Twisted Metal Review

Back when Twisted Metal came out you were the cool kid on the block if you got your parents to buy you the game. I remember we’d always go over to a friend’s house and spend hours playing each entry of the series (I’d be slamming fools all day with Mr. Slam). Jaffe has finally gotten around to giving us a new game and besides the game leaving you wanting a few more game modes it still doesn’t disappoint.

Twisted Metal
Developer: Eat Sleep Play
Price: $60
Platform: PS3 (reviewed)

Now the campaign mode has gotten a bit of a tuneup from previous Twisted Metal games. Instead of being able to play as each character in Calypso’s Twisted Metal tournament to win a wish at the end you’ll play as just Sweet Tooth, Mr. Grimm, and Dollface in their own separate campaigns. Each campaign has 6 ‘events’ that are basically just the multiplayer game modes filled with bots and a specific boss at the end. Calypso does give a short introduction to each map and teases the characters (Sweet Tooth, Grimm, or Dollface) sometimes. These boss fights are big set piece battles that pit you against huge vehicles such as the brothers Grimm in two massive monster trucks. These battles require a bit more thinking since you can’t just spam missiles to finish them off with each boss having a specific way to kill them. Each campaign has an introduction, middle, and final cutscene that don’t really add much so don’t expect any sort of story from them; Grimm wants to go back in time to stop his father from dying for example. The cutscenes however are done in live action which looks surprisingly neat. I honestly can’t tell if the actors hammed up their lines on purpose or not, but it all sort of fits in a Twisted Metal game.

So now that we’re done talking about the singleplayer fluff, let’s get down to what Twisted Metal is all about; getting together with a few friends, some snacks, and 4 player splitscreen action. Now you’ll find 7 modes available, but only 5 of them are available in multiplayer. There’s deathmatch, team deathmatch, endurance, race, hunted/team hunted, and last man standing. The deathmatch modes don’t need explaining, last man standing gives each player a certain amount of lives, and hunted has one player on each time as the ‘hunted’ and your teammates have to take that guy out. Endurance is your basic horde mode with waves of incoming enemies (although I don’t think they get stronger with each wave). Race is probably the mode most people will be scratching their heads at and thinking “Racing? In a TM game? Buddy where the fuck is Ashton at?”. The idea is to race through each gate to the finish line, miss too many gates and your car will self destruct, and the end has a twist like ending in a deathmatch with the final 3 cars in a stadium. Now while I would be fine with just TDM and Nuke, the LMS and Hunted modes just don’t feel all that interesting and it’s a real shame they didn’t include Endurance or Race as a multiplayer mode. Nuke is where it’s at though; in Nuke your team will need to capture the various enemy leaders scattered throughout the map, feed them into the Juggernaut, and launch a nuke at the opposing team’s statue. Each round switches which team needs to attack the statue and which needs to protect their leaders and it really feels like everyone has something to contribute. You could either be the guy with the leader feeding him into the Juggernaut, escorting that guy, or driving around TDM style and just killing the enemy team. Things aren’t over if the other team manages to get off a nuke though since with Sweet Tooth’s new flight mode and the helicopter Talon you can shoot that missile down, hell even with the regular cars you can shoot it down if you get high enough. One round I chased an enemy player up a few buildings thinking he was just trying to escape when I realized he was just trying to get high enough to unleash everything on that missile, and you bet your ass he pulled it off spectacularly. The splitscreen mode does support up to 4 players as I mentioned previously but the biggest point is that it has quite an impressive amount of customization options which should please quite a few people.

I’m sure most Twisted Metal fans stuck their noses up in disapproval when Jaffe revealed that they removed all the classic characters and kept the cars with 4 factions: the clowns, the dolls, the skulls, and the priests but I suppose those people are going to have to deal with it. I don’t really mind the change since I always considered the cars to be the real characters of the game; you didn’t pick a car because you liked the driver, you picked that car because you liked the car. There are around 17 cars with around half of those being new cars or tweaks of older cars. The two most notable additions to the roster is the motorcycle Reaper and the helicopter Talon. What Reaper lacks in health (being the lowest) it makes up for by having a powerful flaming chainsaw and RPG special while Talon (being a helicopter) can fly around the map. Talon does have a neat alternate special where he can pick up other vehicles and carry them around; useful for pulling a teammate to safety or dragging an enemy to be a pinata for your buddies. Each car has their own unique special (although a few have a slightly similar specials) with an alternate special for some added fun. The idea is still to drive around picking up weapons ranging from various missiles, sniper rifles, shotguns, and more. There’s also a secondary gun that all cars come with that has infinite ammo so that you’re never left without some firepower and you can swap out the default mounted guns for rocket launchers, revolvers, and a few other sidearms once unlocked. The directional buttons are mapped to the landmine, freeze ray, and shield specials that are fueled by an energy meter that refills over time.

Besides some slight control layout changes the game feels even tighter and polished than it ever did with everything fast and fluid. There are also three different layouts for anybody who can’t stand the classic TM layout. I was a little thrown off by accelerate being square instead of X and reverse being on the right stick (in the classic controls) since I could’ve sworn they where never like that but you’ll snuggle into them quickly. I brought a few friends over and after a few minutes of messing around with the various layouts they all had the hang of it (even the ones without any TM experience) with their layout of choice.

Currently the multiplayer is going through a finicky situation with some connection issues. When I tried to join most of my games via the server list I got errors trying to join, but this seems to be fixed when I joined through the quick match option. I’m not 100% sure if that gets around the issue, but until Sony patches the main problem I’d recommend connecting from there. My main issue with the online mode is that you can’t join ranked matches that are in progress and the server list doesn’t accurately show if a game has started yet or not. I’ve joined numerous games that said they were in the lobby and when I go in it said it had already been started a while ago. It’s really annoying when you want to join a ranked game but have to look through the many rooms for a game that hasn’t started yet, once again Quick Match fixes this by throwing you into games that haven’t started yet or unranked games. Once you get into a game everything plays incredibly smoothly which is impressive considering all the chaos that’s happening. As you play through ranked games you’ll gain XP that goes towards leveling up to unlock vehicles, sidearms, perks, and skins for the cars. It was slightly annoying having to play with cars I wasn’t interested in but you acquire ‘unlock points’ so when you’re able to unlock a car you’ll be able to pick your favorite ones. Splitscreen has everything unlocked already (besides Warthog and the laser pistol) so no worries there.

You’ll find 8 massive maps available that vary from a bustling city, an amusement park, and a massive arena filled with traps that’s constantly transforming forcing players to be aware of the constantly changing environment. All of the levels are also cut down into smaller sections to accommodate for certain game modes or lower player counts. Each map features some pretty impressive destruction with certain parts of larger buildings falling apart and smaller structures just collapsing entirely. There are also numerous environmental objects that can be destroyed to cause further chaos such as a ferris wheel rolling around and crushing any unfortunate soul in its way.

A neat feature that many people are going to love is the skin customizer you can play with on the official Twisted Metal site over here. You’ll be able to change the look of each of the vehicles into whatever way you want. I’ve seen Outlaw reskinned as the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo and Meat Wagon done as the Ecto 1 (Ghostbusters). Hopefully the community pulls out some interesting designs besides the grim black/gray or black/red reskins I’ve seen.

The Final Word
The campaign should last you 5 hours tops, but this is seriously one of those games where it’s excusable. Twisted Metal has always been about fun, fast, & visceral car combat with friends and it doesn’t fail in any of those points.

– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good