Twisted Metal review

by Dr_Worm on Feb 21st, 2012

It’s been almost 7 years since the last Twisted Metal was released, and over a decade since a non-portable version. In my time, that’s too damn long. Although its gameplay originated as an early Playstation title, it’s still just as original and creative as ever. So does a new Twisted Metal for the PS3 stand the test of time, let alone stand out? The answer, I’m happy to confirm, is yes.

The basis of Twisted Metal’s story has always remained concrete throughout the series, and the PS3 edition is no different. An otherwise ordinary man named Calypso has the power to grant any wish, but he doesn’t simply give just anybody whatever they want. He created a contest called Twisted Metal, a demolition derby that allows the use of weapons, such as machine guns and missiles, and as you would imagine, it’s kill or be killed for the opportunity to be given anything they desire.

Twisted Metal’s gameplay is just as hectic and adrenaline pumping as ever, but this iteration has been even more refined than Black or Head On. Your vehicle controls arcade-style – don’t get this game expecting realistic physics. All the vehicles in the game can turn on a dime, jump 15 feet in the air, and can be shielded for a brief instant from oncoming damage. You can also turbo, and deal damage to your opponents by ramming into them. Some vehicles are faster but with less armor, while other vehicles are the opposite, and others are in-between. There are even a couple that fly. The game doesn’t bother going out of its way to explain why these cars can do these things, but who really cares? As mentioned before, you also have access to weapons like homing missiles, shotguns, napalm, and even a sniper rifle. Speaking of which, the damage for sniper rifles depends on how long you have your target in their sights – take your no-scope BS back to Call of Duty and don’t forget your juice box. Each vehicle gets two unique special attacks, one of which tends to be more high-risk, high-reward than the other – for instance a few alternative specials require the user to stand still, not something you necessarily want to do in the middle of an automotive battle to the death. They did, however, swap the sidearm and fire weapon buttons in the default configuration (L2 and R2), which may be confusing for veteran players and might take some getting used to.

The new Twisted Metal isn’t particularly easy. Health doesn’t regenerate, levels are huge, and weapon pickups require precision to drive into. God forbid a game requires skill to actually play. Being a good Twisted player requires good driving skill, learning the locations of health pickups, and making the right decisions with energy based attacks like the freeze beam and shield. Twisted Metal’s training mode is extremely helpful and brief enough for you to learn the controls at your own pace, and it should be the first thing you do in the game. There’s no Easy setting in the single player campaign; it’s either Normal, Hard or Twisted. I’ve heard of some people finding Normal to be too hard, however my brother and I felt it was too easy and decided to bump the difficulty up to Hard on our first playthrough of the campaign.

Throughout the previous games in the Twisted series, the single player game formula remained pretty static and understandably got old after a while. They were usually deathmatch after deathmatch after deathmatch, with an occasional boss battle thrown in for good measure. Even the multiplayer had no other modes than deathmatch or campaign co-op. The new Twisted Metal’s single player mode changes things up regularly. Although most of the time your objective is still to kill everyone else and be the last man standing, there are a few different ways you go about doing it, my favorite being the ones where you have to stay within a certain territory on the map or else you explode (why wasn’t this mode added to multiplayer?). All of the deathmatch based games are fine, and the boss battles are big, exciting and challenging.

Where the campaign does get bumpy is in the racing stages, where you have to race through checkpoints and finish first to win, and if you miss too many checkpoints, you die and have to restart the race. Firstly, it can be pretty unclear where you need to go to reach the next checkpoint. Secondly, in order to do well, you need a faster, usually lighter car, meaning other cars can, and almost certainly will knock you off the right path, most frustratingly occurring a hair’s length away from a checkpoint. And thirdly, since all of the rest of the game is focused on directly destroying your enemies, racing just feels out of place and somewhat distracting. Twisted Metal’s boots just weren’t made for walking, they were made for kicking your ass into glue.

Storywise, the single player campaign follows the stories of three characters, Marcus “Sweet Tooth” Kane, Mr. Grimm (whose name I don’t remember being mentioned), and Krista “Dollface” Sparks, in that order, and each admittedly less interesting than the last. When you finish one character’s section of the campaign, it transitions into the next character’s section. These stories are told with a combination of live action and CG greenscreen backdrops. It doesn’t have any affect on gameplay, but I like how visually interesting it is, although the story itself, and the acting for that matter, certainly could have used some general improvement. Players will wind up with more questions than answers. Finally, it should be mentioned that the entirety of the campaign can be completed cooperatively with two players, including unlocking vehicles and sidearms for offline multiplayer, which should only take about 3-4 hours or so to complete.

Once you’re done with single player, you’d do well to check out the game’s multiplayer modes, especially online. Available game modes include deathmatch and last man standing, with a few new inclusions. Hunted labels one lucky player as the hunted, as all the other players try to hunt him or her down. There are free-for-all and team versions of all of these modes, and another mode that’s exclusively played with teams online called Nuke. Nuke is sort of like capture the flag, but a little more intricate. Teams are played by factions, either clowns or dolls (based on two characters from the campaign), and players on one team capture the opposing team’s faction leaders while the other team defends. Offensive players with an opposing faction leader take them to a missile launcher, literally fueled by said leader’s sacrifice to what I can only describe as a cremator on wheels. Finally once the missile is launched, the player who made the sacrifice gets to fly the missile himself into a giant, flying, scrap metal effigy of either Sweet Tooth or Dollface. Teams take turns launching missiles at each other, with the winning team being the one who hits the opposing effigy most. As complicated as my overly long description of it seems to be, Nuke is actually a very fun, unique and balanced take on otherwise traditional CTF, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other games implemented game modes “influenced” by it.

Online games play smoothly, with little noticeable lag. Vehicles are, for the most part, fairly balanced, and you can even change vehicles between lives. Despite the fact that vehicles unlocked in single player can be used in offline multiplayer, online multiplayer has its own unlock system, where you gain ranks through XP. Generously, the game allows you to choose what you unlock, but is limited by tiers which you reach after unlocking all the previous tier’s unlocks. Playing online really is fun, but the lobby leaves much to be desired. For example, ranked games, which you need to play to unlock stuff, doesn’t allow late joining, so you need to wait until the round is over. That’s fine, but the lobby doesn’t tell you how much time is left in the game, making you wait upwards of ten minutes before a game starts. More importantly, when game leaders leave their server, other players become host, but not many players realize they’re hosting and wait for someone else to launch a game, leading to even more waiting, or sometimes not even playing at all and having to join a new server.

Unfortunately, in the game’s current state, players are having trouble joining games, be it from the lobby or the instant action option. As well, players may also be kicked from servers they were just playing in with a network error. This has been confirmed to be a problem on Sony’s end, and one that’s affecting many players, including myself. Dedicated players are managing to break through, while others might not even be affected at all. But worry not, because Sony and David Jaffe, Twisted Metal’s lead designer and primary spokesman, are currently working on releasing a patch to fix this issue. I’m confident this problem will be cleared up soon, but I can’t guarantee it, nor can I guarantee any other improvements will be made to the game. This review will be updated as soon as a patch has been released.

Finally, no review would be complete without discussing presentation. Graphically, Twisted Metal looks visually appealing and is full of detail. Better yet, the game runs at a full 60 FPS in most cases, and even when it does lag occasionally, it still plays very smooth. It could have used a more varied color pallet, but enemy vehicles are easy to spot (hell, they’re labelled), so it doesn’t really affect gameplay much. Some cars, however, can be confused for other cars, specifically Death Warrant, Roadkill, Roadboat and Kamikaze, especially since cars can be custom painted either in-game or using the official website. Audibly, the game uses a blend of original set pieces for the story’s cutscenes and menus, and an assortment of licensed tracks during in-game play, including I Can’t Drive 55 by Sammy Hagar, Straight Outta Compton from NWA, and Dragula by Rob Zombie (which was previously featured in Twisted Metal 4). If you don’t like the licensed tracks, you’re in luck, since the game allows you to use your own custom soundtrack. My soundtrack includes the Bee Gee’s Stayin’ Alive, Cum On Feel The Noize by Quiet Riot (yes, they really spelled it that way), The Final Countdown by Europe, and a handful of songs from Twisted Metal 1 and 2. I only wish you could add songs from the game’s licensed soundtrack to use in your custom playlist.

Even in 2012, Twisted Metal is just as unique as ever. In a sea of first-person shooters, third-person shooters, open-world role playing games and failing MMOs, this game is a buoy indicating that there are still fun games based on creative ideas that aren’t just niche digital downloads. It’s still fairly niche, but it still stands out as being one of the most original games of the decade, despite being the 8th game in the series (6th in the eyes of most veteran TM players). Twisted Metal is not without its flaws, but it’s just as much a blast to play today as it was 16 years ago. If the $60 US price tag is too much for you, this one is definitely worthy of a rental.

4/5

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