If you just finished a 50+ hour game and feel overwhelmed diving back into another, play Stray.

A quick and simple game that’s well-made. The world is unique with interesting characters and a sad yet feel good story.

Also, you are a cat.

(8.0/10)

As a fan that grew up with the Outrun series I can't love this enough. If you're searching for shiny graphics or super realistic controls then obviously this won't be your thing. If you're looking for old fashioned white knuckled skill testing, then this is going to be your jam. The regular campaign is plenty long (roughly 6 hours of content) and the DLC is only $1.99 per pack on the eShop, each with it's own roughly 4 hours of content with the extra cars. I highly recommend this to fans of arcade racers.

Finally reviewing this, because I just had to have it on disc. In my defense, the last TMNT beat-em-up I bought was the much maligned Turtles in Time: Rehselled, which was eventually delisted. Shredder's Revenge was also developed by Tribute games, which was founded by former members of Ubisoft who worked on Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game, another licensed beat-em-up that was delisted in 2014 and only made available again in 2021. I'm not taking my chances!

Shredder's Revenge is hands down the best Turtles game since The Hyperstone Heist. It definitely plays more on the side of Streets of Rage 4 than Turtles in Time, with a heavy focus on building and maintaining combos and making use of special moves to control mobs. And like Streets of Rage 4, it controls like butter. It's incredibly easy to keep combos going by chaining ground attacks into slides or arials, and the quick recovery move can be used to initiate a new combo, which stops the flow of combat from being ruined when you get suckerpunched. You also level up as you play the story mode, which further expands your moveset by allowing you to activate super moves for different actions, which expands what you're able to do in a very satisfying way.

Like most beat-em-ups, co-op is where Shredder's Revenge really shines. I had no trouble finding a game in arcade mode and experienced very few issues with latency. Thankfully, if you happen to have, say, a Raphael who has connected with a modem made out of four potatoes wired in parallel and keeps getting stuck walking to the far left of the screen, you can just kick them out of the game. I found that losing players in the middle of an arcade run is no big deal as new ones are always dropping in between levels. It's very easy to get a full group of seven, and the game is absolutely bonkers when you do. Everyone is popping off supers back-to-back, the screen becomes completely unreadable, it's probably not for everyone but I love it. It's the one arcade throwback game I've played with a "complete the game with 1 credit" trophy I was actually able to get because of it.

I love the aesthetics of this game a lot, too. It has a very soft look which suits the cartoon style it's emulating quite well, and the characters are super expressive. It's fun to see how some of the taunts and victory poses are pulled right from the show's opening, and all the little nods to the cartoon are a lot of fun. Foot soldiers are always goofing off in the background, emulating menial jobs like they're god damn Gremlins, or enjoying some ice cream while waiting to get punched directly in the face (I feel a little bad about that, actually.) TeeLopes soundtrack is incredible and probably on par with his work on Sonic Mania, and hearing the original voice actors return is just plain nice.

In fact, Shredder's Revenge lands for me in a very similar way to Sonic Mania. These are both series that have been starved for a good game in really any style for years, finally getting retro throwbacks that not only do service to the classic titles but suitably modernize them. They're both made by talented teams of people who are clearly passionate about what they're working on, and it shows from the second you start the game to the moment the credits finish rolling. I grew up with the classic Turtles beat-em-ups, and I feel Shredder's Revenge does right by them, so this one gets a big thumbs up from me.