Twisted Metal Impressions!

Car combat! Once a staple of gamer diets, this genre has seen a sad decline of late. Carmageddon is dead, Vigilante 8 went bye-bye, and Blood Drive, well the less said about that the better. But all is not lost! The pioneer of the Twisted Metal series, David Jaffe, has returned to the franchise, hoping to breath new life into Sweet Tooth and co.

A multiplayer beta was released last week, and I've been having some fun with it. Stay tuned for a tale of tutorials, challenges and nightmarish connection issues. Impressions awaaaaaaay!


Initial impressions were good! Sweet Tooth glares at you at the title screen, much like Kratos from God of War. Its funny how you notice these things when you play games from the same creator one after the other. Its like how every "spunky" female in a JRPG is an annoying twat bag.

I picked out "Death Warrant", a fully armored muscle car, and began tutorialising. Tutorial was concise, if a little dry. It a game of Simon Says, and runs you through the control scheme quickly, but a little dryly. I would have liked it better if the tutorial gave me a bit of context, giving me someone to shoot up for a bit perhaps, maybe some target practice. It made the challenge mode tougher than it should have been.

OK, someones been using the Konami Code

The challenge in question was a simple fight, only five-on-one, good odds for any Spartan. My first two tries were pitiful, taking out only one opponent in three tries. I decided to switch up my vehicle, choosing "Meat Wagon", which is essentially the Ghostbusters car. This was an infinite improvement, and I beat it in one try with this car, and beat it well. The cars could use a little balancing methinks.

I tried online next. A long wait was in store for me, as it took me two days to actually find a game online. The connection issues were horrendous, and I was this close to giving up. It finally let me in however, and I got to mess about online. The lobby was nice and fast, and the level loaded up in a flash. The actual combat online was a touch imbalanced to my eye. The helicopter class seemed to dominate in every match it was in, and the community have yet to become reliable at taking them down. This would have been a good addition to the tutorial perhaps. The general feel of the combat was fun, cars were nippy, and fights were hectic. It seems that certain cars, particularly the tougher ones, seem much better at staying in the fray and racking up kills fast. Prime culprits were the semi-truck and the police wagon. I piled rocket after rocket into these damned things, and they just wouldn't die. It could be down to player error in my side, so I tried again with the semi-truck, Darkside. Infinite improvement. I was only bested by the chopper.

Not pictured: The thousands of broken wrecks caused by this damned chopper.

In summation, it was a fun beta. Biggest issues for me were the car balancing, and the tutorials. If they can plug these holes, I think we could have an online classic on our hands!