Like a bad pizza, the shellshocked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have given people much agita. Without mincing words, the past two Turtles games (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus) were video train wrecks … not the kind that people miraculously walk away from unscathed.

With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare, the third time is neither the charm nor the strike to send the franchise back to the dugout in shame. It's certainly an improvement over the aforementioned two Turtles' games, which is good because the laws of nature probably wouldn't tolerate a game that was worse.

As amphibian warriors Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, one-to-four players venture forth to beat up everything in sight. Dead enemies spit crystals. Crystals can be redeemed for new skills and combination attacks. Special scrolls, when equipped, will (among other things) augment a turtles' health, the damage he inflicts on opponents, or allow him to carry extra throwing stars. It's all very straightforward and been there and done that. Sharing the game with friends makes the bad medicine go down more smoothly, but understand there's a lot better multiplayer fare to be had.


For the most part, the fighting in Nightmare is absolutely fine. Enemies are plentiful, the move sets varied enough to allow for some player creativity in terms of brawling, and the turtles can act in conjunction with one another to make special group attacks. The combined strikes are particularly well done; a tap on the GameCube controller's directional pad calls the turtles together and a couple of quick button presses issues the attack order. Players must then follow a prompt to push a directional button to make a successful attack, and the more correct responses (and the more turtles involved), the greater the damage done. Nightmare also drops lots of objects into its game world that can be manipulated to great effect. In combat, it's possible to smash open fire hydrants to douse foes, bowl them over with explosive barrels, and send them flying into mines.

Having the turtles as evolving characters works well, too. After collecting a series of scrolls, it's possible to initiate ultimate turtle mode to change a hero's look and greatly increase his ass-kicking potential. Unfortunately, though, there's a lot of junk that needs to be waded through to get there -- so much so that the destination is barely worth the trip.