The Most Radical Strategy Game of the Year Just Released on PC
Serving beatdowns, one turn at a time.
Tales of brotherly love and conflict are a dime a dozen in entertainment, whether you’re looking at comic books, movies, or games. But few characters have managed to have as profound an impact, and legacy, as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The heroes in a half shell basically wrote the book on a superhero band of brothers, but incredibly, even after four decades — these characters can still feel fresh. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown is a brilliant bite-sized strategy game that brings a refreshingly unique take on the genre, while reminding you of why these characters have been so special for so long. Whether you’re a fan or not, it’s one of the year’s must-play games.
There’s a surprisingly compelling setup to Tactical Takedown, putting the Turtles in a place they’ve never been before — without both a mentor and a villain. Some mysterious event has finished off both Splinter and Shredder, leaving the Turtles to completely fend for themselves as the Foot Clan begins a veritable invasion of New York. Separated and isolated, each of the Turtles now has to fend for themselves, and in the process realizes the importance of leaning on each other.
Tactical Takedown is a fairly short game, clocking in at roughly six hours — but that’s honestly the game’s biggest strength in this case. Split into four different chapters, the game has you playing through a series of grid-based tactical missions where you control one of the turtles. Through this format, you get to see each turtle figure out how to move forward on their own and grapple with the trauma of Splinter’s passing.
The writing in Tactical Takedown is quick and snappy, and while the narrative isn’t overly complex, there’s some genuinely nice characterization for each Turtle. We get to see Mikey struggle with no one telling him what to do, figuring out how he can step he can protect the city in his own way. Leo, as you might expect, tries far too hard to do things entirely by himself and suffers the consequences.
Despite its short runtime, Tactical Takedown’s story does a good job of illustrating the heart of what makes Ninja Turtles special.
In a recent interview with Inverse, Strange Scaffold head Xalvier Nelson Jr. said that the reason each stage features a single playable character is because of the constraints of the game engine. But what’s remarkable is how that design constraint has been turned into an actual narrative theme — used to explore the nature of family. It’s all enhanced by a vibrant visual novel aesthetic that helps hammer home the unique personality of each of these iconic characters.
But where Tactical Takedown really makes its mark is in the strategic gameplay. The game uses small levels focused on optimizing the moves you pick and using your action points smartly. Everything is presented in a diorama visual style, with characters represented by pieces like a board game — really emphasizing those strategic elements.
Each Turtle has a completely unique moveset that requires you to think about the game's strategy in a different way. For example, Donnie can lay down electric traps and freeze enemies with a throwing knife, which makes his gameplay heavily focused on map control. Meanwhile, Raph is all about moves that can boost his attack power and restore AP when an enemy is defeated, putting an emphasis on smartly linking KOs together. There is some degree of replayability, however, as an in-game shop lets you buy new moves using the points you gain from completing levels.
Each Turtle has a wildly different combat style, making the various levels feel like unique puzzle challenges.
The extra twist on top of all this comes with Tactical Takedowns stages, which actually “mutate” as the battle goes along. On each stage, you need to survive a number of turns, and sections of the map will both appear and disappear constantly. This means you always need to have forward momentum, and think a few turns ahead to make sure you don’t fall off the map. There are a number of other elements woven into maps to make them feel distinct — an old granny that blasts Foot Soldier with ammo, a lane where a car runs over everything, and pizzas to restore your health.
In most grid-based strategy games, you can see the entire map, and your strategy is typically built around careful planning with that broad overview in mind. Here, however, the emphasis is on adapting on the fly, having to shift your strategy as the world around you literally changes.
It’s a genuinely ingenious twist that changes the very way you think about this kind of strategy game, but the focus is still crucially on bite-sized levels that demand speed. That’s really the crux of what makes Tactical Takedown feel special, it’s a tactics game that has a completely unique identity, in a genre that tends to do the same thing over and over.
The way levels shift and change makes things feel tense, adding a unique edge to your strategy.
Tactical Takedown is the perfect game you can knock out in a weekend, an engrossing strategy game that keeps you hooked with diverse levels, but never overstays its welcome. That tight strategy is perfectly coupled with a breezy but charming narrative on the brothers' learning to grow, both apart and together.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have a long history of fantastic video games, but Tactical Takedown nestles itself safely near the top of that list.
