Gameitall The Twisted Metal Series has always been a guilty pleasure, like a Tarantino flick or some kids cartoon that you watch way into your adult years. While that doesn’t mean that they’re necessary bad game, there is usally something holding it back from being great that you want to tell people that you enjoy it and even talk about your experiences with it, what you liked and hated.
Within the first few minutes of playing new Twisted Metal, it feels like David Jaffe and the team at Eat.Sleep.Play really want to change that, while giving the old fans what they come to expect and love from the series. Brutal Car on Car Violence.
Twisted Metal is more of a retelling of the series, basing the game off of 3 characters rather then a larger amount like we’re used to in the series. The Characters of course being Sweet Tooth, Mr. Grimm, and Dollface. The Story falls in the same line as the others, fight in Calypso’s tournament, if you win, you get what ever wish you desire. As your three characters you choose your vehicles and go forth to kill all your opponents. The presentation of the story is great, done though well done live action sequences, and the single player story really mixes it up so that it’s not the same gametype over and over.
Like all other Twisted Metal games, gameplay is strictly set to car combat, drive around blasting other opponents with your mounted machine guns and special weapons. There are a few new changes to the rules this time around, specifically to Single Player mode. At the start of the mission you will be given the option to choose up to three cars, in which you’ll be able to swap cars at a garage when at low health, if you blow up in single-player though, you fail the event, this makes it much more frantic as you’ll need to watch your health on all three cars.
Another major change is the levels, thanks to the PS3’s power, all the levels have some degree of destructible environments, it’s much more satisfying to plow through a house to ram a player who decides to hide from fire behind house. Some areas can even help with environmental kills or even change altogether. It’s a great way to keep people on their toes in multiplayer.
Finally we have the different game types, including the basic Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, you can also look forward to the Electric Cage, Twisted Metal’s version of a steel cage match, where you must stay inside the cage or you’ll start losing health, as a twist, the cage itself will move after some time. Then we have the Juggernaut Deathmatch, where your team must work together to take down or control a heavy armoured 18 wheeler that reminds me too much of a scene from Death Race staring Jason Statham.
Multiplayer has always been great, and with online capability of the PS3, your looking at one of the best online multiplayer experiences on the console. The matchmaking time is quick and because the game is easy enough to pick up and play, your looking at a great time no matter what your level of play is.
Twisted Metal is a step in the right direction for the series, and we hope to see more of it soon, it does a great job at pushing the boundaries that made the game great in the first place, and does more to introduce newcomers. If I were to complain about the game, it would be the fact that the miss some of the older characters and would have enjoyed to see it play out like previous instalments for that, and that the difficulty level gets ramped up fast. However the story mode is well done, and the multiplayer is great. This is the triumphant return of Twisted Metal we’ve been looking for.
Twisted Metal – 8 out of 10
Pros: Easy to pick up and play, Great Multiplayer, Great presentation
Cons: Diffuctly curve in single-player ramps up quickly, only 3 characters to chose from, some balancing issues with certain vehicles (specifically the helicopter.)
