More of a reason I disliked, then a proper review. was not at all What I had been waiting so long for..
User Rating: 6 | Twisted Metal PS3
I have always loved Twisted Metal, Ever since Twisted Metal 2 introduced me to Playstation in 1997. Since then I have revered TM2 as one of the best games of my lifetime with some of my best memories tied to it. I was NOT a fan of 989 versions, or even Small Brawl. It wasn't till 2001 with the release of TM:black that I would again happily devote hours of my life to a Twisted Metal game. Since then I have been dying for Dave Jaffe and his team to come together once more, hoping and waiting 11 anxious years for a next-gen Twisted Metal to become reality. It's here and sadly from my point-of-view it kinda sucks.It was set up to be a very interesting game, and made a few good changes such as that "freeze" actually stalls the car instead of trapping it in an unrealistic block of ice, and the "bouncy bombs"[ricochet] are now R/C bombs in the form of R/C cars you just let the passenger drop out the window. It makes a few changes for the better, however it also makes a lot more changes for the sake of change. If there's one thing I can't stand (when dealing with anything) it's changing a working and well loved system Just for the sake of making it "new and different" which is not necessarily better. I'm not going to say there's no fun to be had here, it has elements of a good game. It's more my personal problems with it that makes it "suck". For destructibility in the environments the world is still too papery, and just dissolves when you touch it. Also the cars don't feel anything like cars, Cars don't move like that, they don't float around that much, it gets more drastic with every sequel. Overall AI battles are just TOO chaotic, TOO fast paced and the controls are a little too complex. I didn't have much fun with the single-player becuase the controls are a weird mix of new and classic, and hard to just instantly grasp. Especially difficult since it seemed like every AI just started specifically ripping -ME- apart, and my health was just gone. I found myself just fumbling to get away let alone fire back. The health runs out quicker in this becuase, again, it's made mostly in the interest of multi-player. Something I've never personally been a fan of is multi-player Deathmatch style games where you die like 9 times in the first 5 minutes. TFC was the only game I could stand that was like that. I enjoy surviving longer and pacing myself a little more, you really have to be on constant overdrive for this AI. So the game I see here is actually a good multi-player experience (if you can manage to enter a game), but re-invented into that at the expense of most of the things I personally loved about the series.The change that bothers me most is the fact that there are 3 characters in this game: Sweet Tooth, Dollface, & Grimm. I love themes, and one of my absolute favorite aspects of Twisted Metal has been that each character would be represented with a vehicle and special weapon to fit their personality, which felt really cool. In the PS3 version there are only 3 characters which are entirely separate from the cars available. In a match you choose three cars to be available to swap between during a match. This works great for a re-invented vehicular combat game, but it's not the "Twisted Metal" I remember or was looking forward to for OVER A DECADE! Dollface in Sweettooth's truck? Sweettooth in Axel's contraption? It just looks so stupid, and kills the awesome theme feeling turning it into a very generic deathmatch tournament game, Which I actually believe is what Dave Jaffe was going for here. Looking back I can see what I did, I fell in love with a final product (TM2 & TMb), while Jaffe still had different ideas floating around in his head which he could not implement into the original games. Much as people feel about the original Star Wars movies, they fell in love with a finished product, while George Lucas was still picturing it the way he couldn't originally show it from his mind. When he changed it to fit his vision after so long, it pleased him but alienated those who grew up with the originals. To add to this theory, Jaffe has been away from the TM franchise for awhile working on God of War and some other smaller PSN titles. Whenever asked about PS3 Twisted Metal he acted as if he was trying to be done with the series but fans kept bringing it back up. It feels to me, judging from his E3 interviews, that he finally threw together a little multi-player version of Twisted Metal for release on PSN to appease the fans, but then got back into it a little more and decided to put together a full game featuring single-player experience utilizing all his unused concepts he couldn't manage on previous systems, like the racing, obstacles, overly-epic year-long boss battles (a touch of GoW there), and floating clown-mechs etc. Playing the 2012 version it seems all of this game is somewhat related to the games I knew and loved, but at the same time feels like one of those movies based loosely on a comic/book that steals a few characters and basic similarities and reinvents it to a whole new cannon. What you get is a whole different experience that could be an absolute blast for newcomers, but the fact that this is Dave Jaffe the originator of the series now reinventing it just leaves those of us hoping for something more like "TM: World Tour 2", just completely out of luck.
