Twisted Metal

"A beautiful woman wrapped in a big ugly coat"

Wow. I honestly can't believe that it has been seven years since the triumphant release of Twisted Metal for the Playstation. Since then we've had an excellent sequel, a god-awful third installment, a less awful fourth title, an incredibly awesome fifth game, a cool online version and another crappy PS1 game for good measure. All of these titles were modeled off of the 1995 classic Twisted Metal, a game that is just as fun as I remember, but a hell of a lot uglier too.

The gameplay is based off of a simple but engaging concept that has been emulated by various other series over the years. Let me keep it simple: You pick car, you meet other cars, you kill other cars. The (I think) twelve cars all have their own advantages and disadvantages, larger ones like Darkside can rely on ramming their opponents to death, and smaller ones can speed around their opponents and launch missiles to wear them down. Either way, every character has his or her own way of wiping the floor with everyone else. Singletrac thankfully keeps the gameplay enjoyable without overcomplicating things, though.

The levels are very well designed, also. From the first level's tightly compact battleground to Cyburbia's expansive suburb area, which contains all kinds of scenery that can be destroyed, these levels cater to a wide range of strategies, and give plenty of ambush points.

Despite the good core gameplay and great levels, the controls really could have used some work. making tight turns is incredibly hard, whihc results in such ridiculous situations as circling a powerup in a futile attempt to come in contact with it. The surprisingly useful zero-turning radius all of the cars have in Twisted Metal 2 is also absent in this game, making precision driving a phantom. Shooting is also made more difficult than it needs to be as a result of the cars' crappy handling. Laying down suppressive fire from the machine gun or lining up an accurate missile shot can be downright frustrating. however, after a good amount of play you should almost feel comfortable with the controls. I emphasize Almost

Graphics and sound are typical of first-generation Playstation games, so I won't fault the weak aesthetics to the game, and the overall result is a fun, well-designed game despite its weak controls. All in all, however, Twisted Metal is a competent and fun game that blows Twisted Metal 3, 4 and Small Brawl the hell out of the water.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/12/02, Updated 10/12/02