Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows Critic Reviews

Even though it has some issues, it tries to bring back the soul of the arcade, and manages to offer a game full of action that those who play it with friends are definitely going to enjoy.

Out of the Shadows is no Game of the Year nominee, but it's a lot of fun to smack your way through the five-hour campaign and play the Arcade mode with friends. And for those of us old enough to remember the Turtles' original incarnation, it's a trip down memory lane, too.

With enough effort and perseverance, one can glean battles from Out of the Shadows that feel truer to TMNT than any you've ever fought, and that might be enough for superfans to look the other way on its technical and control problems.

Intrinsic problems with some of the basics; collision detection, dodgy camera, and sloppy graphics ruin what could have been a far more polished experience.

Out of the Shadows, sadly, only flirts with these past triumphs. Heavy flirting, maybe, but it’s too badly built of a game to live up to its strong potential.

If it had greater enemy variety and required players to utilize their full arsenal of abilities – and if its technical issues were ironed out – it might have really been something special.

TMNT: Out of the Shadows is a game that promised a lot but fell short of the epic experience that the fans were waiting for. The dialog's lack charm and quickly turns old and repetitive, coop drop in/drop out is frustrating, and AI is clumsy and weak. Even though our favorite masked reptiles look great, Out of the Shadows just doesn't cut it as a TMNT game.

Out of the Shadows is yet another bad Ninja Turtles game. Between the game's loud and ugly UI and the glitches, bugs, and general sloppiness, there's only enough hope for the good intentions to improve next time.

TMNT is a video game of poor production values​​, valid only for the die-hard fan of Pizza-loving turtles.

There’s just not enough cowabunga in this undercooked game.

Patchy. It suffers from bugs that see you teleporting from one place to another, graphical glitches, unfortunate design decisions, and poor level design. On the upside the arcade game is so good it should have been its own game.

If Turtles are your thing, you might want to put aside the concerns for the bugs and pull down the demo from Xbox Live. It is more than playable, just don’t expect to have a smooth ride. On the other hand, the story is light but so is the source material – it would have been nice to see episodic content come out for an otherwise compelling realization of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Out of the Shadows has all the trimmings of a fantastic brawler, but none of it works as it should. For every highlight the game showcases there are multiple failures: shoddy controls, a complicated combat system, and far too many glitches.

Despite the brevity and repetition, plenty of bugs plague these turtles. From low-level quirks like characters getting caught on objects in the environment, to high-level issues like A.I. partners abandoning us or a hacking minigame causing freezes, the amount of glitches in Out of the Shadows is pretty alarming.

In theory this could be an entertaining coop brawler. But it lacks in technical quality, variety and esprit. “Kowabunga” alone doesn’t cut it.

It may have a few good ideas, but all of them are poorly executed.

Aside from about fifteen minutes of nostalgia and the title screen, there really is no need to play this game unless you are some kind of sadist. It pains me to say this, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time is still the last great TMNT game.

Inexcusable glitches, unresponsive controls, broken combat, bizarre gameplay design (hacking games, really?), unfair enemies and completely unnecessary loading times make for a monumental disappointment.

How can such a bad game be part of the Summer of Arcade? Those games need to be special. This Turtles game is definitely not.

Game-breaking glitches and a poor camera make TMNT: Out of the Shadows a bruised and battered shell of what it could have been.