Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Battle Nexus Free Download

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Battle Nexus is more than just a step backward for this series it's a step backward into a large chasm. When Konami released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles last year for consoles and the PC, all we wanted was a spirited beat 'em up in the vein of the classic Turtles arcade games. While Konami managed to get the genre right, it unfortunately succeeded at little else, turning in a rather prosaic effort that didn't have much going for it beyond its cel shaded graphics.
While the story aspect of the last Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2  game wasn't a huge factor, it was at least better than what Battle Nexus has to offer. The storyline of this game is ripped largely out of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series' second season, and it consists of an overarching storyline that puts the four heroic turtles--Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael--on a quest to rescue their master, Splinter. At the beginning, you'll have a couple of story paths available to you, as well as a couple of locked story paths. Each story branches out into an episodic series of misadventures that you must play through, and some of these missions even have multiple paths. What's weird is that there's obviously a fairly linear plotline that the game follows, as evidenced by the way the different animated cutscenes taken from the show play out. So, even though you can choose from a couple of different missions, only one of them actually starts in the proper place in the story.
Another weird and annoying thing about Battle Nexus is its character management system. Each time you start up the game, you'll be presented with a character select screen for one to four players. If you're the only one playing, you'll still have to select four characters from a pool including the turtles themselves and side characters like Splinter and Casey Jones. You'll be able to have only one character onscreen at a time, but you can switch between them on the fly. The reason for this is simple at certain times during missions, specific characters' abilities are needed to proceed. However, this is set up in the cheapest way possible. For example, if you get to a door that has to be opened via a control panel, you'll have to cycle through to get to Donatello, since he's the smartest of the group, and logically is the one who can operate electronics. Of course, all you actually have to do is press his weak attack button in the vicinity of the control panel, and the door magically opens. For everyone else, it's just as simple. One guy can move heavier blocks, another can chop through certain objects, and that's about it. At times, you can actually circumvent these ability specific objectives altogether. That's as much character specific action as you're going to see in the game, which is pretty underwhelming, to say the least.
Battle Nexus' combat is just as bad. The enemies weren't very smart in the last Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2  game, and they're just as brain dead here. Only now, some of them are proficient at blocking, so you have to suffer through trying to beat up an enemy who not only can't fight properly, but who also knows how to turtle itself until you walk away for a while. Most times, grunt enemies will just stand there, slowly walking around in a circle until you get too close or attack. Enemies with projectile attacks will attack more often, and are often the most difficult, mostly because the game likes to put them together in significant numbers and tailor their attack patterns so one will always attack right after the other. On the other hand, you'll frequently find yourself without any enemies to beat up at all, as many levels feature oddly vacant sections.
The game also contains an unlockables system, in which you collect antiques throughout each mission in an effort to unlock items in April's antiques store. Most of the unlockables are just concept art and things of that nature, but the one thing you can unlock that's actually pretty cool is the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. Apart from the audio being totally different, this is the same game you came to know and love in arcades, and, of course, it supports four players. The messed up thing, however, is that you have to slog through most of the main story mode to actually get to the game, which really isn't worth it. What's interesting is that once you actually do get to it, it basically shows you that a 15-year-old arcade port that's only a few hours long can still be vastly superior to this mess of a game.