{"id":435873,"date":"2025-12-09T15:36:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T15:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/435873\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T15:36:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T15:36:29","slug":"empire-city-hands-on-a-radical-vr-beatem-up-in-the-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/435873\/","title":{"rendered":"Empire City’ Hands-on \u2013 A Radical VR Beat’em Up in the Making"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City\u00a0is coming to Quest, Pico and SteamVR headsets sometime next year, making it the first Turtles game in VR. Ahead of launch, Cortopia Studios gave us a 15-minute demo on Quest to show off just what sort of radical action this co-op beat\u2019em up has in store.<\/p>\n

In TMNT: Empire City, you get to tackle the Foot Clan with\u00a0all four titular Turtles\u2014Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo\u2014which also means getting to grips with with each of their signature weapons: katanta, sai, bo staff and\u00a0nunchaku.<\/p>\n

And just like the cartoons (and live action films), you won\u2019t be actually ganking dudes, but rather knocking them out as you explore deeper into the various levels, be it alone or with up to three other friends.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Image captured by Road to VR<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say I was expecting much more beyond combat in the game, although there seems to be a fair share of adventure-style objectives too, like solving casual puzzles, exploring levels for specific items, and scavenging craftable bits to bring back to your humble sewer abode, which lets you craft upgrades for each Turtle.<\/p>\n

You also have a nifty smart watch that can display your health bars, real-world time, and a map to help you navigate through what promises to be a good smattering of NYC-inspired levels. I saw tunnels (blocked off for me) to China Town, the Lower East Side, and some sort of \u2018Port\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Image captured by Road to VR<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the demo does an awesome job of showing off the game\u2019s decidedly \u201990s sidescroller roots, making it definitively Turtles to the core: you can jump, kick, dash, and ping around the place at high speed as you take on the dreaded Foot.<\/p>\n

While melee isn\u2019t physics-based, there is a block, parry and strike system in place that feels like it needs a little more refinement before I\u2019d consider it super reliable.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Image courtesy Cortopia Studios<\/p>\n

You can technically \u2018play it by the books\u2019 and engage with enemies like the game wants you to, i.e. by blocking or parrying and then striking them when dazed. Or you can do what I did, and just slice around without a care until dudes fell over.<\/p>\n

That said, I\u2019ll need to play a lot more to see how combat actually shakes out, although it has the potential to be a pretty good experience provided more difficult enemies can stop me from cheesing the combat system. As it is, some enemies do have unblockable moves, like the demo\u2019s level boss, which could make combat a lot more tactical than the low level Foot displayed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Image courtesy Cortopia Studios<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to tell for now if this is the Turtles VR game of my dreams, since the 15-minute demo is pretty heavy on the tutorialization of each Turtle\u2019s weapon and secondary move, although it seems pretty promising at this point. I want to see more of the story, and also get in with a crew of three other heroes in a half-shell to see how multiplayer will work.<\/p>\n

Reservations aside, one thing I can say for sure is it has absolutely nailed the Turtles aesthetic and vibe. Visually, the game has a consistently cool cel shading throughout, making it feel like it\u2019s been ripped out of the comic books. Voice acting is also spot on, and really reminds me of the \u201990s cartoons more than the various reboots.<\/p>\n

While we don\u2019t know exactly when TMNT: Empire City\u00a0is set to launch, in the meantime you can wishlist on the Horizon Store<\/a> for Quest, the Pico Store<\/a> for Pico 4 and above, and Steam<\/a> for PC VR headsets.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City\u00a0is coming to Quest, Pico and SteamVR headsets sometime next year, making it…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":435874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[158,67,132,68,729,730],"class_list":{"0":"post-435873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-technology","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-virtual-reality","13":"tag-vr"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115690353229737282","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}