TMNT Tactical Takedown is a Pleasant Surprise

If there's one thing Donatello loves doing, it is seeing what lurks beneath the encryption

If the last like three things I wrote on this site aren't an indicator, I've fallen down something of a rabbit hole recently. Or a sewer hole, I guess, since it's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You know they live in a sewer? Crazy, right?

Anyway, an early sign of my imminent Turtle Fever came with the release of Strange Scaffold's newest (probably not newest anymore, I'm sure they've released another twelve games since I started writing this) release, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown. There's a quick look for it on this very website, you know! As a dude who likes games with tiles (and especially likes games with tiles and board game aesthetics like Hitman Go), Strange Scaffold's whole vibe in general, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it is kind of surprising that it took me a couple of months to get around to it. That was more because at the time it came out I was busy obsessing over... I dunno, some other stuff that was out, I can't be bothered to look it up.

Point being, I eventually picked it up and started playing, and like Jan did in the Quick Look, I kinda bounced off of it! It wasn't that I didn't like it, it was more that I was invested in something else - knowing me, it was probably DOOM-related - and it was easy to put the game down after putting a couple hours into it. This has been a year of a lot of games coming out that I wanted to play (and also a year of me deciding to finish up some older games, naturally) so it kind of got lost in the shuffle. Fast forward six months or however long it's been and I'm ranking TMNT brawlers and making New Year's Resolutions about finishing the old NES game and also reading a bunch of the old comics, watching all the movies, etc. etc. It's Turtle Time, is what I'm saying, so obviously part of that involved picking Tactical Takedown again.

This time, the game's got its hooks in me. I will say up front that part of this is, I think, down to the fact I started playing it handheld this time around, which fits its whole vibe a lot better for me (so well in fact that I ended up picking it up on the Switch, because that is my go-to portable system. Congratulations to Strange Scaffold, you got my ass twice). It's a real good handheld game, largely in part because in my experience each level takes maybe 10-15 minutes to get through, tops. I do kind of wish you could save in the middle of a level, but playing on the Switch you can just sleep the console and it's fine. That's called convenience.

The best way to pitch this game is "hey, remember Hitman Go? What if instead of being puzzle-focused it was tactical battles instead?" The aesthetics are similar - you are little board game pieces with limited animation- and really the size of a level is about the same too. It's compact. No fat! Just the stuff you like, at least in theory. You have a set number of action points per turn, you use them all up and then the enemies take their turn. Levels evolve as you play, which is to say that chunks of them will drop out and new chunks will be added, and new enemies drop in at the start of every round. You get points for chaining together KOs, and each level gives you three lives to get through. If you die in a level, you lose a life, choose where on the map to drop in your turtle, and continue from where you left off. It's very forgiving, but also you get a score multiplier based on how many lives you have left at the end of the level - and importantly, those points translate into a currency you can use to buy new moves and loadouts for the turtles, so there's an incentive to play clean.

Raph's levels all stick to the rooftops, which provides ample opportunities for kickin' people off roofs

Each level sees you playing as one of the Turtles as they investigate some new plot cooked up by Karai, who has taken over the Foot Clan in the wake of Shredder's demise. In the course of this battle, Splinter also lost his life (or at least that's what seems to be implied). The turtles, for their part, have all gone their separate ways a little (which is how the game gets away with you only playing as a single turtle each level) in the wake of all this. Leonardo is adrift without Splinter and doing a whole lone vigilante thing, Raphael and Casey Jones share an apartment and also have gone into business as private detectives (although Casey is out of town during the game, something they mention at the very end), Donatello continues to do machines and, and Michelangelo tries to get the family back together. That's more or less the plot of the whole thing - the plot ends up involving Baxter Stockman, it's a whole thing. The ruckus gets the Turtles to work together and realize how much they missed each other, it's something the comics and films and cartoons have all explored at one point or another. No points for originality, even if I do like the balls it takes to have the game start with Splinter and Shredder dead.

I actually really love the idea of Raph and Casey Jones running their own shitty detective agency

Each turtle has their own kit of moves, and this might be the first TMNT game I've ever played that makes Raphael the most fun to play! He's a wrecking ball and he can gain action points back, so it's very easy to chain together KOs and clear the board of enemies every round. This rules and is deeply satisfying. The other turtles also have their quirks - Donatello has a bunch of traps and AOE stuff, Leonardo can chain together certain buffs if you do it right, and Michelangelo is a good all-rounder who can buff and heal himself automatically. You may be thinking to yourself "damn I bet playing all the turtles together must feel good" and you know what, I bet it would! But you can't, because they had a vision and that vision was "just control one turtle at a time." I would kill for a game that would at least let me bring two turtles to the party, but you know what, it's actually okay. Swapping between turtles (and their movesets) keeps things feeling fresh the whole way through, as does the ability to buy new moves and tweak each turtle's loadout for maximum Foot-stomping. There's also a Remix mode which changes up the enemy placement and amounts and whatnot for Extra Replayability if that's a big concern for you.

They should let Strange Scaffold make another one of these! One where you control multiple turtles, maybe! That would be rad! Cut the check, Paramount!

Look at these boys! These are my boys!

FINAL VERDICT: Play this game it's fun.

FINAL SCORE: 4 Turtles out of a possible 5 (really there are like six at this point in IDW continuity, although Venus is kind of a special case in that she isn't like, strictly a turtle and... look, the point is it's 4/5).