Watch on YouTube | Subscribe to Polygon on YouTube
After bringing us a not-so-great take on The Legend of Korra and a slightly better riff on Transformers nostalgia, it's no shocker that Platinum Games is back for a third swing at licensed games. But if our demo at this week's Game Developer's Conference is anything to go by, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan may be Platinum's best and most confident licensed game yet.
The TMNT franchise lends itself to co-op, so Platinum has built a game with many recognizable elements from its other action titles but with a new four-player framework. The game is positioned as a brawler — not unlike the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle quarter-munching arcade games of old — but it has a more strategic element in each turtle's ability to equip and use special moves that then go on cooldown. Comboing these moves together with your teammates will allow you to pull off more damage, which will be a necessity in the game's tough, lengthy boss fights.
It also features an interesting mission structure. The turtles are unleashed in a larger open-world area, of which we are told there are several throughout the game. The game pulls from a list of possible missions to send the turtles on within that area at random, meaning each playthrough will be a little different. Once they've completed enough of these side missions, the boss fight to finish out the mission opens up.
In the video above, you can watch us, along with the game's producer and director, play through an early level. We finish off a couple of sub-missions and then go on to fight Bebop, a difficult battle where we need to pull together our various abilities in order to eke out a victory.
You also get to witness some of the game's incredible charm, including a move that forces enemies to dance and another where Michelangelo turns his nunchaku into a baseball bat and knocks an enemy out of the park. Hard not to crack a grin, at the very least.
