Instead, if you want to replenish your lives, you have to go back to the car selection screen, input the password and continue where you left off. Speaking of its password system, Twisted Metal has this vexing little quirk where you’re given three lives to reach the end of a level, but they don’t refresh when the next level starts, nor is there a continue system. Not that I recommend it if you want to get your dollar’s worth. You have a choice to play through all the levels again as a different vehicle, and that’s not without merit, but the password system is so basic that you can use the same one to reach the last level with any vehicle effectively skipping the game. I waded through the carnage in an evening and reached the final level. They make a show of fighting while you’re up close, but distant groups of enemies don’t seem to take damage over time. The AI doesn’t seem to really… exist beyond the draw fog. Don’t think you can just hide and let everyone else take each other out, however. You start off battling a single opponent, but as you advance, you’re pitted against many more. There are only six levels but they vary greatly in size and layout. Your tour of destruction takes you through the various neighbourhoods of Los Angeles from downtown to the suburbs. (Image source: ) THE STREETS OF LOS ANGELES Watch out! These cardboard standees like to shoot at you. Instead, you get a text crawl which is better than nothing, I guess. Originally, they were going to be capped off by a live-action FMV cutscene, but they were cut because they were considered too disturbing. There’s an individual ending for each one of them, as well, allowing you to see how things turn out for them. It’s a bizarre collection of characters, each with their own reasons for entering the contest, each with a wish they’re seeking to be granted. The cast has always been one of the better aspects of Twisted Metal’s narratives. I personally wouldn’t trust a guy who likes to watch people in station wagons turn their fellow man into a well-charred piece of scenery, but I guess there are people out there who would. The winner of the competition earns a single wish whatever their heart desires. The story, such as it is, involves a man named Calypso holding his deadly demolition derby on Christmas Eve in the distant year of 2005.
It can be a bit of an issue, since the incentivizes driving away from danger while you wait for the repair points to come back online. These are single-use, but they do recharge after a while. These have a little more variety in them, giving you access to arcing electricity, ghostly heads, and even flame throwers.įinally, if your health is low, you can ride into repair points scattered throughout maps. Each vehicle also has a special weapon that recharges on its own. There’s also a variety of mines that… I’m not sure if I ever found useful. Weapons are picked up off the ground, giving you access to a plethora of missiles that freeze, burn, or just cause massive amounts of damage. You have a monster truck, a police car, a motorcycle, and, of course, an ice cream truck driven by an insane clown. In Twisted Metal’s case, most of the vehicles are simple civilian cars and trucks modified with machine guns and rocket launchers. You’re given control of a chosen vehicle, and you have to destroy everyone else in the arena. Vigilante 8, Battletanx, Rogue Trip (a game actually by the original Twisted Metal devs), and many more all hit the market to varying levels of success. On that thought, vehicular combat didn’t meet the same lasting success as the fighting or beat-‘em-up genres, but there was undeniably a surge of them towards the turn of the millenium. Much like how Street Fighter wasn’t the first fighting game, Twisted Metal was hardly the first vehicular combat game it was just the one that cemented the genre. The vehicular combat sub-genre is one that is mysteriously scarce in the current gaming scene, but in the late ‘90s, it exploded in the wake of Twisted Metal.
It’s like going back to the days of bashing cars from the toy box together. So, my elusive little devil, what do you have for me? Only the digital PSN version ever passed my radar. Not every edition of it came in the ill-conceived tall case, but I don’t even remember spying a Greatest Hits edition. In fact, gazing at its bizarre early-PlayStation tall-case, it dawned on me that I don’t remember even having seen it before. I have vague recollections of having experienced later entries in the PlayStation series, but never the first.
A friend of mine used to own a PS1, but the rental store we frequented only carried the sequel in perpetuity. The original Twisted Metal has been something of a mystery to me.