Portal Power is a game that does an absolutely [i]atrocious[/i] job of showing you how great it is. It flat-out puts its [i]worst[/i] foot forward. Once you get past that and begin to appreciate the overall design concept, mechanics, and interesting take on arcade action, you start to see the beauty of the intent and polish of the deeper execution. At its heart, Portal Power offers one of the most fun and interesting single-player TMNT experiences.
That said, players have to overcome a few technical and perception hurdles before they can truly appreciate this game:
- Portal Power is fairly unique compared to traditional beat 'em ups or other arcade-style TMNT games. Intentionally, there's no multiplayer, your health is shared amongst all turtles, and although you can control turtles individually, you're responsible for the entire team at once. Think of it more as a real-time, single-player, team-based action game than a traditional beat 'em up.
- The tutorial is borderline misleading, seemingly teaching new players the least interesting, least effective way of playing the game.
- While it worked flawlessly on Steam Deck, PC players may encounter port issues, especially with controller detection in the main menu UI.
It's hard to overstate how seriously Portal Power buries the lede regarding how best to play the game. It starts you off at an awkward disadvantage, knowledge/understanding-wise. It suggests you approach the game like a (very) simple beat 'em up with clunky perma-escort mechanics in how you manage your team. It does show you that you can control all four turtles at once, but you aren't going to have nearly as much fun or be remotely as effective if you aren't almost always doing it. The game defaults to single-turtle control with toggleable team control, but it really should be team control with a single-turtle toggle.
Another way it undersells itself is regarding its dash attack, an offensive application of the dodge mechanic which combines the i-frames of a dodge with rapid traversal and quick, stunning hits which can be chained together indefinitely, depending on enemy number, placement, and level of rage. This is another mechanic the tutorial buries the lede on. Basically, you can either walk up to enemies and do generic punches and kicks at them while reacting to enemy specials... or you can group up and zip around the screen unleashing coordinated combo fury and baiting attacks [i]like a team of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.[/i] You also get punished if your timing/aim is poor, in that your team separates and becomes uncoordinated. There's a lot of fun to be had in mastering the execution of coordinated dash attack chaining.
While the audio features could be more robust and the soundtrack more fleshed out, the game's overall presentation is solid. It combines the original voice cast from TMNT (2012) with that show's iconic style and features crisp visuals that present well both on Steam Deck and at 4K. The story is relatively simple but more than enough to drive the action, where the game shines. The costume system also adds flavour, as well as depth in how you build your team by virtue of the different mechanics associated with each costume.
The level design, enemy variety, boss fights, and overall balance are solid, with the exception of a few tedious enemy types that aren't frequently encountered. Similarly, the difference between Normal and Extreme mode is handled well, with Extreme being both more fun and offering a slightly different challenge.
The game's not perfect, however. One of the ways the game trips over itself is a lack of polish when it comes to the PC port's controller/UI implementation. For example, although I had no issue on Steam Deck, on my PC I had to mod the game's controller port settings to bypass issues with the main menu UI not detecting controllers, even when the gameplay itself would, which appears to be a somewhat common issue. Similarly, while most of the achievements are well thought out, the Randomizer achievement may as well say: "If you didn't notice and get this early, you may as well restart from scratch."
Despite the technical issues and arguably misleading tutorial, I really appreciate this game. You can tell that some people on the design team knew exactly what they were going for in a pretty masterful way. It's unfortunate that the game didn't do a better job of highlighting those successes and that the degree to which Portal Power stumbles over itself is going to turn off a lot of players before they can recognize the deeper appeal, but I'm hopeful it can be better appreciated in time.
