Activision and Red Fly’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows has gotten a very good amount of hype since its initial reveal earlier this year, but for those wondering it’s not another remake of a classic Turtles game, nor is it based on the forthcoming Michael Bay film. Instead it is based (in story) on the critically acclaimed Nickelodeon cartoon that launched last year.

These (perhaps) are not the Turtles you are looking for!

The game features the four eponymous Ninja Turtles; Leonardo,  Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello. Their different fighting styles are attributed to their personalities in the 2003 and 2012 animated series. Lenardo is the leader and strategist, while also being the most trained, so his fighting style appears to be an all-around type of thing, most likely to make him the easiest character to control for younger players. Raphael is the hot headed rebellious member of the group, so naturally he’s more of the brawler type, it seems his moveset is full of MMA inspired moves as well

Donatello is the genius of the group, he’s the slowest of the four, but has a large array of long range attacks. Michelangelo is the youngest and the joker of  the four, so he’s the weakest in the game. However, he is also the fastest of the Turtles, and speaking of which allow me to just say that Red Fly got Mikey’s character for this game down to a t! His mannerisms and moveset is very reminiscent of his character from the cartoons.

What the hell kind of Turtles are these!?!

Out of the Shadows initially got some heat for the direction Red Fly went for the character designs for the Turtles, however they quickly justified the reason for the choice in design. It seems as if they had no other option with the engine they chose to work with, without this design the Turtles wouldn’t be able to make facial expressions when need be. Once you see gameplay from Out of the Shadows hate over the design becomes null and void.

Gameplay looks to be arcadish in some ways, the colorful airwaves that appear after their weapons move is proof of this arcady feel. When a powerful enough move is executed correctly a sort of after effect can be seen of the impact. Arcade gameplay is a fairly interesting chose for a game with the graphics Out of the Shadows has. The cool thing about Out of the Shadow is that all four Turtles are ALWAYS ON! Meaning that no matter what you do every Turtle will be on-screen something TMNT fans have been asking for, for a very long time (thanks Red Fly!).

You can chose between single player, local co-op (two players, two AI), and 4 player online co-op. I believe there was mention of drop in/drop out, but I don’t remember for sure at the moment.  Not very much is known about enemies from the TMNT lore that is featured in the game other than the fact that the Foot and Purple Dragons (again based on the 2012 cartoon) are confirmed. No word on bosses, the Kraang, or Shredder at this current time.

TMNT: Out of the Shadows releases this Summer on PSN, XBLA, and PC via Steam, and Otaku Dome can’t wait until it’s our turn to kick some shell!