Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up

The Beginning: Oh goody, Ubisoft wants in on Smash's revenue. Just what I like to see. I know it was made by the people who made Brawl, but if you ask me, I say they actually lost a few programming items along the way to Ubisoft HQ. It's not to say that it's a bad game, it just that it could've been a whole lot better.

The Plot: Splinter makes up a tournament for all the heroes to compete in, including himself. The prize for the tournament? A trophy and a pick from Splinter's treasure wall. Once the tournament is over however, The Foot Clan kidnaps a robot called the Fugitoid and Shredder plans to have him build a teleporter that can take him and his army anywhere on the planet. Knowing our heroes, they're not gonna stand for that crap, so they go on with Karai as their only lead to track him down...knowing that Karai may be leading them into a trap.

The Good: There's a lot going on with this game, in all honesty. First of all, if you're used to Smash, then you shouldn't have much of a problem with this game. It uses either the wiimote, wiimote + nunchuck, classic controller, or GameCube controller. This is supposed to be one of those "pick up and play" kind of games, and it shows. Like Smash, there's items you can pick up in the form of ninja skills, such as breathing fire, summon lightning barriers, and even throw bombs and such. Probably the coolest thing I've seen is being able to do a Wall Throw, where the throw attack involves knocking the opponent into a wall somehow before bouncing them away from it. In Tag Team, you can do a team throw if you push the button to swap when you grab someone, yet another neato feature.

While there isn't much characters to play as, each one holds their own style of play. Though from what I've played, I've found to like Don, Nightwatcher, and Casey best to use. Leo is a close second, but he's so easy to use it's laughable. (Not to mention he has the WORST phrase I've ever heard him say.)
It seems like the Foot Ninja is quite possibly the worst pick in the game, probably because of tradition. C'mon, they're the sandbags of the Ninja Turtles universe for Pete sake.
Utrominator (Next-gen Krang, thank you) is a close second, mainly because they made a majority of his attacks so dang slow to pull off.
Shredder is third-worst. I dunno why, he just is to me. While he does have some fast attacks, characters can easily come out of them with little effort, so he's practically useless for being the main villain of the entire series.

There's a couple different modes to play on. There's Arcade, versus, wi-fi, tournament, swap (who plays swap anyway?), mission, practice, and survival. Since I'm sure most of you know the obvious, I'll go over the ones that seem the most confusing.

Survival is basically you versus anyone who appears. You can pick anyone and fight whoever comes....that includes secret characters and alternate costumed characters. That can make for some interesting fights. Of course, the whole thing ends when you beat Cyber Shredder.

They said they'd make Wi-fi a much better experience for players. They somewhat did. There's still severe button lag, but at least it's decent enough for some casual play. (I didn't get to try it with friends, so I can't really describe that.)

Mission mode is just like Brawl's Event Matches. They give you a certain objective to do, and you do it. Some range from easy to hard, but nonetheless the majority objective remains the same: Kill your opponent. Sometimes, they ask you to kill them in a certain way (feed them to gators or throw/knock them off the stage), which adds a little challenge.

The Bad: I've got a few nitpicks for this game, and I'm not too happy about them. (and no, this does not involve the inclusion of Rabbids.)

For being a Smash Bros clone, it sure does go out of its way to make itself known as such. The only differences between the two (besides the obvious) is that up+B attacks don't send the player into the air, you can only use two air attacks, no shield bubbles, no ducking, no backward or down throws (the backward throw repeats the front throw animation, just from a different angle and direction), and (my most hated function) being able to grab someone out of tech rolls. That gets annoying real quick, and can make for some real frustrating moments.

The level of difficulty loves to jump from being easy to ridiculously hard, even when you set it in Easy mode. It's odd how this game works once you play it yourself. You'll be kicking butt at one point, and then having your butt served on a platter the next. This is especially seen when doing some of the mission matches.

There are some balancing issues, since it seems Leo is ridiculously fast and strong enough to top over pretty much anyone in the game with the slightest of ease. I know he's supposed to be the leader and such, but c'mon he ain't perfect either.
Not to mention there are moments when you seem like you're locked in an infinite combo (where the opponent keeps attacking and you're unable to escape from it), especially with some of Raph's moves. (Raph's smash side-B is the most spammy attack in the game)

Some people have also said there's no love for the 80s cartoon with this game, considering it's supposed to be a 25th Anniversary game. It DOES have the logo, and the Technodrome as one of its levels (my personal favorite level), but the thing people miss is that this is a game that's more focused on the old comics, not the franchise as a whole. I don't really consider this a minus to the game, but eh.

Extras: There are a lot of different things to unlock, such as concept art, alternate costumes, and even a look at what could've been: Live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4 concept art. There's a pretty big first right there.

You can also buy and make your own trophy to use when holding tournaments, and even transfer over the trophy to the winner; a neat concept I wouldn't mind seeing again.

Final say: If you're a turtles fan, you'll love this game to death. For the rest of us, we've got Smash Bros. Brawl to hold us over.

Score: 7.0