Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge was a standout brawler in a genre that’s seen a retro-focused resurgence over the last decade or so. Its vibrant pixel art, exaggerated animation, accessible yet relatively deep combat, and bumping soundtrack gave it an edge over most of its peers. However, aside from being fairly safe overall, it was lacking in one key area, something Marvel Cosmic Invasion, Tribute Games’ follow-up to Shredder’s Revenge, and its large roster has more than remedied.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Cosmic Invasion’s large roster allows it to have a greater sense of character variety, addressing how similar the characters were in its reptilian forebear. Rocket Raccoon and his many guns and grenades feels nothing like She-Hulk, who chucks around foes and specializes in using her massive muscles to lay the smack down. The two should feel wildly different because they are wildly different characters.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion‘s Characters All Feel So Different
And this carries across the entire cast. Even though Venom is somewhat like a mix of She-Hulk and Spider-Man and Beta Ray Bill’s throwable hammer shares some similarities with Captain America’s shield, these overlaps aren’t nearly enough to make them feel derivative of one another; no one can confuse Spider-Man’s fast web shots with the black and toothy wrecking ball that is Venom. It’s hard for any one of them to come across as copy-and-paste jobs because their special attacks, passives, charged moves, and ultimates cover a variety of bases. Even how parries and dodges are divided up can make a huge difference, as the latter is easier and the former is more risky but can lead to a bigger payoff.
Making Wolverine and Black Panther — two clawed assailants — feel different through these various attributes is an accomplishment, but Cosmic Invasion goes beyond the standard melee archetype often seen in their genre. Characters like Phoenix, Nova, and Storm (to name a few) can fully fly around, while a handful of them like Cosmic Ghost Rider, Iron Man, and especially Rocket Raccoon have access to ranged weaponry. Pushing outside of the typical boundaries of short-range melee attacks and grounded movement makes Cosmic Invasion even more unique. Aerial enemies can be more prevalent, and brawls can be slightly less crowded since some players can sit back and blast away from a distance. The variety here is key in a genre that can, at its most tedious, devolve into mindless mashfests where everyone is just jamming on the punch button.
TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge‘s Roster Felt More Like Palette Swaps
Shredder’s Revenge, for all its positives, still falls victim to one of the genre’s most damaging shortcomings. The differences between all four Turtles, April O’Neil, Master Splinter, and Casey Jones is negligible. Donatello is a hair slower and has a little more reach and Raphael is a bit faster, but these changes aren’t enough to truly differentiate them. This even translates to their special attacks, as just about all of them are just one big sphere of destruction. The animations for every character were full of flair and personality, but the effects remained the same, neutering Tribute’s ability to fully express each’s personality through their move set.
Making everyone have a more standardized array of abilities meant Shredder’s Revenge got repetitive faster than it should have. There was little thrill in taking up a different character since skills with one fighter almost perfectly translated to the next. Tribute seemed to have realized it should have started being bolder with its designs for Shredder’s Revenge’s two pieces of DLC. Miyamoto Usagi’s double jump and Mondo Gecko’s aerial dodge were both the type of one-of-a-kind characteristics everyone in the cast should have had from the start.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion improves on what TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge did in various ways. The voiced cutscenes and small, character-specific dialogue exchanges during combat add more flair to the experience. Unlocking costumes, lore files, and other extras makes for a more engrossing layer of meta progression. The character swapping mechanic allows for more depth. It’s a more polished overall experience built from Tribute’s expertise and prior experience.
But Cosmic Invasion’s most noteworthy advancement has to do with its roster. Having a lineup of 15 characters all with different abilities makes the game deeper and more replayable and means their personalities can shine more brightly during gameplay. Beat-em-ups are already prone to repetition, so doubling down on variety like this is especially beneficial, especially when done this well and at Tribute’s genre-defining level of quality. Palette swaps, like the quarter-munching cheapness that defined the arcade era of beat-em-ups, should be a thing of the past.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
Most Viewed
-
Image courtesy of Lucasfilm -
Image Courtesy of Warner Bros
