|
Of course we're not gonna see anything anytime soon. We don't even know who has the license, and we're likely to not even get that until Rise information starts coming out.
People are either expecting too much or too little from a new TMNT game, and that includes the developers and probably to a degree, myself. Like Cure said, a happy medium is where it's at.
Everyone seems to want a new brawler, and although there's still a market for them, they seem to be notoriously hard for developers to pin down what makes them entertaining. The last well-received brawler I can remember was Double Dragon Neon. That game had a good engine, was fun, and tapped nostalgia but more as a loving parody of brawlers and the 80s in general instead of just cutting and pasting certain elements. It's what Double Dragon 4 failed at hard... ArkSys just took the NES Double Dragons (which have aged horribly) and built new levels around the exact same structure. Likewise, TMNT: Arcade Attack tried so hard to invoke those familiar with the arcade games to the point where it's even in the bloody name... but they were like "Look! You can throw enemies at the screen! Foot Soldiers are different colors!" and then they didn't craft anything resembling a playable piece of software.
Honestly WayForward should have just taken what they did on DD Neon and make Danger of the Ooze a spiritual successor to that, instead of making it the most dull "Metroidvania" I've ever played.
Heading into other genres could be a viable option, but TMNT has not had a lot of success that way. The console/PC game based on the 2007 film wasn't critically acclaimed but it did well enough on certain platforms to hit the Greatest Hits and equivalent status. That's probably the best example of an attempt, and really it was just Prince of Persia Lite. Mutants in Manhattan tried to be Arkham but structured with levels... and just felt overambitious and incoherent (although I will say I still enjoyed it to a degree). Out of the Shadows was just a mess and didn't really know what it wanted to be.
Of course, the genre that this series revisits the most outside of brawlers, is fighting games. But again, there hasn't been a lot of critical success in that area either. The SNES Tournament Fighters is the only one that is widely considered to be "good" by any measure. And Activision missed the boat by skipping a "generation" of what had been tradition at that point. But then again looking at what fighters Activision has published in the past, maybe that's an act of mercy.... And as much as I really, really want a new TMNT fighter, you've got to have a team that understands the genre to make it worthwhile. Critically and/or commercially successful licensed fighters aren't impossible - see Capcom's (earlier) Marvel titles, NetherRealm's Injustice, and Ark Systems Works with the current darling (even though it's still in development), DragonBall FighterZ. But those have teams who have already cut their teeth on fighters again and again.
The important thing that both fans and developers need to realize though, is like pretty much anything, it can't be about what you want. It needs to be what the majority wants. And if that coincides with what you want, that's just serendipity.
__________________
|