Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate review: Hades in a half-shell

There is no force in video games more malleable than the TMNT. The most iconic case of indie comics to cartoon blockbuster IP, well, ever, can be plugged into just about any genre and still be a good time. From Konami’s classic brawlers to platform fighters and now roguelikes, a crew of similar but distinct, color-coded, and bodacious bros is the perfect ensemble for multiplayer fun. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate is simply the latest stop on the tracks, and thanks to some easy inspiration and sincere use of source material, as solid an outing as any. Especially now that it’s the latest inmate free from the Apple Arcade mines.

The boys are back in town (for like the third time in two years)

Like many games hitting the Nintendo Switch lately, Splintered Fate was an Apple Arcade exclusive. Without commenting on that service’s relative quality, it seems like there’s a pattern of decent games not previously getting their deserved flowers, now getting a second chance to shine. This is definitely a game that was totally worth a look, although nobody will accuse it of being groundbreaking, do or die must play material. That said, TMNT fans have been eating pretty good lately, what with the excellent Shredder’s Revenge (and DLC!) and this year’s thrifty port of Raw Thrills’ Wrath of the Mutants.

Unlike those games, with ties to either history or a show (or a movie, for the upcoming Mutants Unleashed), Splintered Fate stands on its own. There are loose pulls from the well-received IDW TMNT comics world, reinforced by writers Tom Waltz and Kevin Michael Johnson. It’s not literally a comics adaptation though, and has a sort of house style vibe to it. Still, the characters’ voices come out well in the text and VO, giving Splintered Fate a more polished feel than something whipped up fast to cash in on a trend.

Cowabunga, pizza, ninjas, cheating death, and etcetera

TMNT are no strangers to action games, but this might be the first roguelike for these guys. Splintered Fate is heavily inspired by Hades, and it’s hard to go wrong when you use a contemporary contender for future all-time classic as a blueprint. In practice, what this means is you’re staring down a gauntlet of combat rooms, with fast-paced encounters utilizing a lot of area of effect indicators to communicate danger. After each room you get to pick an upgrade, ranging from a few competing lists of elemental or status effect augmentation, to simpler things like healing or special currency you can spend later on permanent upgrades.

Beyond the gameplay structure, there’s also a sort of meta commentary happening in the story. Much like Hades, everyone involved is aware there’s some kind of loop happening, and that most of your boss fights are rematches. The turtles and their foes will trade barbs across multiple encounters, although unlike Hades there is a much shorter runway for variance. Still, it’s an effective angle to justify the sort of in-game reality of roguelike games as the story plays out. And with such colorful characters as the TMNT IP affords, there’s a lot of room to play.

The loop itself is fun to engage with, thanks to the impressive variety of upgrades and powers you can acquire on any given run. There are powers, boosts, upgrades, and other gimmicks you can come across, with each choice giving you another chance to define your build for the run. These powers intersect with the individual Turtle you’re playing as, with their own inherent abilities being part of the equation. You may settle on a favorite approach (Michelangelo with Ooze/poison is my go-to, for example), but there’s plenty of opportunity for experimentation. Multiple currencies are required for permanent upgrades, especially as those upgrades get stronger. Eventually, if you want to really gas yourself up, you’re practically forced to engage with higher-tier challenges and boss fights, rewarding you further for testing yourself instead of getting too cozy.

Pump the brakes a little, dang

There are some times when the game gets in its own way a little, especially as it starts ramping up the difficulty. Sure, as you go on and spend a small fortune of Dragon Coins, your Turtles become little, green weapons of mass destruction. But Splintered Fates’ way of compensating is to simply fill the whole screen with nonsense. Let’s give Mousers screen-length laser beams, let’s give ninjas streams of fire that chase you across the floor, and let’s give the Punk Frogs several poison AoEs that can all come out at the same time! No big deal. Some enemies also have incredibly fast moves that barely give you time to react, especially in the middle of everything else.

Meanwhile, your dash/dodge move operates on a cooldown, and there are times when there simply is no safe spot to stand while you recharge. Eating damage for free becomes part of the attrition, and that can be super annoying after all the time you spend on upgrades and getting better at playing. It’s hard to say if the power creep is explicitly unbalanced, but it can feel that way when you’re caught in a corner saying, “welp, guess I’ll just die.” Luckily the upgrade pool is extremely deep, and there’s nothing some extra padding can’t eventually fix. To be fair, it feels great to be on a tear and get through a particularly sweaty room, even when they're annoying in retrospect. There's also a difficulty option available.

There are some performance issues as well, which makes sense considering we’re porting a modern mobile game to the Nintendo Switch's not-so-modern mobile hardware. There’s a performance toggle that’s mostly stable, but at the cost of some clarity. Co-op is awesome, but doesn’t exactly help things in that department. This isn’t a dealbreaker as far as performance issues on Switch games go, but it's worth noting if you’re considering waiting for an eventual PC port. And to be fair, it could be recency bias speaking, but I feel like there’s a much greater sense of responsiveness to the controls, and far more visual clarity in the game now compared to its Apple Arcade release which I played at launch.

It may be easy, at a glance, to look at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate and dismiss it as “we have Hades at home.” There’s a nugget of truth there, as we are looking at an action roguelike clearly inspired by Hades, with a smaller scale in many ways. But does Hades have co-op, or the TMNT? Nah, dudes. Splintered Fate has a specific goal, and it definitely delivers on that goal. It’s a fun time, with a lot of structural solidity and the fun co-op gaming vibes you should expect from a TMNT game. It doesn’t feel cheap or sloppy at all, and even singleplayer can keep your attention for several runs over dozens of hours. I’m still working on it despite winning several loops already, and spinning around like a maniac with my boy Mikey still doesn’t feel old yet.

TMNT: Splintered Fate is available on July 16, 2024 for the Nintendo Switch. The game was previously released for iOS via Apple Arcade as well. A Nintendo Switch code was provided by the publisher for this review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.