Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is coming to Quest, Pico and SteamVR headsets sometime next year, making it the first Turtles game in VR. Ahead of launch, Cortopia Studios gave us a 15-minute demo on Quest to show off just what sort of radical action this co-op beat’em up has in store.
In TMNT: Empire City, you get to tackle the Foot Clan with all four titular Turtles—Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo—which also means getting to grips with with each of their signature weapons: katanta, sai, bo staff and nunchaku.
And just like the cartoons (and live action films), you won’t be actually ganking dudes, but rather knocking them out as you explore deeper into the various levels, be it alone or with up to three other friends.
I can’t say I was expecting much more beyond combat in the game, although there seems to be a fair share of adventure-style objectives too, like solving casual puzzles, exploring levels for specific items, and scavenging craftable bits to bring back to your humble sewer abode, which lets you craft upgrades for each Turtle.
You also have a nifty smart watch that can display your health bars, real-world time, and a map to help you navigate through what promises to be a good smattering of NYC-inspired levels. I saw tunnels (blocked off for me) to China Town, the Lower East Side, and some sort of ‘Port’.
What’s more, the demo does an awesome job of showing off the game’s decidedly ’90s sidescroller roots, making it definitively Turtles to the core: you can jump, kick, dash, and ping around the place at high speed as you take on the dreaded Foot.
While melee isn’t physics-based, there is a block, parry and strike system in place that feels like it needs a little more refinement before I’d consider it super reliable.
You can technically ‘play it by the books’ and engage with enemies like the game wants you to, i.e. by blocking or parrying and then striking them when dazed. Or you can do what I did, and just slice around without a care until dudes fell over.
That said, I’ll need to play a lot more to see how combat actually shakes out, although it has the potential to be a pretty good experience provided more difficult enemies can stop me from cheesing the combat system. As it is, some enemies do have unblockable moves, like the demo’s level boss, which could make combat a lot more tactical than the low level Foot displayed.
It’s hard to tell for now if this is the Turtles VR game of my dreams, since the 15-minute demo is pretty heavy on the tutorialization of each Turtle’s weapon and secondary move, although it seems pretty promising at this point. I want to see more of the story, and also get in with a crew of three other heroes in a half-shell to see how multiplayer will work.
Reservations aside, one thing I can say for sure is it has absolutely nailed the Turtles aesthetic and vibe. Visually, the game has a consistently cool cel shading throughout, making it feel like it’s been ripped out of the comic books. Voice acting is also spot on, and really reminds me of the ’90s cartoons more than the various reboots.
While we don’t know exactly when TMNT: Empire City is set to launch, in the meantime you can wishlist on the Horizon Store for Quest, the Pico Store for Pico 4 and above, and Steam for PC VR headsets.
