The point I'm at now, I think Streets of Rage 4 is pretty much the only good scrolling beat 'em up ever made. Well, Shredder's Revenge is pretty decent too.

SoR4 was a constant knife's edge balance of combos and extra lives. You were always watching your score, and furiously running into the next opportunity to hit another baddie and boost your reserves. It made paying attention and playing well actually matter. In a beat 'em up! What a thought! I didn't think anyone would ever want to make another one that didn't rob from it wholesale. It'd be like doing a platformer with static screens after Super Mario Bros. What an embarrassment.

Well, Turtles doesn't quite do that. What surprised me is that's okay. This isn't supposed to be as brutal or gripping. It's a hangout game. A fun, lighthearted brawler. There's space for different kinds of beat 'em ups.

It's colour, energy and fun. You've got a ton of different moves and combos flow and open up in exciting ways. The presentation strikes me as a surprising mix of Saturn and GBA. Times when the staff were really excited not to be held back by the limitations of 16-bit, but had grown incredible skill working in 2D. The soundtrack sounds like it's from folk who are thrilled to have access to CD-quality audio. There's few games that look and sound as instantly fun as this. Just what you want from a six-player brawler.

Then there's the drawbacks. Combos are fun. Really great to dive in with a lunge and juggle a limp Foot Soldier for a while. The incentive behind this is to unlock character-specific moves and upgrades. I think that's a pretty weak system. Your favourites quickly get boosted through natural gameplay, while Donatello sits there without being able to do aerial specials. I think unlockable moves are a pretty shite concept outside of a tight one-and-done campaign. Here, you're handicapped if you want to switch characters throughout the game, and incentivised just to stick to your lane.

Not that you're really going to be too fussed about switching characters, because they more or less play about the same. There's no hulking bodybuilder, rollerskate kid or baby in a mech suit. The party dude, plucky reporter and old man rat all come the with the same core abilities and feel, just with some minor stat tweaks.

I get it though. Have you ever tried to set up a local multiplayer game of something with more than four people? One fussy prick spoils the broth for everyone. Arguments over controllers, characters, player number... it's not an environment you want to put a Gilius Thunderhead into. Equality of opportunity is the foundational tenet of such a chaotic social scenario. Just make everyone more or less the same, and nobody's too fussed about who they're playing as. But if you're playing on someone's single-player save, the characters aren't equal... I don't know. Why is it like this?

Look - ideal situation - 6 players, new save, all playing it for the first time, all excited, all in it for the long haul - I'm sure this works. I just don't think it's likely to be anyone's experience of this. More power to you if it's yours'.

Obviously, you're going to have a better time with this if you're a big Turtles fan. I have vague memories of being one as a little kid, but the emergence of Sonic the Hedgehog wiped my developing brain clean of pretty much anything that happened in the cartoon. I couldn't recognise any of the characters outside of the main cast and the action figures I had. I actually learned that one of my toys was a "Punk Frog" while playing this, though I couldn't tell you which one he was. The only real nostalgia I got out of the package was for Konami's cartoon licences, with the energetic soundtrack and colourful visuals conjuring childhood memories of Buster's Hidden Treasure and Mega Drive Animaniacs. I'm only kind of aware of some of the references to old TMNT media in here. I still like the game though. I don't think you have to be a fan for it.

It's a lighthearted cartoon brawler, and it's easy to appreciate the care and passion that's gone into it. It's not Streets of Rage 4, but I guess if I want that, I'll just have to play Streets of Rage 4.

First-person shooters have re-embraced agility over the years, which has naturally led to a resurgence of games specifically trying to emulate the graphical style and feel of the genre from the 1990s when speed was king. Prodeus is another one of those titles that looks and plays like it came out in 1997 instead of 2022 and while it has the aesthetic and action of a title from that earlier era, it’s not much more than a loving homage.

Read the full review here:
https://www.comingsoon.net/games/reviews/1241054-prodeus-review-ps5-ps4-worth-buying

not even close to finishing this but I wanted to write something because there's a weird discrepancy here between the reviews and the overall rating and I think that's just because there isn't a lot to say about it if you like it. This is Doom 3 for people who hate Doom 3, it's a loud and excessive game (though in a very different way to the original Doom games) that you'll know whether you like or not in the first 10 minutes. It's fun, guns are punchy and it plays basically just as Brutal Doom with a more consistent aesthetic but as someone who's played a quite a few of these Boomer Shooters I found it kind of junk food-ish as I went through levels with my brain completely switched off just gunning through enemies. I don't really get anything from its aesthetic and outside of that it's just a really polished Boomer Shooter, which is fine, that's all it's trying to be but I think it's worth noting going in.

If you're curious about it play the first level and then see if you want to refund it or not because I guarantee you'll know based on that.