While I was a huge fan of : Shredder’s Revenge when it launched last year, I wasn’t sold on the Dimension Shellshock DLC when it was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:revealed to be a survival mode instead of an all-new campaign. I’m always up for more heroes in a half-shell, b𓃲ut I was hoping this new helping would feature more struct👍ured levels akin to the excellent base game.
Combining this letdown with Gears of War permanently scarring me when it comes to horde modᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚes, I was worried that Dimension Shellshock wouldn’t be for me, even if it was adding two of my favourite characters. I was wrong to be skeptical - Dimension Shellshock is a surprisingly dense addition that mixes up the core formula enough to feel worthwhile without ever leaving behind what makes Shredder’s Revenge so good in the first place.
Although Dimension Shellshock might just seem like a simple survival mode at first, it’s actually a lot deeper. While you are bat✨tling through waves of enemies to progress through each run, you’re also tasked with collecting pieces of crystals that then let you advance to the next dimension, such as the world of Mirage comics, an 8-bit area reminiscent of the NES classics, and a Japanese𒆙 Edo era based on Usagi Yojimbo.
Collecting crystals might sound easy enough, but you need a lot of them to hop between dimensions, something that increases with each new area you visit. Thankfully, larger amounts of crystals are also offered as one of the randomised end-of-round rewards you get from beating waves of en🍸emies. They’re not the only thing on offer either as you’re often given the choice between them and a temporary power-up or perk that makes fighting enemies easier, but keeps you in the same area for just a little bit longer.
This creates a compelling risk-vs-rewওard mechanic that keeps things fresh no matter how many times you run through the mode. Do you grab the bundle of 30 crystals and get closer to finishing your run, o𒁏r do you pick up the health-restoring pizza and live to fight another round? Is it worth choosing the power-up that lets you turn into Shredder to decimate the next wave of enemies and hope to find more crystals later, or do you try and get through the dimension you’re in as quickly as possible?
There can be a frustrating learning curve to some rewards at first, as you don’t get told what each pickup does until you’ve selected it. That can be exciting when you’re close to death and choose a perk that lets you drain health when attacking enemies, but it can be run-ruining if you’re in the same situation and unknowi𒐪ngly pick the ability that causes you to both deal and take double dama💛ge. Thankfully, this frustration fades once you’ve run through the mode a few times and come to grips with all the rewards on offer.
And run through the mode several times you shall. After playing around 30 hours of the base game across several different platforms, I was expecting to breeze through the survival mode without any difficulty at all, but boy was I in for a shell shock. Since this mode doesn’t carry over your health, number of lives, or the ability to use radical mod꧟e from the main game but still puts you up against the game’s hardest enemies (and some new, even harder ones to boot), I got absolutely destroyed before managing to emerge victorious for the first time.
Dying is when Dimension Shellshock really clicked for me. The best thing it does is bring along elementsꦓ of the base game’s progression. Once you fail a run (and you absolutely will the first and second time around with each character), you level up based on the number of crystals you collected and unlock permanent upgrades similar to the base game, such as extra health, a second special meter, and eventually radical mode.
Dimension Shellshock can feel brutal when starting out, but running through it enough times and powering your character up makes sure that you can eventually get to the end with enough perseverance, which reminded me a lot of Hades. That&rsq𒐪uo;s right, Shredder’s Revenge is a roguelite now, and all the better for it.
As great as the new survival mode is, the real h𒈔ighlight of the DLC is the two new characters - Miyamoto Usagi of Usagi Yojimbo fame an✨d Shredder’s daughter, Karai. Usagi is by far the best character on the roster now thanks to his prowess in the air, while Karai’s special moves feel fittingly overpowered and make her a great choice for survival mode. They’re both excellent additions to the game’s roster and gave me more than enough reason to replay the campaign with each of them.
These two new characters are so great that they almost make it hard to go back to the more simplistic and grounded♚ original crew, especially if you’ve already poured as many hours into the base game as I haveꩵ.
Thankfully, Dimension Shellshock has an answer for that too in the fo☂rm of palette swaps based on different iterations of the Turtles, like the 2013 seri✃es, 1990 movie, and the more recent Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. They might just be palette swaps, but the chance to represent every era of the Turtles is more than enough reason for a diehard TMNT fan to pour even more hours into the mode. 2003 Turtles for life.
I went into Dimension Shellshock expecting it to be a simp🙈le game mode that adds an hour or two of fun to an already great game, but I instead got an even deeper experience that gave me just as much to love as the main campaign. Shredder’s Revenge was already the best TMNT game there’s ever been and Dimension Shellshock only cements that position even further.