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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown is a shining example of how the way a game plays can completely change what it says about its characters. Growing up, my perception of New York’s finest reptiles was shaped by beat-em-ups. GameCube drawlers like Battle Nexus taught me that the boys were a bunch of rowdy goofballs. They were deadly, but sloppy. They aren’t the same turtles I find in the turn-based action of Tactical Takedown. There, I meet hyper efficient assassins who don’t waste a single movement. They aren’t just members of a squad who need one another to take out waves of enemies; each is a one turtle wrecking machine. I’m left to wonder just how devastating they must be as one unified band of brothers.

Fast-paced strategy makes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown’s turn-based action feel as active as an arcade brawler. Each level offers a jolt of arcade excitement that gives each turtle their chance to shine rather than treating them as interchangeable heroes. Its small scope leaves it vulnerable to bugs and repetition, but Tactical Takedown’s best quality is how much it’s willing to break the mold and offer a new spin on a familiar TMNT power fantasy.

Together alone

Rather than revisiting a scenario that’s been done to death, Tactical Takedown tries its best to steer away from TMNT clichés. It pits the boys against a new Foot Clan leader who is filling a void left behind by Shredder. Rather than tackling that threat together with a carefree attitude, we’re left with four brothers who have grown distant as each comes to terms with impending adulthood. The big shock is that the four of them never appear together during their mission, as an attack on the Turtle Lair takes out their communication system. Each one sets off on their own solo objective, only interacting with their bros through interstitial dialogue between missions. A broken Turtlecom turns out to be a perfect metaphor for a more human kind of distance.

That may sound a little sacrilegious at first, but it’s a purposeful swing. The physical separation drives home how much the team is growing apart through the story. It’s a little sad, like waking up one morning and realizing that you haven’t seen the cousins you used to play all night with on Christmas Eve in years. We’ve so rarely, if ever, gotten to see a version of the Turtles that feels this lonely and introspective. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I walked away from Tactical Takedown with a new appreciation of their dynamic.

Tactical Takedown isn’t a big licensed project and shouldn’t be approached as such.

That separation isn’t played as a bummer, though. Instead, developer Strange Scaffold uses it to shine a spotlight on each hero. Every level has me playing as a specific Turtle, as they all work towards the same goal using their own skills and expertise. Michelangelo attacks the problem at a street level, taking out goons with his nunchaku. Donatello sticks to the sewers, Raphael dashes over rooftops, and Leonardo sticks to the subway like a real New Yorker. In any other Turtles game, these would be locations that every turtle would explore by the end of the story. Here, each feels like one of the hero’s turf, giving them a specific home field advantage that their other brothers don’t have.

That builds to a climax you can probably see coming, but not in the way you’re expecting. We’re never quite given a moment where all four heroes are playable together, sharing a pool of actions and synergizing their skills with one another. There’s a much different interpretation of their union here that undercuts their individuality. It’s functional enough, but the finale feels less like a natural conclusion and more like a concession to not mess around with the core tactics formula too much. That philosophy makes for some repetition as each of its 20 levels plays out the same with little variation aside from swapping the hero.

Tactical Takedown isn’t a big licensed project and shouldn’t be approached as such. It’s a micro indie from a studio known for playing things fast and loose. Like every Strange Scaffold game I’ve ever played before launch, I encountered some form of game breaking bug that will no doubt be fixed by the time you actually play it. A broken special attack that I could spam multiple times by hammering a button, reset levels due to a glitched “end turn” button, and a loadout menu that I could not for the life of me figure out how to edit. It’s not that I hold those issues against it much, just as I didn’t mind I Am Your Beast’s few game-breaking issues that halted my progress for a few days. They’ll get fixed promptly by a nimble team, but sometimes I wonder what just a little more time in the oven could do for some of the studio’s best ideas, whether it’s polishing them to perfection or having time to build in one more creative twist that snaps everything into place.

All action

Though there are limits to its compact nature, Tactical Takedown’s focused scope is its greatest asset too. Each bite-sized level drops a turtle onto a small grid-based map. Every few turns, a new piece of the map forms while another goes away. It’s built to feel exactly like an old beat-em-up in that way, with the screen scroll of an arcade game stopping to frame a brawl before prompting players to move on. It’s an ingenious way to bring the feel of those games to an entirely different genre.

That same philosophy extends to its brilliant spin on turn-based combat, which takes a genre known for careful decision making and makes it feel like John Wick. Each Turtle has five moves that they can use on each turn and a whopping six action points that can be spent in any way. When playing as Michaelangelo, my initial skill set is largely about leaping around enemies. I can skateboard over a foe and hit them on the way over or dash past a few enemies with my whirling nunchucks. Even my most basic attack, a simple bonk, moves me to the enemy’s square once defeated. With six whole points to spend per turn, and more if I equip moves that replenish AP, I’m able to do a whole lot of damage in one go.

There’s a maturity to the boys here reflected in precise strategy rather than drunken brawling.

There’s a strategy to each turtle and the brisk four hour runtime gives me just enough time to perfect each over time. With Michaelangelo, I learn to chain my way through enemies by knocking my way through one so that I can directly move to another without spending a movement point. Donatello is more about shocking enemies to keep them in place and create distance between them, allowing him to pick them off from afar or trap them in poison sewer pits. Leonardo is more about standing his ground, creating stacks of evasion that allow him to survive in tight subway car melees. And Raphael is all about yanking faraway enemies to reposition them and boot them away. Each strategy is distinct and rewards mastery.

Once I got the hang of each, I couldn’t believe just how much I could do in a turn. Sometimes I’d be greeted with a screen full of ninjas and assume that I couldn’t possibly take them all out. With careful enough positioning, I’d realize that I could punt a foe off an edge here to instantly kill it, slash another weak one to finish it off and get its AP, jump over to a pizza box to heal, and still have enough actions left to take out a few more enemies. All of this happens quickly in my brain. I don’t need to think about what to do next; I reflexively fire off actions one after another, often taking out a whole screen full of enemies in seconds flat. It’s like playing a beat-em-up, but somehow faster and more precise.

It’s through that ironclad combat hook that my perception of the Turtles changes. While most TMNT games hone in on the teenage part, Tactical Takedown is concerned with the anagram’s N. Each one truly feels like a ninja here, dispatching enemies in the blink of an eye. If you cut out the bits of decision making between move selection, you’d be treated to a thrilling little sequence on every single turn that plays out like Oldboy’s hallway sequence.

I do wish that there were a few more ways to really drive that point home outside from the fairly static gauntlet of fights that never really changes. Some levels can feel long, throwing out waves of enemies with little pace until they just suddenly end. Perhaps some bosses or stage hazards could have given me a few more ways to think about the most efficient ways to use my moves, especially since the difficulty winds up feeling flat even in its enemy-filled finale. There’s more room to grow the great seed Strange Scaffold has planted here if the studio decides to take the team for another spin one day.

Even if it’s destined to be a one-shot, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown is a welcome little addition to TMNT’s storied video game canon. In just a few short hours, it gave me a new appreciation of each individual bro by deconstructing the team dynamic and showing how each part of the unit functions on its own. There’s a maturity to the boys here reflected in precise strategy rather than drunken brawling. You can break up a team, but the mark of a strong family is its ability to fight through hell and back to come together again.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown was reviewed on PC and Steam Deck OLED.