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up”, will scratch that party game/fighter hybrid itch.

While the comparisons to Smash Bros. are inescapable, the dev team said in a recent interview with IGN that this game was built from the ground up. While it retains the simplified fighting controls of the Smash Bros. series, even down to the block/roll to get out of danger (not surprising since the games share many of the same developers), the actual moves your character performs are all based in real martial arts moves.

What kept the game fresh in my brief time with it was the environments. While fighting on a rooftop, there was a giant water-tower on one side of the roof and a neon sign on the other. I accidentally hit the water-tower and noticed it was taking damage.

Out of curiosity, I started pounding on it until it eventually exploded. The water spewing out threw me off the ledge (which I recovered from) but send the players on the other side head-first into the neon sign. The sign proceeded to electrocute them, causing damage and throwing them into the air. From there I was able to jump up and continue that as a combo attack.

While it does seem very similar overall to Smash Bros., I do look forward to playing it more. Time will tell if they have worked out the balance issues that haunt that series and if this brings enough new to the table to keep it interesting.

And for the record, I kicked ass as Master Splinter.

Tags: fighter, fighting game, licensed games, PAX '09, PAX 2009 COVERAGE, Smash-Up, Super Smash Bros., Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up, TMNT, Wii

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 10:04 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.