[h1]Wasted Potential - Too Simplistic and Feels Unfinished[/h1]
I love the Turtles. Loved the 80s/90s cartoon and love the arcade games. When I heard TMNT was coming to VR, I was excited! When I saw the dev of GORN 2 making it, I even got more excited. TMNT Empire City should have been a hit out of the park if they stuck with classic arcade style gameplay. Like a VR beat-em-up. Melee combat in VR, when done well, is a perfect combo... unfortunately, not here.
[h1]The Combat[/h1]
The combat is WAY too simplistic. There is no depth to the combat and your weapons lack weight. You can literally cheese the combat system by just flailing your arms around and your contacts will count as hits. It is quite boring and repetitive. There should be more to the combat I feel. I feel they should have stuck with a system more like what Until You Fall uses, forcing the player to play more strategic in their hits.
[h1]The Enemy AI[/h1]
This plays on part with the boring combat. The enemy AI is pretty bad. Their eyesight has to be the absolute worst. I have encountered numerous times that the enemy cannot see me when I am standing literally 5 feet in front of them. When they do spot me, the only ones that are much of a challenge are the long pole guys and enemies who have guns. But then again, if you just cheese the dashing mechanic and flail your arms about, their "challenge" is not much of a real challenge.
[h1]The Environment[/h1]
The game stages you in an open-ish world environment. You pick what part of the city to go to via the sewer tunnels. However, any part of the city just feels so empty. There are no pedestrians, no traffic, hell, there is barely any trash/objects. It really feels very liminal. Very artificial. The only thing that are in the streets are basic parked cars and pizza drones.
There are indoor sections that are all called "Warehouse". But man, are they SMALL! I could not imagine playing this game COOP with someone, let alone THREE other people??! What would be the point? You would be bumping into each other, attacking the same enemy, or one friend does the attacking while the other friend(s) just sit there and do nothing. The COOP HAS to be a joke. lol. If the movement was slower and the combat was something more strategic and required your attention, then yeah, maybe it would work. But not here.
[h1]Repetitive Radiant Side-Quests[/h1]
When you are in a part of city, you get a radio call every 1-2 minutes giving you a random quest - basically these quests are just go here, kill enemies and/or deliver an object. You also have to destroy these antenna things to reduce "Crime Level". However, I actually tried reducing the "Crime Level" to 0% and nothing happens. You get nothing, no reward, and no "Congrats, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for wasting your time!". The radiant quests still continue to be given out, so obviously there is still crime... What is the point of this??
[h1]Level Design[/h1]
The level design in this game is probably the game's worst negative. Again, the game feels so empty! In both the city parts and the "Warehouse" parts, there are barely any enemies. In the city, there are enemy outposts that you take out and "crimes" that are reported in a random portion of this empty city. That is it in the city. In the "Warehouses" there are a few enemy spawns per each room, but again, so few! You also get enemies spawns if a camera sees you, however, they are so easily avoidable. I actually purposefully get seen by a camera just to spawn enemies to fight. If I was the developer, I would just remove those cameras and just spawn enemies at random parts inside the city. It would make the game more fun.
Also, here is another idea for the developer. Maybe add an "Arcade" mode where you have to get from point-a to point-b fighting enemies just like the arcade games. During your trek, you encounter enemies. Each encounter, locks you in the arena until you defeat all enemies then you can proceed to the next area. Just like the arcade games where you go from one screen to the next, fighting enemies. Then, at the end, you fight a boss. If they added this mode this would seriously improve this game. Or, maybe restructure this game and make it like that, I feel that would definitely improve this game quite a bit.
[h1]VR Interactions[/h1]
What can I say. There barely are any VR interactions. You swing your weapons and collect scrap by just aiming your hand hand squeezing your controller and you can pick up some objects while in your Turtle Lair. Occasionally, you can pick up quest items, but that is practically it. Most of the items you can pick up, are just uninteresting trash with crappy textures. There is nothing really about this game that makes it feel like a true VR game. This game could have been a flat-screen game. In fact, I bet the combat would have been better if they did that, sadly.
There are consumable items you pick up. Mainly syringes and food items and gadgets to help you with the boring combat. However, I do have one problem with the health pickups... I don't remember in the cartoon that the Turtles used syringes for health boosts. Wasn't it always Pizza? Yes, pizza does make an appearance (main base) and occasionally on the streets, but yeah, it should be the main health item. Nit-pick, but, being a fan of the turtles, I guess this just bothered me.
[h1]Music[/h1]
I remember in one of the marketing interviews, the musician of the game was talking about how he was doing all this research and wanted to stay true to the Turtles... I don't know, the tracks that I have listened to in my play time just felt, well, average. Yeah I can hear a little "retro-ish" 90s/80s vibe in parts of the soundtrack, but then again, the tracks are just so average. Also, why isn't the TMNT theme played at all in the game? Shouldn't that be the title music? Instead, the title music is just some average track with no homage to the theme. Nothing great, nothing to get you hyped up and get you into that "Ninja Turtle" mood.
[h1]Graphics[/h1]
It's a direct Quest port with really no PCVR enhancements. So the visuals do suffer in low res textures and lack of shadows/shading that you cannot tweak in the game options. The cartoony cell-shaded vibe is okay, but I feel it needs a bit more. The PCVR port should have at the least shadows, higher res textures, SSAO shading, and anti-aliasing options. Also maybe add a little stencil outline shading like Borderlands. They really need to enhance this version that takes advantage of more powerful hardware.
[h1]What I Wanted[/h1]
All I really wanted was a structured beat-em-up with competent combat and with a TMNT paint job. I would have been happy if the levels were linear, much like the arcade games. They really went deep with the whole open-ish world with parkour elements, but I feel that was not needed at all.
Hell, if they wanted to go this whole open-world element, maybe it should have been structured like the first TMNT on NES. That would have been cool. Add a bit more structure to the combat system, and if your turtle gets defeated/captured, you cannot play as them until you rescue them which means you have to go out of the path of the main quest to get them back. That would have been awesome. Unfortunately, that is not what we have.
[h1]Overall[/h1]
I am saddened to say as a TMNT fan, I am disappointed from this game. It is very boring and that is it's major sin. Much like all other Quest ports, there really is a lack of VR interaction with this game. Like I said, this could have been a flat-game. Probably would have played a bit better (I cannot believe I am saying that - as a die-hard VR player).
I really hope the devs seriously add something more to this game. As it currently stands, it is empty, boring, and so average. I just cannot recommend this game.
