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TESTING, TESTING: For some reason, WordPress isn’t auto-saving drafts (again), which for me, is a problem of the very large variety as I may need to pre-load some future posts if I need to get some medical stuff taken care of.  So, I dug up an old post from my older extinct blog and converted it over to see if I can see what’s going on.  Hmmm. I see that I’m still experiencing failed draft saving, but let’s go post this using manual saves every few minutes try to figure out a few things. Time machine, activate!

Platform: PS3/Xbox 360, Wii U

Developer: Monkey Bar Games

Publisher: D3Publisher of America

# of Players: 1 – 2

ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)

Official Site

Score: B (80%)

Just like the DreamWorks film, Turbo on consoles is a nice surprise of a game that’s not bad at all for its target audience. Rather than retell the movie plot or do some sort of follow up to the films events, Turbo: Super Stunt Squad is a cross between a racer and and extreme sports game (more specifically, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series). This oddball mix actually makes the game quite enjoyable and thanks to optional tutorials, a slice of shell customization and some interesting course layouts. It’s certainly not a bad bit of diversion for adults who shell out for this one expecting the usual too-short licensed experience, only to find a game with a few tricks up its sleeves.

Monkey Bar Games has cooked up a pretty nice-looking game with a fair bit of content and some definite replay value for those looking to see everything. Granted, it’s not the hardest game in the world for expert players or even novices. But again, this game’s made for the kids who saw and loved the movie. The 3DS version isn’t as successful, but that one will get its own review when I can get to it.

For the record, the PS3, Wii U and Xbox 360 versions look exactly alike in their nicely shiny HD coats with the sole difference being Wii U owners get that GamePad to play this on. There’s not even an attempt at dropping a story on your lap here – you just hop into the main game as Turbo or choose one of the other snails from the movie, maybe play through a series of tutorials if you like (good for the wee ones) and then get to the racing and unlocking fun. What works immediately are the fairly simple to pick up controls and how fun it is to pull off stunts from rail sliding to wheelies and more with relative ease. If you or the kids aren’t used to the gameplay mechanics in older skateboard games, a few of the more complex stunts may baffle you until they’re nailed. Thankfully, the game doesn’t throw failure in your face, as you only lose any stunt points you were going to get if you don’t stick a landing.

As this is a kid’s game, points and rewards are super easy to obtain to the point that in the non-mandatory tutorial, you can unlock a ton of Trophies (or Achievements on the 360) and earn enough points to buy a bunch of shell upgrades. It’s not rocket science here to figure out this is a very easy hunt for those awards, that’s for sure. As the game isn’t taxing the hardware on any home console, the game looks solid on every console I’m playing the Wii U version, but have seen the PS3 and Xbox versions at a press event and yep, they all look alike. There’s a good deal of content here, but the great thing is you can choose to play as little or as much as you like as there’s no pressure to race though things.

Overall, Turbo: Super Stunt Squad in exactly what you expect, save for the amount of replay value, which is pretty high if you’re wanting to see everything and play in reasonable slices of time. As a kid’s game it’s pretty decent and very well made enough that there’s going to be some parent somewhere rocking this for fun while the kids are asleep. Nope, I won’t tell if you won’t. Recommended.

-GW