What you need to know
- TMNT: Empire City is a 4-player co-op beat-em-up for the Meta Quest, SteamVR, and Pico headsets.
- Players can embody any of the four Ninja Turtles, battling Footclan soldiers in the streets of NYC, utilizing each Turtle's special weapon and full freedom of movement.
- The game is expected to launch in early 2026 and we got to play through the intro section early.
As a kid, one of my favorite games was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES. It felt like the perfect gameplay adaptation of one of my favorite TV shows, and it helped that I could tag along with friends and beat the heck out of the bad guys plaguing NYC.
Fast forward several decades, and now I'm actually embodying those same Ninja Turtles in a new VR game for the Meta Quest and Steam VR, and Pico headsets. You can wishlist the game via those links, which is scheduled to come out sometime early in 2026. TMNT: Empire City has been teased since August, and now we finally have the gameplay to understand what you'll be doing in the game.
In a nutshell (halfshell?), this one's a near-perfect translation of the classic 2D gameplay into a 3D space, giving you full autonomy over your Turtle of choice via freedom of movement offered by a VR headset. Slicing Footclan members with Leo's swords, smacking them on the head with Michaelangelo's nunchucks, wacking them with Donatello's staff, or stabbing them with Raphael's Sai felt as authentic as a comic book come to life could be. It was cathartic in every way.
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My gameplay session was about 30 minutes long and followed through the tutorial section you'll play in the final game. The storyline in this portion of the game involves all four turtles "gaining ingress" into a building, as Leonardo so eloquently put it, only to have three of them get captured by a heinous villain who works for The Shredder.
The Turtles apparently think the Footclan and Shredder were supposed to be defeated, but it turns out some dark art is keeping Shredder and his minions from properly entering the afterlife. That's where the turtles come in, although the demo cuts off right as the boss's plans are thwarted.
You play as each turtle in the tutorial, learning movement tricks, how each weapon works, and how to utterly kick the butts of every Footclan member you come across. You'll climb pipes and walls, jump higher than any human could, and unleash kicks and a fury of weaponry that make you feel exactly like the arcade beat-em-up, just translated into 3D movement.
The final game supports 4-player co-op gameplay just like the classics, too, so you can properly roleplay your way through the streets and sewers of NYC. All the classic moves are here, including the flying jump kick that sees you hopping into the air and pressing the dash button to unleash a devastating thwack to the bad guys.
The remaining 10 minutes or so of the demo was spent in the Turtle's lair, which acts as the central hub for this pseudo-open-world game. The lair is unmistakable in its design, meticulously crafted and fun to roam around. You can check out all four Turtle's rooms, chat with Master Splinter, plan the next mission with April O'Neal, and head upstairs to craft unlockables throughout your adventures.
While none of the levels were open for this demo, heading out into the sewers takes you to different parts of the city for butt-kicking mayhem. Based on the previous parkour video, it looks like a notable amount of space is traversable, with climbable buildings and fun parkour everywhere. I'm super stoked to play this one with friends and couldn't be more excited to finally get the chance to embody a Ninja Turtle next year!
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