Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles: Shredder's Revenge's Dimension Shellshock by developer Tribute Games and publisher DotEmu—Sony PlayStation 4/5 review
written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the
publisher.
Estimated Reading Time: 3.5 minutes
The exciting part of DLCs are the potential that they can bring to the core game. While 'back in my day' we called them expansions, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge's Dimension Shellshock DLC does exactly that. It expands the gameplay. Bringing in a brand new mode alongside the existing Story and Arcade, Survival will test your skills with the pre-existing cast and some new faces to the mayhem.
Unlike the Story and Arcade modes, Survival mode is truly meant to test you and up to five others against waves of enemies and boss combinations through various dimensions. Dimension Shellshock indeed! Only adding to the test is the mystery of what specific power ups do and if they are indeed there to help you or cut your run short on their double edge swords.
In
terms of core gameplay, nothing has changed. Any character you pick can move
around the screen and perform regular attacks, heavy attacks, jump attacks,
special attacks and dodging… attacks. Lots of options for our heroes in a half
shell and their companions! From there it's all about survival through a series
of stages each with their own quirks that can only be passed through to the
next dimension once you've collected enough crystal shards to move on.
The collection of crystal shards is what makes this tricky. Shards can be collected in one of two ways. The first? Defeating enemies though you won't be gaining them very fast in this manner. The other way is that they can be offered as a reward for every stage cleared. Ten, twenty or thirty shards are definitely nothing to sneeze at but like everything else, it comes with a catch. Do you take the crystals to be able to move on? Or do you heal up in order to potentially survive another round?
I
would love to say that it's a team decision, but that really depends on your
team. While playing through the new mode with Richard, we found out that if you
decide on one portal but someone else rushed into another before you? It's the
other portal's reward that is selected. Whoops. From there we would discuss it
as long as it wasn't clear of what we wanted to obtain.
The new power ups to the mode are also really neat. Some of them simply let you do as you could in the Story and Arcade mode. Use your special abilities as much as you want. Spin around like you just don't care about hitting everyone in sight. But now you can also get power ups that drain your health slowly but allow you to gain health from defeated enemies. You can hit much harder but also take more damage. And some of the weirdest power ups? Playing as Bebop, Rocksteady or Shredder for as long as their health bars last!
That's
not all either. There are two new characters added to the roster. Usagi, a
samurai rabbit originally introduced when I was watching the Ninja Turtles back
in the 80s though I seriously don't remember this. And Karai, a member / leader
of the foot clan that I've only recently known about while reading through the
IDW Publishing graphic novels which are fantastic for the record. Both these
new additions are a lot of fun and work well with the other characters as well
as the Story and Arcade modes.
As a final twist to the new Survival Mode, full crystals are also used in order to level up, but more in a roguelike fashion. As you clear dimensions by obtaining enough crystal shards to move on, the completed crystals that they form are what will eventually level up your characters. The higher the level, the more crystals required. These level ups will grant similar bonuses to the Story Mode but only AFTER you fail, or, complete the new mode and head back instead of continuing forward to further test your mettle.
All
in all, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge's Dimension Shellshock
adds in hours of challenging new fun for players looking for something a little
different. Challenging but rewarding, this new mode and the characters are a great
reason to come back to this excellent title if you haven't in a while.
In Richard's and my case? It was a small break from the other two modes as we try to Platinum it together!
Score: 8.5 / 10
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