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Twisted Metal it has been too long! I've missed driving my car through crazy destructive environments, while I'm unloading missiles, freeze rays and bombs into my opponents cars. Everything you expect in a Twisted Metal game makes a return here and so do a couple of new additions and tweaks.
You now have a passenger in your car, they usually fire weapons for you like the new shotgun, sniper rifle or remote toy car. At certain points during the story mode they help you defeat bosses. You can now ram people with the Six-Axis motion, shake your controller slightly or violently like me. For some fun car ramming action! This is a cool idea but at times becomes tiresome and I wish there was an option to change it. Every car now has two alternate specials, they vary from car to car. For example Sweet Tooth's first special has his cars shooting a giant flaming ghost head, the alternate to this is his car transforms into a walking mech that can fly around and slam down to the ground.
Another change is the games story mode, past games like Twisted Metal Black had cut-scenes and story lines for each character. This time around you see the story unfold through the eyes of three characters in live action cut-scenes. Now here is where I had a major problem with the game, the cut-scenes look nice even though they come off like bootleg scenes from Sin City. The acting is kinda painful, especially Sweet Tooth; imagine if you watched a Friday the 13th movie narrated by Jason……yea its that bad. Mr. Grimm and Dollface are a little better but their stories are very predictable. The conclusion to the game is cool and seems to be leading into a epic story in the sequel. Okay okay stop yelling I know what your saying or thinking right now "Most people don't play Twisted Metal for it's story line". True! but when last years Mortal Kombat had a well crafted and good story, well there is no more excuses for other games.
Single player is varied and fun even when you feel like every car is against you instead of each other. Some new modes break up the usual Death-match formula, like cage match and race. Both are welcome additions that are sadly absent from the online experience, which I will get into in a bit. There is one more thing from the single player I have to address. It's frustrating boss battles! It was nice for David Jaffe and company to be creative with each one but didn't anyone think to make them fun? Their only saving grace is that they have checkpoints…..if they didn't I would honestly tell you right now this game would of gotten a lower score from me.
Now lets have a chat about the games online, it's fun, frantic and chaotic. Nuke mode is a welcome addition to your usual, Death-match, Hunted and Last Man Standing. Whats not so fun is trying to get into a room to play with people, Twisted Metal doesn't have a matchmaking system that almost every game like Halo, COD and even Uncharted has now. You either find a room randomly or make a room then invite your friends….yep it's pretty annoying. Oh and matches don't start until the host starts it, so if your host went to the bathroom and didn't tell anyone your going to be waiting around doing nothing for a while. Word from Jaffe is they are working on adding an auto start to rooms, which would be lovely. I'm kinda worried about Twisted Metals future, Jaffe recently left the company and is only contracted to work on online updates till March. As of right now there is no planned DLC for the game, that might change with the games sales but honestly if you want your games online to have some legs you gotta add more and take care of its problems. Also I have to mention this because it shocked me the hell out of me, everything you unlock in the single player mode does not transfer over to online. You have to unlock everything else again while you level up…..wish somebody would of mention that to me before hand.
Man I sound like I'm complaining alot but the truth is, once your speeding around in your favorite car of choice mowing down pedestrians and cars. It's a great car combat game, which are a rare these days. It's nice to see Twisted Metal still does it best in this current generation, if your a fan welcome daddy home and if you new to the series. Your in for one hell of violent fun ride, see you online.
Danny Mercado