‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles VR’ Review – Totally Radical Beat ’em Up Action

While I don’t think anybody was really asking for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game in VR, much less a story-driven campaign with optional co-op: it’s here. And I’m so glad it is, because it’s totally radical.

Developer: Cortopia Studios
Publisher: Beyond Frames Entertainment
Available On: Quest, SteamVR , Pico
Reviewed On: Quest 3
Release Date: April 30th, 2026
Price: $25

Gameplay

There tends to be a common mantra when branded VR games come out: “it’s alright, but it’s probably only going to appeal to fans.”

I don’t think that’s the case with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City. Sure, it’s an unabashed love letter to classic late ’80s, early ’90s TMNT—which absolutely appeals to me as a massive Turtles fan growing up—but it’s also just happens to be one of the best casual beat’em ups I’ve played in VR to date. Stick with me, because I’ll explain.

I am (and forever will be) a fan of Leonardo. Maybe that says something about my personality. Whatever the case, you can guess who I chose for my playthrough; my man Leo with the dual katanas.

Although you can technically switch turtles at any time during the campaign, although you’ll also lose expensive character upgrades when do, incentivizing you to focus on mastering a single weapon, be it Raph’s sais, Don’s bo staff, or Mikey’s nunchakus. More on upgrades below.

Anyway, here’s the narrative: set in New York City in a post-Shredder world, you and the boys are trying to navigate the resultant power vacuum. Shredder’s former underlings are jockeying to be the most overtly evil bad dude, culminating in an unlikely alliance. It’s basic Turtle fare, including missions across New York’s various iconic boroughs to do things like retrieve high-tech batteries, retrieve parts for robots, retrieve … well, a lot of stuff.

As it is, the game is built across several key areas which you can access via the large overland map of New York, or more quickly via the sewers conveniently connecting everything to your Turtle Lair. Some of the action happens out on those city streets, although a majority of the big narrative beats happen in warehouses—essentially the game’s dungeons.

To be honest, I don’t really begrudge TMNT: Empire City for the heavy emphasis on fetch quests. A slate of VR-native puzzles, fun and memorable boss battles, and armies of Foot Clan soldiers provide enough variety to keep you guessing.

As for combat, enemies include regular Foot soldiers, Foot with an unblockable lance, heavy Foot with unblockable smash moves, crossbow Foot, machine gun Foot, elite Foot with all of the above plus a better health and damage stats … the list goes on.

It’s a good variety, although the meat of the game is in boss battles, each of which has their own quirk. Bosses aren’t very tough to beat, and most only have two phases, although I still had fun blasting around and figuring out attack patterns—you know, beat’em up stuff.

Granted, if you do find yourself in a tight spot and get killed, (or rather “knocked out”, you’ll simply respawn where you were last to continue the fight, making it a fairly low stakes gameplay experience. I can imagine the same isn’t true for multiplayer, although I still have to pop in when it officially launches to say for sure.

There’s also no real penalty for not following the game’s own logical combat flow, where you parry strikes (with a yellow weapon flash) and dodge unblockable strikes (colored red). I found myself naturally pinballing around and slashing wildly until everyone died, which works just as well in most cases.

While a lot of the game focuses on beat’em up encounters, there is a stealth element that makes things much easier—maybe even too easy at times. You can technically throw your weapon and instantly kill most unalerted Foot, making it fairly simple to weed out low level guys from afar so you can take on heavies on the ground, or ignore them entirely if you want and head on to your next objective. Your weapon will respawn in your shoulder-mounted holsters, so you basically have infinite ammo.

If that were it, I’d say you’ve got yourself a pretty full Turtles game right there already. But there’s more. You can also upgrade your abilities as you go, which are done in three principal ways: finding blueprints so you can 3D print consumables like throwing stars and health vials, finding rare items to print ‘Ability’ cubes, which lets you do things like double jump or fast movement, and upgrading your characters level, which unlocks stuff like more health bars and ability cube slots. It’s a really good amount of stuff to help you balance your Turtle.

But it’s not for free. All of this takes scrap, which you will be constantly hoovering up as you wind through warehouses, sewers, and New York alleyways. In the latter half of the game, the sheer amount of scrap you find becomes more than a bit overwhelming—probably only appealing to die hard completionists who want to upgrade the whole Turtle team, and not just one character.

But wait, there’s more. There are also gads of found audio tapes that you can listen to optionally for more story (not a must), as well as a ton of easter eggs, as well as optional time trials throughout the game, giving you plenty of reasons to explore and search everything.

While I really liked TMNT: Empire City, my only real complaint the game’s crime rating system, which requires you to keep crime under 100 percent throughout the overland city map. You do this by shutting down Foot Clan outposts—usually three soldiers protecting a simple puzzle—or by stopping active crimes, which periodically come over the radio and give you a visual waypoint.

Honestly, throughout my six hours playing the single-player campaign, I never even tried to keep it under 100 percent; I would just randomly run across baddies and gank them when convenient and it never managed to creep up to 100. Still, these encounters got old real quick though, and you never seem to get anything actually good out of these encounters anyway, making for essentially useless padding that you can mostly ignore.

That said, one thing that I suspect will need to be patched post launch is the ability to cheese certain bosses by hiding on high structures and throwing your main weapon to knock down health. It’s unsportsmanlike, and I definitely did it once on one of the harder bosses to give me a fighting chance.

Immersion

Developer Cortopia Studios has absolutely nailed the Turtle vibe; everything from the cartoony story, voice acting, cell-shaded comic book style visuals, and the massive overland map that is surprisingly detailed (even on Quest). Really, I don’t want to understate any of these things, as I found production level to be surprisingly much higher than the $25 price tag suggests.

That said, there are some things that make the game a little less immersive than it could be. Empire City is very UI heavy. Many of the options can be found in your wrist-mounted watch—a smart way to represent 2D UI. However much of the action is dominated by objective-based markers, which can make you feel like you’re being led by the nose a bit. True exploration is only really done between missions, and even then, you’ll be assaulted by crime objective markers that flash yellow and include how many meters you are away. In turn, I never once looked at the map in my watch, simply because it was fundamentally useless.

There are also a lot of doors you can’t open, objects you can’t pick up or operate in any way, and even some ledges you’re not supposed to climb, which makes it a little bit of a guessing game at first. Granted, inaccessible doors usually have a big ‘NO ENTRY’ sign, and fake ledges are usually quite high, although it’s still a disparity in what the user expects to interact with, and what they actually can interact with.

Even then, actually openable doors are a pain to operate, as they only react to your hand awkwardly trying to push it forward, and not your weapon or rest of your body so you might otherwise tap or shove your way through. That said, the shoulder-mounted weapon holsters and waist-mounted inventory all worked very well, and felt quick and natural to use.

Comfort

This is a game that focuses heavily on running fast, jumping high, and kicking hard. And considering the circumstances, the studio has done a lot to make sure all of this is fairly comfortable.

If you’re not used to frenetic artificial movement though, you may want to take it easy and not stack too many of those moves at once. Still, combat and map traversal requires all of those things to some extent, so it’s best to play in small bites if you’re worried about motion sickness.

Notably, bumping into level geometry can send you sliding or smashing in opposite directions at times, which can be uncomfortable if you’re committed to going full-bore and slashing at the fastest pace possible.