TMNT: Splintered Fate

The gameplay loop is extremely simple, but it works. The main reason for a relatively high score is that the gameplay does feel polished and doesn't get in your way, though it also feels somewhat limited. It shines in co-op, which absolutely helps here.

Essentially the player enters an encounter, dispatches of enemies, selects from a random pool of rewards, and moves on to the next encounter. If the player dies, they are sent back to the Lair where they can invest into permanent upgrades, switch turtles, etc.

During gameplay, combat is everything. There is movement (general + dash), attack, special, and tool. Special and tool are one-time use abilities that must be recharged via regular attacks. Dashes are charge-based and regenerate over time. Dashes provide iframes and may be enhanced with additional effects.

The game rewards damage, picking the correct combination of reward powers, and using the plethora of iframes that the game gives you.

It also focuses on observing enemy behavior. If you're comfortable with beat-em-ups or shmups, this will immediately be clear. There are a limited number of enemy patterns, so it's pretty easy to take in. The challenge is mainly presented by a combination of a few enemy factors:

• Speed
• Beefiness
• Lack of hit-stun
• Area of effect

By making enemies that cannot be stunned and throw out AOE attacks quickly swarm you, the game creates a distraction from long-range AOE attacks that ultimately take you down. Often the random hazards or AOE enemies are more dangerous than the bosses that they accompany.

This simple formula works well. I'm glad they didn't try to overcomplicate it. This plays into the game lacking extreme depth, but also makes it very easy to learn and engage with.

Not much to say - the graphics are competent for the style and mostly work at a base level.

The main critique of graphics is that they get extremely noisy, creating an artificial difficulty spike in pure visibility. Since the game is not particularly difficult and the flair is part of the appeal, this isn't a huge deal. In general, effects are good enough and at least entertaining, though they sometimes lack creativity or negatively impact gameplay.

The sound fits - it's upbeat and at times goofy. It's not particularly memorable but is also not annoying. I would describe the sound as competently average.

This is an easy game - given that, is the ease appropriate?

In this case: Yes! This game does not shine as an incredible challenge. It DOES shine as a casual game that is replayable and fun without extreme investment. The couch co-op also shines due to lower difficulty, since this style of play often involves players without as much experience or skill. It has performed incredibly well in that regard.

There are still some difficulty issues: visual noise and weird camera behavior shouldn't be main difficulty factors, but result in a lot of the "real" difficutly. The patterns are good for casual players, but often lacking for experienced players.

Later levels do a good job of layering enemies to create actual difficulty in a reasonable way. Beefy enemies are not too beefy, which is a common footgun that this game avoids.

This is a TMNT game that leans into TMNT! The story is nothing to write home about, and honestly I couldn't explain the story. Given that this is a TMNT roguelike, I think that's just fine -- the game is far more about the overall theme. It doesn't try to do anything particularly subversive and sticks to turtle things. Job well done for a story-light game.

Why can a game not support controllers properly on a computer? I don't know, but it's a basic thing that was missed by this game.

PS5 performs perfectly. Computers work if you're lucky, and work well once setup with a controller that doesn't explode.

For better or for worse, this game is not terribly deep. After a drunken session of messing around and accidentally doing over-leveled content without any powerups, I got a pretty reasonable feel for most/all of the upgrades and most enemy and boss behaviors.

Just because there are a lot of options doesn't mean that the game is incredibly deep. There are enough options to spice up a run, limited enemy variety (executed well, so far), tame bosses, and a lot of AOE.

No complaints -- this game runs smoothly and does not have any apparent bugs (outside of comptuer controller support).

Very enjoyable for what it is! Couch co-op once again helps a category, since it's such a valuable and relatively unique option. Even without that aspect, it's easy to jump in and play, and overall an enjoyable gaming experience.

This game does not have "wow that was the coolest experience" or deep satisfaction/effort moments of other games. As mentioned elsewhere, that's okay for this niche of game. It's a casual game at heart and an enjoyable one at that.

This is a game that is built from the ground up to be replayed. It has a completely different set of incentives and goals from an arcade game (especially a scoring game), but regardless it manages to hit the genre incentives and make replays feel good.

Meta-progression can be frustrating, but it doesn't take very much to hit the key "necessary" items and move on. The challenge areas with their different options provide some variety and additional challenges. Having four characters to choose from with different characteristics also helps.

The randomness in each run generally feels fair as well, so replays aren't immediately useless if you get the wrong set of options.