I set up a time for my buddies from California, Washington and Arizona to all get together on Xbox live, have a few beers, and hopefully play a great classic arcade game remake. It’s not often that I get the chance to play a game with all of my old buddies, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to just want a fun game that’s easy to play and talk some smack back and forth and just have a good time. Well we just tried out Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled, and all I have to say is… “This game sucks… Bad…”

There is absolutely nothing special about Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled. Shredder and his goons are stealing the worlds’ artifacts like the Statue of Liberty, so of course Master Splinter sends the turtles to get them back. After battling through the first few levels for whatever reason, Shredder sends the team back in time, and then into the future, for no good reason at all, while laughing hysterically at them. I don’t get it, but I guess that’s not the point. This is a button mashing arcade game from the past. They never had stories anyway.

Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled is a hack/slash button mashing 3d side-scroller. The first level was actually kind of fun, but when the 2nd and 3rd and 4th level were all identical to the first with just a different background graphic, it just got silly. Over Xbox Live, Turtles in Time is 4-player co-op. Now this of course is very awesome, it’s too bad such a wonderful feature had to be implemented in such a terrible game.

It should take you and your friends roughly 45 minutes to complete. This is of course unless someone happens to lose their connection to XBox Live. About 3 levels in I lost my connection and was unable to rejoin the game already in progress. Why would the developers not make it so you could re-join the game that you were already playing in? So anyway, we had to have someone else start a brand new game and we all had to start over.

The controls in Re-Shelled are extremely simple. The amount of moves in the game are very limited. There is a standard attack, a special attack, a running dash attack and a jump kick, but the only move you’ll ever need to use is the special attack, as it is spam-able and is capable of taking out several enemies at once. Now, of course the game is 4-player and there are 4 turtles, so you get your choice to play as Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael. Unfortunately, I was stuck with Raphael and let me tell you, he is absolutely worthless. His range of attack is so limited that you basically have to be right on top of the enemy to even hit them. Playing as Raphael made the whole experience that much worse. Each player starts the game with 6 lives and if you lose all of them, you are out of the fight until your friends beat the level, at which point you are granted 6 additional lives. Needless to say we never had a game over because the levels are so retardedly easy.

Overall, the game was extremely easy and super repetitious. There is of course a boss at the end of each level, but they don’t provide a challenge, unless some of your friends are dead, as the bosses all regenerate their health during the fight, so you have to put a constant barrage of attacks on them to drain their health all the way.

At least the presentation of Re-Shelled was pretty decent. Redoing the graphics to utilize the power of the 360 was a great move. The levels look better than ever and the animations are very smooth. The games music is very action packed and intense. It makes you really want to kick some shell so it’s really so disappointing that the game play is so underwhelming.

The actors of the 2003 cartoon television series came together to record the voices for the characters and that sounds great as well. What it comes down to is this. A painted turd, is still just a turd, it just looks nicer.

I can remember in the early 90s going to Showbiz Pizza (that’s what Chuck E Cheese used to be called if you weren’t alive at this time) and spending the entire night with my buddies standing around this arcade machine. It was excellent. The graphics rocked, the game was challenging and we had all the pizza we could eat. It was a simpler time. But times have changed, and Turtles in Time simply doesn’t slice the pizza. While the graphics have been completely updated and look great, the game play is just so repetitious and boring. I absolutely cannot recommend the 1200 Microsoft Points to purchase this game. I actually fell asleep several times while playing. It is a complete waste of your time and is not worth your hard earned money.