Here we are at episode four in record time. I guess it’s good I’m shooting these out like nobodies business because I did play quite a few games this year and tomorrow is November already! Wow year flew by and my episodes are into February/ March of what I was playing. This game TWISTED METAL was the first 2012 game I played in 2012. Mostly because a friend of mine was super excited for this game and its multiplayer and wanted someone to play with him so he pre-ordered this game for me as a birthday present. This game was sort of intimidating to me because outside of watching a friend play I think Twisted Metal 2 on PSX when I was like eight Twisted Metal was a foreign entity to me. Although after my friend amped the game up for me I began digging into what this game would be and also got excited. The first thing I did was hop into the single player just as my friend did so we would be prepared for some multiplayer mayhem later on.

The first thing I noticed as a fresh Twisted Metal player was first off the difficulty and second that there were a surprisingly amount of stuff to keep track of at first. Obviously I got the game soon enough but right away it was sort of hard to keep track of everything. My absolute first car choice was Outlaw just in case anyone is wondering which I honestly think is the best car to start with. Durable, decent special and ok speed. So I really, really liked the live action corniness of the cut scenes. I thought they were really well done and kind of wish there were more of them. Especially now that I know how many characters are in the roster of Twisted Metal. If there were maybe two to three more character sections in the game I think the game would be more interesting as far as the campaign goes. Overall the campaign was a decent mix of styles (racing, big bosses and typical battle royale) but god damn maybe it was my lack of experience but I found the normal campaign difficult as shit at times. In particular the battle against the two huge trucks which was just generally hard (cheated like a mofo with Talon to pass) and the Dollface robot who I thought was just hard to control Nuke and had weird checkpointing. So with the exception of those boss fights in the game which might just me sucking and complaining about it, I genuinely liked what story there was and the ironic wishes.

Now the other huge component of the game, the multiplayer. Oh my did I have fun with the multiplayer…when it worked. I played the online pre-patch and post-patch and still got randomly booted from games, had difficulty joining games and had glitched stats and therefore glitched trophies. This made some of the longer type of game, Nuke for example which has more than one round almost unplayable. This was incredibly frustrating because from the few matches of Nuke I was able to complete it was the most enjoyable game type and the most original mode in multiplayer. It involves two teams attacking each others mascot with Nukes which take time to attain. This was a lot more involved than the typical deathmatch, team deathmatch set up which while still great because it’s Twisted Metal but not quite as engaging as the Nuke mode. I will probably return to Twisted Metal at some point and hopefully there will still be people playing. I also REALLY hope the online is improved…but I kind of doubt it. However, I played quite a bit of this online and had a lot of fun mostly because I played with friends which I seriously recommend. This game is magnificent with friends. A great group online game, clan up and have a ball.

I’ll talk briefly about the vehicles which I thought were numerous enough and enough different styles. However, the special variation was not too different for some of them in particular the bomb related ones like Meat Wagon and the pest control van which basic special is just shoot a bomb. It is in the secondary specials where you get the variation and the fun as well as the larger difficulty in connecting. Because of the fact that I am not a Twisted Metal old school fan I don’t know if they left out important vehicles or not. The complaints I did hear and had were obviously about the newest vehicle Talon. This helicopter was sort of cheap mostly because in multiplayer people ignore Talon. Talon is out of the direct sight line of most players and they ignore people playing as Talon and as such he racks up kills. It has a tiny amount of health but can easily run away and has a pretty awesome special and can murder people not paying attention. This leads to people relying on Talon and becoming a nuisance. With the exception of Sweet Tooth’s ice cream truck which can fly no one is on the same verticality level as Talon. Talon is fun to use but changes the entire setup of deathmatch games where people have to go after him or risk losing. Sort of a bummer when you just want to racing around killing each other. This is my only issue with a vehicle.

Finally the Trophies: Wow you have to be one determined hardass to get the plat on Twisted Metal. Not only is it generally hard, but the trophies are a pain in the ass. In particular the kick in the nuts trophy is the win an online game every day for 30 days. I got to day 17 until a PSN update locked out my progress which effectively stopped me wanting to get that trophy completely. Also the stats online do not always update properly and a friend of mine went past the 50 kills with each car in the stats did not have the trophy pop. So glitched trophies are the worst so yeah. One of the few games I played this year which I have no drive to even try and get a plat in it. It’s not really going to make the game more fun. Unless you want to have one of the harder PS3 plats to get just to say you have it, I doubt you’ll have fun trophy hunting in this game. Detracting fun from this game would be incredibly detrimental because it has enough problems as is.

If this game had worked properly it would have been awesome. It didn’t but it was still a lot of fun and that is to my knowledge what Twisted Metal is all about. Sidenote: Was incredibly disappointed at the lack of coverage on Giantbomb, wasn’t sure if it was the general less coverage for PS3 games (I’m sure someone will argue but I think it’s obvious 360 is their console of choice) or if they were afraid of Jaffe stabbing them (possible) or no one on the team had any interest. Not sure but was let down a bit. Anyways duders who made it this far thanks for reading and next up is the polarizing Mass Effect 3!