After Sony’s press conference I got a chance to spend some time with Twisted Metal. They had it setup for 8 player matches so I was playing against 7 other press people. The game was definitely in demo format as Sony’s staff had to start the match with some secret button combo when everyone was ready. It also had a tendency to drop people from the match after a while. I’m going to ignore these things and assume they are related to it being a live demo for a game still being developed.
The game looks quite good visually, with a good color scheme that allows you to see enemies easily as well as the various pick-ups. For a car combat game, there is quite a bit of complexity. Sure, you are driving around shooting everything in site but there are like 8 different power-ups you can use. Plus, each car has a couple of unique special attacks you can switch between. Personally, the magnet shot was my favorite from the ones I tried. In addition to your attacks you have three defensive armor abilities to use. Both your special attack and defense abilities recharge over time while all the other power attacks have to be picked up. If you run out of everything else, you always have a mounted machine gun to fall back on. The weapons had a good variety of both conventional things like shotguns and missiles as well as odd things like the fire bomb and ricochet drone.
The vehicles have a decent amount of health so you are not dying a ton but not so much that it does not feel like you can kill anyone. When you do kill an enemy, the driver and rider pop out, and if you can run them over you get an armor or health boost. It’s little stuff like this that can take the game from an average vehicle combat to something really fun. I did not get enough time with Twisted Metal to say I’d get it, but I did have fun and I’m looking forward to trying it out more.
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