Despite its obvious departures from the original series, 989's Twisted Metal 4 is surprisingly addictive.
Rather than continue with the premise that Single Trac started and 989 messed around with, Twisted Metal 4 actually manages a different story to start the players out with. We start out with a pretty well designed FMV which explains what appears to be 989's vision of the origin behind the trademark character of the game Sweet Tooth as well as the history behind Calypso and his Twisted Metal contest, narrated by one of Sweet Tooth's current cronies.
We quickly learn that Sweet Tooth won the Twisted Metal contest long ago and wished to be the 'Star of Twisted Metal.' Being a glorified and apparently immortal contestant however made Sweet Tooth envious of Calypso's ownership of the contest, which inspired Sweet Tooth to gain his own gang of miniature clown body guards which kicked Calypso out and put Sweet Tooth in.
Although the plot does not progress beyond that premise, it does not necessarily need to; aside from the obvious rivalry that develops between the de-throned Calypso and Sweet Tooth, there's no need to stretch beyond that, especially when there's a whole string of other contestants willing to win the contest.
The game play mechanics for the most part remain the same as you choose your mode of game play and your driver and you follow an arranged set of levels that range to different locations. Most of the locations in the game are pretty inventive in both concept and design as you start off in a construction yard that is separated into five different locals, each with their own little hide aways, retreats and some with their own hidden ammo caches! From there the locations change to mostly urban areas with enough variation to keep you on your toes.
Sadly, not every spot is well conceived as the fourth level is a seemingly over-rated bedroom level complete with Hot Wheels style ramps and the fifth level is the oddly decided Amazonia 4000 BC, a variation of the famous Amazonia Fire Walk level from Twisted Metal 2, but the lava hasn't over-run the arena. What's the point of going to Amazonia if there's no lava to slowly melt on?
What makes each level unique however is that some of the levels have traps and areas you can access either by using jumps, teleporters or in the first level manipulating a crane to pick enemies up with! There is also the addition of spots of the arenas that are flammable! These are referred to as Toxic Waste spots which are neon green pits that you can drive on. If these pits are struck by flammable objects such as napalm, the entire pit ignites with a ring of fire that spreads to the area of the pit, making a nice little trap on occasion.
Although there's little change in the modes, you have a number of options to choose from in regards to either choosing or randomizing your opponents as well having the level you choose progress or repeat as you play in death match mode. In Tournament mode, you choose your character to play as and progress through eight levels until you beat the final boss and thus beat the game as that character and see their ending. The most noticable points of change here includes the option to save your progress after every level is beaten. As you save your progress, not only can you continue where you left off by a simple load option, but you can also use this method to view the character's ending and depending on how long you progress as the character, the game will get harder, which is determined by your rank which tells you how many times you've played the game.
Also, at the end of every level there is a boss to fight, rather than having a boss half way through the game and then the final boss. These boss fights disable an and all alternate methods of fighting your opponent save for falling to death, encreasing the challenge.
The same minimality of change goes for the controls: The shoulder buttons control your armaments and your steering is directed with your directional buttons. The biggest change in the controls however lies in view control and locomotion. Much like TM3, your view controls vary from only a few select camera angles, though this time the first person view has been scrapped; you now have the option of zooming in on the car or out twice so that you have a wider view of the terrain. Also ditched was the useful rear view mirror option which is replaced with a complete rear-view screen via the O button.
As for locomotion, you now have a different set of commands. Rather than hitting the square button to accelerate and the triangle button to use your turbo boost, you now use the X button to accelerate, the square button to break and the triangle button to go in reverse. In order to use turbo in either direction, you can simply tap either X or triangle to increase your speed either to accelerate forward or maneuver backwards.
Alternatively, you can use the directional buttons and analog sticks to move, but sadly the functionality of these controls aren't the best. You can no longer drive casually with the directional buttons. The left and right buttons help in steering, but the use of the down button is completely nullified while the up button is used as an alternate turbo button.
You'll have much trouble using the analog sticks as the left analog stick enables you to move forward, left and right, but you'll need to use the right analog stick in order to reverse, but even then the ability to turn as you drive in reverse is cut off. As confusing as this all is to the classic TM players, you'd be better off playing with the main control buttons.
A unique addition to the combat in TM4 is the array of unique weapons you can pick up. You have the same selection of effective and ineffective weapons from TM3 with slight improvements. Firstly, the Speed Missiles are now fully automatic, which improves their purpose as a good back up weapon for crippling a weakened enemy. The Rain missiles remain somewhat faulty as rather than being a remote missile that fires too fast to accurately lay a wall of avoidable fire in front of your enemies from afar, it's now a straight firing missile that lays a stream of fire on the ground that fires too slow to be effective. It's also interesting to note that just like in TM3, the Ricochet bombs bounce around and get stuck on the corners of the arena as well as force your opponent to jump rather than be thrown back upon impact.
With these out of the way however, you can see definite signs of good innovation with the new weapons: There are certain missiles you can pick up that fire multiple missiles at your opponents when launched! There's a variation of these missiles that is associated with the Rain missiles which fires miniature homing napalm balls at your opponent! There's also a variation of the mortar from the third game which fires multiple arching mortars at a short range! Not only do these weapons entice creative attacks and kills, they also entice strategy on the player's part as you can use these around corners and on top of high positions.
The graphics don't necessarily improve nor do they decrease in value. Although the graphics are darker in shade than they were in TM3 which obscures some of the weapons easier, the graphics offer more details in the vehicle designs and in the weapon pick-ups. Also elements such as explosions and fire are a bit improved, though notably the fire. Although the fire effects in TM3 were a tad grainy yet 3D, the fire effects in 4 are 2-Dimensional, yet actually looks like fire and smoke; it actually has a hot looking effect to its simplistic design. Simultaneously certain explosions are basically 2D mushroom cloud explosions (think Duke Nukem 3D) while some are round bursts of fire which are basically 'paper-ornament' shaped explosions with one flat surface sticking out of the explosion horizontally and the other sticking out vertically, which is the most visible when viewed from the side and vice versa.
The FMV graphics, though short in their length are much more improved as there is much more activity happening between characters between dialogue scenes, especially amongst Sweet Tooth's clown minions: in every character ending, we enter Sweet Tooth's room which was once Calypso's now turned into a miniature circus with all the clowns playing around while one does all the talking for Sweet Tooth who is too busy juggling in the background.
In regards to vehicles and their drivers, well... let's just say that if you like Twisted Metal characters that are on the cartoony side in regards to their style and motivations, then these are for you. Some of the vehicles and their drivers are just so bizarre, they aren't as funny as they were intended to be, nor are some of them as fun to play as they were intended. For example, the smallest of the vehicles is a bright red toy car with the name for both vehicle and driver being Microblast. The driver is some form of trollish-leperchaun that simply wishes to be tall. You also can’t help but wonder how often 989 looked over their shoulders for inspiration from odd vehicles from Vigilante 2nd Offense at the time; it just doesn’t seem like coincidence that you can play as a garbage truck and fight a six wheeled lunar rover.
As far as familiar characters go, aside from Sweet Tooth and a few surprise characters, there isn't much to brag about. It was rather upsetting to find that the famous Mr. Grimm was no longer a motor cycle or the Grim Reaper even, but a skeleton pirate driving around in a... pirate ship car. All of these factors seem to add a childish nature to the game which has never entirely been the way of Twisted Metal; the existence of aliens, deceased drivers and other-worldly drivers for that matter, sure but not in such a fashion that it's utterly laughable.
Thankfully there are sparks of the imagination put to good use in some of the vehicles as Warthog has been replaced with a WW1 style tank, you can drive in a meter-maid car as well as a drag-race funny car and Calypso contends in the contest as well with a VERY powerful vehicle! Needless to say, it certainly displays one's unbridled rage when they've been back-stabbed.
It's interesting to note as well that some of the new special weapons are quite unique, though in some places they tend to dwindle. Certain specials use a sort of electric chain effect which when fired: an electric bolt extends from the center of the weapon and draws nearby opponents toward it! Other specials though were blatantly rehashed from previous characters (ie: Warthog's XQJ missiles now belong to a luggage bound station wagon) and Microblast's special is just a full load of Speed Missiles named The Gatlinger and sporting a very weak laugh once fired.
Perhaps the most enticing mode in the game however (and worth mentioning lastly) is a particular mode in the game that allows you to make your own car to compete with the competition! That's right, a Creat-A-Car mode! As exciting as it is however, the method is a bit lack luster as you choose from a certain category of car types and makes, each with only three variations and three different paint jobs, as well as one of four special weapons.
The CAC special weapons aren't too bad, in fact half of them are pretty decent (particularly the Detno-Ball which is a physical, fast firing version of Shadow's special from TM2) and finally a name for your car. Sadly, before all this, you have to choose a 'Battle Cry' for your driver - vehicle, rather - to shout when your special weapon is fired. To have this be mandatory is rather gross as you cannot choose anything other than one of many annoying one-liners spoken by the majority of the male voice cast, though thankfully a select few of them are spoken quietly enough to be drowned out by the other sounds. Why you couldn't just pick a cool, loud noise instead is bewildering.
And that's it. Sadly, you can't decide who drives your vehicle as there's no accompanying Create-A-Driver to go with it and depending on your type of character their demeanor could determine the style of ending they could get and there could've been a huge variety of endings you can receive, but nope, none available. Still, if you have an active imagination and have always wanted your own car-combat car, this is your chance.
All in all, Twisted Metal 4 is a surprisingly fun, but understandably shameful game. At the very least, Twisted Metal 4 can be enjoyed by anyone with a knack for vehicular destruction so long as you realize that, despite the technical aspects, the game is far from the original series.