There is something so special seeing the resurgence of great Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle content. The fantastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredders Revenge, The Cowabunga Collection, and even the bit different Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate was great to have. Of course the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem movie was delightful, and introduced a lot of younger generation to the Turtles. Seeing the four brothers always brings me great nostalgia, and when I saw there was going to be a VR game letting me step into the shell of Raph and Mikey, I said yes please! Does Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City have what it takes to stand with the classics and kick some shell?

What I do appreciate about the direction of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City story direction is that it touches on a main villain that most people won’t know. Hell, I was even a bit confused with it at first. The story takes place in the City at War story arc in the TMNT Mirage comics. If you aren’t familiar, it follows the aftermath of the Turtles victory over Shredder. With his death there is an internal power struggle with the New York Foot Clan and Shredder’s loyal Foot Elite. Who will be taking his place as the leader?

Yes Donny, Mashima is like a wizard.

The big bad you may not have heard of if you aren’t familiar with the comic. Shredder’s loyal zealot Mashima, a Foot mystic, is obsessed with the idea that Shredder’s legacy isn’t over. He wants to restore him with his mystic powers and make him more powerful than ever. He is throwing New York into chaos, and the Foot are now a disorganized power hungry force. This is where Karai comes in, someone you should recognize. She is trying to take control of the Foot and bring a more structured and strategic future for the Foot Clan. Seeing how Mashima is throwing everything into chaos, Karai and the Ninja Turtles must team up to stop Mashima.

It’s nice seeing a more obscure villain featured instead of just Shredder or Krang. The setup with Mashima using his mysticism to shutdown and take of the streets of NY make for a great idea and helps scale down the city a bit for a VR game. However, it is the execution in all of this that had me wanting more. Unfortunately, that is the common theme throughout Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City, good ideas that just don’t quite make it due to execution.

Mashima has walled the main areas in allowing the Foot to run rampant without police interference.

Mashima is using his powers to wall off parts of the city and take control so the game is separated into two main city sections: Lower East Side and China Town. These are open world maps, however they aren’t that large, but the Foot have taken over the blocks in these areas. You will need to liberate these blocks and destroy their technology in order to lower the crime percentage in the area. There is even a crime meter that you need to keep low. By the sounds of how rampant crime is in these areas and how much chaos the Foot is sowing, you’d think it should be a hectic area.

Well, that’s where the limitations start. When I first popped out of the sewers, it’s just a ghost town, barely any activity at all. I soon found out that the only action to be had were at the specific area where the Foot have setup their machines, basically one on each block. You go take out three to four Foot enemies and then disable the machine to liberate that block, and there is essentially not much else to do. Once in a while there will be a random event, but those are also very static activities. There isn’t anything dynamic happening in these areas. No random groups of Foot patrolling, no flying Mousers, it’s just these small pockets of enemies that you run into when going to liberate the areas.

Side content opens up after clearing the map, or liberating it again if the Foot take it back. I just wish there were more dynamic activities and enemies.

Once you clear the map, some side activities will pop up like parkour time trails, basketball free-throw challenges, collect the “Cowabunga” letters, and shuriken throwing challenges. These are fine to do once, but they don’t give you any rewards, not that I noticed at least, and they bring in their own issues with the gameplay aspects which I’ll get into. So I was a bit disappointed with the overall feel of the city areas, and unfortunately the mission structure doesn’t help out.

For the mass portion of the missions they fall into a couple categories: fetch quests in the city and then warehouses. Essentially you will be going on a bunch of fetch quests to the same areas where those pockets of Foot hang out with their equipment. Yes, they respawn in order to keep you doing things, but enemies will get slightly harder. It’s a lot of retreading the same spots over and over. Then you will need to go into the Foot warehouses. which are small linear corridor levels where you’ll use more stealth. You’ll need to clear them out or find some item that will help you track down another item or relic. While the warehouses have slightly different designs, the overall style of them are very similar making it feel like you’re doing the same thing sometimes. It just gets a bit monotonous.

Be ready to go into A LOT of these warehouses.

 Combat, as you would expect, is very melee heavy which isn’t a bad thing since you get to wield the Turtles iconic weapons. All of the weapons feel natural to use, being able to swing around Mikey’s nun chucks and dual wield Don’s staff. You can dodge, block, and parry if you swing at the same time stunning the enemy. Each Turtle has their own way of charging their attack which increases your damage. Twirling Mikey’s nun chucks charges his, Don’s will charge if you grab his staff with both hands, Raph’s charges faster when attacking enemies but also decreases faster, and Leo’s is more balanced with it increasing and decreasing at slower rates.

Once the meter is charged you can kick the enemy to activate it which will make your weapon glow with power. It doesn’t change your attack or add anything else to it besides extra damage. I was a bit let down there weren’t other special abilities along with this, maybe Leo’s swords could send out some slashes that travel, Donny could have some special device to use when he charges. But it remains pretty standard VR melee combat. Which comes with its own issues, hit detection.

Being able to basically climb everything makes it enjoyable to stealth around and get the drop on enemies.

It’s a common issue with melee in VR and it’s here also. I found it most annoying with the enemies being able to hit me when I was in close quarters when they would just wined up an attack. And when you’re in close, good luck landing a block. I ended up just using Mikey for most of the game because his nunchucks shred enemies. Since attacks go through enemies instead of hitting them, It is so easy to get in close, twirl the nun chucks and it just decimate enemies. It made the few boss fights pretty easy. I also started using a lot more stealth with my shuriken’s to avoid the combat since stealth attacks are instant kills.

In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City you get various items and upgrades as well. As you explore the city areas and warehouses you will find various trash, relics, and blueprints that Donny will use to craft and upgrade the Turtles. After collecting blueprints  you can use the 3D printer to print various tools like health, shurikens, smoke bombs, and EMT bombs. Relics can used to modify the turtles like including a double jump, extra health, increase charge attack rate etc. while upgrades will increase health, how many relics you can equip, as well as how many items you can carry. You will be busting open a ton of boxes in order to collect your materials.

In the lab is where you can level up and equip relics to alter your movement and stats.

Speaking of double jump one thing I did find enjoyable is the parkour. You can basically climb everything in this game and for the most part it is a pretty fluid mechanic. Sometimes VR games struggle with clambering up edges easily, but here it is pretty simply. My only issue with the climbing that can be frustrating is with clipping into walls. If you hold your hands out and you clip through the wall, it won’t snap you to the edge. You will miss the grab and end up falling. It made some of the parkour time challenges annoying. I also wish there were more dynamic enemies that would climb or fly also so that way the parkouring system would have more use other than just getting the high ground or the random enemy group or item on a roof.

The fun factor of using the Turtles weapons faded pretty fast after realizing there just isn’t much depth in the enemies or the Turtles combat. Since there is no progression or special attack unlocks, it starts to get stale pretty fast. Enemy variety isn’t great and they don’t really have many attacks to try and learn. It boiled down to rushing in and swinging wildly and spam the kick to take them out fast before they could even swing. Or just use stealth to bypass combat a lot. It’s a disappointment because that first hour feels fun playing in that half shell.

Boss fights are some of the better combat areas. Bebop and Rocksteady also make an appearance.

I do need to mention that there is up to four player co-op featured in this, but I wasn’t able to test it out during my time with it. I can’t really talk about how that may change the encounters or if the game increases enemy count to adjust for more players. But I will say that I feel like a four player co-op would be chaos in some of these smaller warehouse areas. Perhaps co-op change up the pacing a bit and makes the combat a bit more fun, but it’s not going to change the shallow mission design.

Visually the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is appealing with its cel shaded style that looks ripped right from the comics and older cartoons. It’s a clean look, no textures, but it perfectly encapsulates the TMNT style and the characters look great. My main issue with the visual design is with its lack of variety in the levels. As I mentioned before, the cities, while not ugly, just lack any life or flair. The warehouses are sterile and not exactly the coolest thing to explore, but they do sometimes offer multiple paths for the larger warehouses so you can sneak around. It’s a smaller gripe, but there is a noticeable jitteriness to some of the physics like when enemy go ragdoll or when you throw objects. There were also a couple instances of framerate issues here and there that caused me to get a bit nauseous.

The art design for the characters and the general cel shading graphics look great.

Sound design is another area that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City does well in. Voice acting is accurate to the characters and so is the writing for them. Each Turtle has their signature personality and that is portrayed convincingly throughout even during various story decisions. I will say I was hoping there would be more dynamic banter during combat and exploration. Seems like the only time they will talk is for specific story parts, but not while randomly clearing the city. I wasn’t expecting Deadpool VR levels of chit chat and smack talk, but the Turtles are known for their trash talking as well.

Soundtrack is hit and miss, however. During a lot of the exploration and raiding warehouses there is this elevator style sounding smooth jazz and a bit of rock going on and it just seems odd. There are some throwbacks as well as some good boss music, but the general vibe music didn’t really fit for me.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City has some good ideas and I do like that they touched on a story and villain that isn’t the typical Shredder or Krang. Having some story decisions change a bit of the outcome for missions later is a nice touch. Being able to step into the half shell of these iconic characters was great for the first bit. Unfortunately, the execution of the level, mission, and combat design left me a bit disappointed. There is a great idea here, but with how good VR has gotten I just didn’t feel this quite capitalized on all it could.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is available now on Meta Quest, SteamVR, and Pico.

Reviewed on Meta Quest 3.

A Copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City was provided by the publisher.