Twisted Metal

I’ve played it on DuckStation 0.1-5613-g5d750a88 (dev)
I don’t know if it’s because of this game (believable) or because of the emulation, but for several characters the credits scroll got stuck. Nothing major, it happened after the story part anyway, and pressing X made it go back to the menu after a while.

This game (or one of the nearest sequels) was shown to me by the same guy who showed me Predator 2 and Spider, while i probably was still in kindergarten. I remember him having a lot of fun hiding in the corner waiting for the healing station to recharge. Now it was my turn.

I was aware of the series, but i never got to play it in my childhood because my cousin had only Vigilante 8. I’ve played a bit of the Twisted Metal 2 in the late 00s, but didn’t decide to continue.

So it’s a free for all arena vehicular combat game. Or more like free for all to kill you. If it operated like a real game the best strategy would be to hide, waiting while the bots fight each-other and to kill the last survivor. But it operates like an arcade so bots almost never kill bots. They can shoot at each other for show but that does almost nothing.

The developers probably though that they’ve made a cool action game, but this is not a cool action game, this is a chaotic slide-show running at lower than 10 FPS during the fights. Everything just teleports around and is uncontrollable. While the small FoV is not the lowest, the game still should run better. It already outright locked at 20FPS, but once the shooting starts it instantly drops to unplayable levels.

The physics are as terrible as they can only be, combined with warping textures you can see some things. I didn’t encounter geddan and was never kicked into the skybox. But that’s probably only because the vehicles are glued to the floor and the sky has already fallen on top of them.

There are 12 fairly boring cars, there is no Axel yet, or anything like Garbage Man or Astronaut Bob O. from Vigilante 8 2. The best you can get is a serial killer clown in an ice cream truck and a motorcycle. The cars have different stats and different special weapons. There are a few maps, with some weak weapons peppered around, like a half of which is almost useless outside the PvP. And the maps always repeat in the same order for every character.

Everything is already bad, the bots gang up on you, half the cars are just terrible, your vehicle is constantly thrown around, the game barely runs, and then the streets themselves are shooting at you. The orange guys are literally the worst part of the game. In a span of a level they are capable to cumulatively deal a lot of damage to  you while you get nothing for killing them.

To win this stupid mess your best chance is to pick a target, very slowly adjust your bearing for a had to head collision and unleash all you get. If your special deals good damage you can ruin one opponent that way in a hit and run attack. Then dart to a healing station. When you are out of heals, you just have to run away from everyone collecting more weapons, waiting for the healing stations to recharge. Rinse and repeat and play extremely safe. At least there are codes after you beat the level, but those are not saves. They start you from the level with no real progression.
A pro move while playing it on the original hardware with no saves, is to leave the last enemy alive and just accumulate respawning homing missiles, so they will carry over to the next map.

The last mission is on rooftops so you or the enemies can fall down to death. Or more like you lose one life, but many of the enemies lose only a chunk of HP. Sometimes, and sometimes they die. There are barely any pickups and the only HP station is semi-secret. After the three bots probably kill themselves by jumping off the roof faster than you can, you’ll have to fight the boss with infinite every gun and a ton of HP. And your HP doesn’t even get restored. So you should just lure it to one of the rooftops, return to the pyramid and watch it kill itself, unable to make a jump, because it’s to shy to cheat and teleport while you are watching.

The music is poorly looped. All the time it plays some rock-metal and then abruptly switches to the same beginning of the track. It sounds really bad.

The story operates in the structure of fighting games. There’s a bit of background lore for the event. Then there’s the introduction and the ending scenes for every character. Or more like tiny snippets of plain text. Originally it was supposed to have proper FMVs to make it a cool game. But instead we got this.

Mr. Grimm deals very good damage with the special gun, but also he has barely any HP. You can be killed even by the bumps on the road. And you are constantly kicked around by everything.
Arguably he has the best ending because it puts an end to this stupid-ass 10FPS tournament.

Spectre has noclip homing rockets, so one strategy is to hide and run away from everyone, and just send the rockets on cooldown for the entire game.
Scott is a simple man with simple desires.

Hammerhead has okay HP pool but it’s weirdly very vulnerable to Sweet Tooth. As a trade-off the special is weird, automatic and melee range. So the freeze rockets are very useful. With good luck Hammerhead can just eat the low HP opponents in one go. But it can as easily do barely any damage in three tries, or destroy itself by counting the spazzing opponents (or their carcasses) as high-speed collisions.
The ending is another joke.

Road Kill stats put it as averagely average car. But actually it deals good damage and has decent HP pool. If you know what you are doing it’s a good fighter. But also it’s super slippery in turns.
The ending makes the character confusingly dumb and the text has a different background.

Sweet Tooth is one of the dangerous AI players and it promises a lot of armour. But it’s a very squishy car, especially against the orange guys. And the position of the machinguns makes them really weak. At least the special weapon is pretty strong.
The ending text is more on point than the FMV. But also it’s just garbage lazy text. For the FMV at least a number of people had to try.

Yellow Jacket uses a weaker version of Sweet Tooth’s special weapons. In this game average doesn’t mean you are not bad at anything, it means you are not good at anything. Could be worse.
At least the story is solid.

Darkside is supposed to be cool. It’s a giant truck and he has glowing eyes. But it uses goofy sound effects for the special gun. And it is weaker than the machineguns. The AI Darkside spams freeze rockets, but you don’t have an infinite amount of them.

With a lot of armour in the stats you would think it is tailored to use only the picked-up rockets and to win 1v1 head-on duels. But this car is a joke in head-on attacks. On easy. Any weaker car destroys it with machineguns. On maps with poor selection of offensive weapons it outright suffers because it can’t rely on the special gun.
This car is extremely weak and it’s a big target. It gets significantly damaged when it’s ramming some tiny cars with no HP. It is constantly getting stuck on walls and it is very hard to get into a healer station in this crap. Darkside is so bad, one time a healing station has killed me.
It’s another character that goes for Calypso in the ending. But Black was cut out of the game, so this ending is crappy if you didn’t do your research homework.

Outlaw’s special deals low damage in a short range, but it’s a single target omni-directional sticky attack. So you can cruise around boom-zooming in drive-bys. It’s a slightly above average car, but in this game with terrible cars, slightly above average propels it to the top.
The story is about a good cop with a properly worded proper wish. But this time instead of a monkey’s paw or getting a dumb wish, Calypso outright scammed the winner. Screw Calypso. The cop said he wants the streets to be free of violence and children, not to forget this pain. The ending has a unique picture.

Thumper has a decent HP pool and a strong low-range weapon. This is the best car since Road Kill.
It’s a good guy ending, where Calypso have actually delivered, instead of scamming the winner.

Crimson Fury AI opponents are very annoying with its bond stings, and now you have to inflict it upon yourself. The game claims that the car doesn’t have any armour. But actually it is pretty decent in combat, unlike Darkside. Its special is a medium-range lower-medium damage gun which is pretty decent. The car goes too fast and it is nearly uncontrollable at these 10 fps during battles. But also it allows you to flee when things get hairy. And smash into the next wall.
The story is kinda a joke.

Pit Viper is solid at everything, but turning. It’s extremely slippery, especially on the rooftops.
Considering what we saw in the other endings, i somehow don’t think that this one was but a temporary setback.

Warthog has a lot of HP and seeking rockets as a special weapon. Is this the best car in the game? Tho, it has troubles fitting into healing stations.
Story-wise it’s just a mirror of Crimson Viper.

The game’s just bad. The physics are bad, the lazy texts instead of cutscenes are bad, the game-design is bad. The selection of the cars is not that interesting. And all of it runs at damn 10 fps. There are many better games for this same hardware in this same genre.