TMNT: Empire City Preview – Hanging with Your Turtle Bros in VR is a Shell of a Time

When I played TMNT Empire City for the first time last year, I was instantly impressed by how easily being a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle jived with the immersive first-person VR perspective. Dashing from rooftop-to-rooftop, scaling skyscrapers, and taking down Foot Clan ninjas in melee combat all showcase the stuff that VR is best at pulling off, and the unique charms of these goofy reptiles pair perfectly with the playfulness and whimsy in a way that only virtual reality games can do. But last year’s demo didn’t let me play beyond the tutorial, and didn’t let me take the all-important co-op mode for a spin, so I was left with a lot of questions for how this thing would feel beyond being a really neat premise. Having recently had the opportunity to not only try out the co-op features by playing alongside a developer but also freely roam around one of its open-area hub zones completing quests, I now have a much better idea of how this thing feels with friends, and so far I’m feeling pretty good about this radical rendition of the Ninja Turtles.

No Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is complete without cooperative multiplayer. After all, a core part of the turtles fantasy is bringing the crew of four legendary fighters together to take down over-the-top goons with some good ol' fashioned comic mischief. Doing so in VR is exactly as hilarious as you’d hope, simply because seeing your friends represented by dorky, green anthropomorphized reptiles never stops being amusing. Whether it was their grubby, three-fingered hands, their massive mouths that flap open like something out of the Muppets, or the freakishly large shells that adorn their backs, I couldn’t help but cackle watching my co-op partner jump around and swing weapons with reckless abandon. Of course, half of the fun of VR is dancing around and doing shenanigans with your buddies, so naturally I spent a good chunk of time just hanging out back at the underground secret hideout eating pizza, chugging soda, and throwing stuff at my friends for a laugh.

But the real fun comes when you take to the streets of Empire City with your pals to put a stop to would-be criminals. Taking a page out of developer Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, you can freely explore parts of the city in search of quests to complete and minigames to take part in, like one where we had to beat up some Foot Clan goons and return stolen goods to their rightful owner, and another where we had to complete a time trial by gathering floating letters, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater-style, using our mastery of the climbing and jumping mechanics to get to hard-to-reach places before time ran out. None of the sidequests I saw were anything groundbreaking, but they did offer some decent excuses to do silly stuff with your buddies and compete with one another for who could take down the most baddies or complete a challenge with the best time, and you can get some good mileage out of that kind of stuff with the right crew at your side. There are lots of great details to be found while exploring, too, like how when one of your friends is defeated, they hide inside their shell and plop to the ground, revived only when their fellow bro runs over and stands near them for long enough to lure them back out and into the fray. Or how Shredder’s base of operations in Empire City can be seen from most anywhere – a massive skyscraper in the city center that looks like what you’d get if the Foot Clan launched a successful tech startup.

One thing I was definitely bummed to discover is not in the game is skateboarding. In addition to the free exploration, I also got to see a tiny bit more of the main story and progression systems beyond what was in last year’s demo. After gathering intel around the city and taking down some goons, my crew and I were ambushed by none other than one of Shredder’s favorite acolytes, Rocksteady, which triggered a lengthy and honestly quite challenging boss fight where we both had to work together to get shots in when we could, then dash out of the way before getting absolutely destroyed by this rhinoceros’ devastating attacks. Were it not for a healing item or two we’d saved from some previous adventures, there’s a pretty decent chance we would have become turtle soup, and it was cool to see a bit of unexpected challenge emerge from Empire City.

I also got a tiny sneak peek into the progression systems in TMNT: Empire City, which include a whole suite of gadgets and upgrades that can be gained by grabbing scraps while out on missions, then returning to the sewer for Donnie to turn them into tools for the team to use. I didn’t get to use the vast majority of these, but early examples included injectables that healed the team in times of need and smoke bombs that allowed for a stealthy retreat when combat gets too hot to handle or a failed stealth attempt warranted a speedy retreat back into the cover of darkness.

One thing I was definitely bummed to discover is not in the game is skateboarding. I get that they’re already doing quite a few things, and it’s a co-op game where there’s likely to be a lot of chaos going on as it is, but still, skateboarding seems sorta crucial to the teenage mutant ninja turtle experience, especially when you’re running around open areas and have to do so on foot when there’s a perfectly good excuse to speed up ground travel just sitting there waiting to be exploited. You already put Tony Hawk-like time trials into the game, guys! How the heck are you not gonna let me try and complete those while pulling off sick tricks on a skateboard?!

After spending a little more time with TMNT: Empire City and seeing how effortlessly hilarious its multiplayer mode can be, I’m feeling pretty good about its chances of capturing the attention of me and my friends. Here’s hoping the final product turns out as well as this preview felt when it comes out later this month.

Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.