A very impressive, disturbing, and addictive game.
The game play is extremely fun and consists of driving around, collecting weapons, and firing them at each other until you are the last man standing. The environments have many destructible structures and objects which will add to the chaos. It is any adult Twisted Metal fans dream, although it shouldn't be played by gamers that take their video games too seriously. You will be dying a lot, so you will have to learn to accept losing occasionally and trying again. Luckily, unlike some former twisted metal titles, this game lets you save every level and refills your lives. Each level you get to start with three lives. There are 8 levels in ever characters story including co-op, and sometimes you are actually given the choice of what you want the next arena to be. This allows you to mix it up and makes it feel a little less linear and allows for more interesting content. The difficultly level of the game is pretty fair, although occasionally frustrating, for single player mode. Once you learn how to kill the bosses they can be a breeze, although sometimes you have to run around in circles a lot to avoid being pounded with missiles and specials. The difficulty is extremely hard with a second player though. Since you both have to share health packs and the same three lives, you will find that you will be forced to replay over and over. It is still a fun experience, just be prepared to spend a lot of time with co-op if you start a story. It is also relieving to know you have one friend out there in the arena with you. There are also different modes of multiplayer and single player besides the story modes that add to replay value; however, there is no more Twisted Metal: Black Online. The servers have been shut down.
The content was pretty impressive. In certain levels there is hidden content that is enjoyable to unlock and adds to the game play. You can unlock vehicles, levels, and cut scenes. The impressive amount of un-lockable content gives the (thank god) replay value! I hate games that have shallow game play and no replay value. I recommend looking up some hints on finding some of the content because it is hidden very well. From a graphical stand point, all the content in this game looks beautiful, if you consider the time of release. All of the game is done in a very dark color pallet, so keep that in mind if you like bright happy colors. It may not look like HD, but you can tell what everything is and get into it.
Last, but not least, were the cut scenes. If you are familiar with the cut scenes of Twisted Metal one-four, you know they are somewhat disturbing but funny. Black has a new take on that. They take out the funny and keep the disturbing. This game is NOT FOR CHILDREN. This game even gave me trouble sleeping and I play horror games! It will consist of violent and disturbing images; however, the most disturbing thing about this game is the characters themselves. They all have the most messed up mentalities that leave you horrified. For each character there are three cut scenes, which is more than any Twisted Metal game before it, and you will feel rewarded for starting the game and beating each boss. All of the cut scenes are done very well and only leave me with the complaint that they were too serious compared to other Twisted Metal games.
In summary, it is a great game that gets major points for great game play, good graphics, and a lot of content. However, I am taking points off for the serious tone of the game and the insane difficulty on co-op mode and an occasionally frustrating single player. I recommend this game for all of the adult Twisted Metal fans that don't mind there games being a little bit on the hard and disturbing side. Thank you for reading this review!