For those of you who are into video games, especially old ones, Twisted Metal should be a well-known title. For those of you who are not, well, let’s say Twisted Metal is a series of games where you drive a weaponized car in the arenas and try to obliterate your opponents while not being obliterated yourself. Sort of car-based deathmatch with a basic premise and clear goal – be the only one left driving.
I’m going to talk about the game back from PS One era, and this is basically the only game I played in the series I know there were a lot of games on the next iterations of the console, but I didn’t play them (and yes, I know that there’s even some TV series, but my wild bet it’s not good since very rarely series based on video games are good). Yet I played the first one. And replayed it, too. Today. But let’s start from the beginning.
Twisted Metal screams 90s. The plot, the characters, the music, the overall madness. Everything is so 90s. Basically, the idea of the game is the following: there’s a tournament called Twisted Metal that happens on a yearly basis. The tournament is held by some shady dude with a burned-out face named Calypso. And this dude promises to fulfill a wish. This thing causes a whole bunch of daredevils to show up for a chance to make their dreams come true. And basically, this is the only plot you have there, everything else is just a high-octane action pumped by heavy metal tunes and a surrealistic atmosphere.
Also, the game had planned videos for endings, instead, we got text-based wrap-ups that tell you what happened in a few sentences. Too bad, because videos were even more 90s than the game itself. The Sweet Tooth ending where a dude in a clown costume, who sits in a death machine with machine guns and rocket launchers, decides to get into a confrontation with the half-naked bodybuilders with AKs with the help of an SMG because he’s so deranged. While Calypso, who appears to be a heavy-metal version of Cenobites from Hellraiser, is surrounded by girls in bikinis. If that’s not the most 90s thing, I don’t know what is.
I played this game back when I was a kid, and I played it before I had a shot at Carmageddon. So, for me, this game was the original Carmageddon. And since I checked the internet, apparently Twisted Metal was released back in 1995, while Carmageddon was released in 1997. Which means… Twisted Metal was an inspiration for Carmageddon, I guess? I don’t know, don’t want to make a statement. Anyway, I played Twisted Metal first. And when I was a kid, I knew shit about the plot, about the motivation of the characters, instead, I knew that I liked driving a dude on a motorcycle because back then, I liked motorcycles and motorcycle gear. I think I never got too far because I was shit in this game. Nevertheless, I still liked it.
Fast forward twenty-something years to the present, and today, I went through my PS Plus Classics. Saw Twisted Metal and decided to give it a shot. Long story short, I ended up getting Platinum Trophy for it because if there’s a choice between work or wasting your time playing video games, I don’t have to be asked twice.
This time, I knew what I was doing. Or thought I knew what I was doing. I took the first character who was Sweet Tooth (a bat-shit crazy killer-clown who drives a white candy van and looks for his best friend), chose the easiest difficulty, started the first level (which is a duel 1-on-1), and got my ass handed to me. Turns out the difficulty impacts only the number of additional lives you have, and everything else is basically the same. And back then, games weren’t made with weaklings in mind. If you were unfit, you were crushed by the ruthless AI opponent and no amount of whining on the internet would’ve helped (well, maybe you would end up being laughed at by the developers). The end.
To spare you the details, I managed to win the first level. Even managed to get through the second level but was completely demolished on the third one. After that, since I wasn’t a dumb kid anymore and had access to the internet, I went online, searched for the guides, and found out that you can cheat. Not like an ass, but in a more controllable, organized way.
For example, PS5 gives you an option to control time in the old titles. Yep, you can rewind the activity the way you want. Like, for example, you fucked up and fell off the roof. Instead of accepting the game over or losing a life, you rewind a few seconds before that and have a second chance to make things right. And you have no limits. Cool.
The second cheat was the level select. This way, you can farm trophies how you want. The only problem – you still have to beat all of the levels anyway. But at least you can repeat the level as many times as you want. Not that it was necessarily after I got a grip on the game.
So, what did I do having all those tools at my disposal? I went straight for the final boss – the tank called Minion. And I went there as Sweet Tooth. And I got destroyed. Mainly because I had no idea how to play, I had no idea what was good and what was bad and what options did I have. That’s why I started jumping from one roof to another, thanks to the guides found out that the tank has no capacity to jump over the roof, and it was the slowest but most definite way to beat him. And actually beat him like that the first time. It wasn’t glorious neither was it fun. It was tedious and boring. But the ending was worth it – Sweet Tooth found his friend, who turned out to be a sandwich bag, and went on a rampage. Happy end, I guess.
Then I decided to beat the game with every other character and went straight for the boss. Long story short, by the time I got to the third character, all of a sudden, I understood that the game was actually easy.
First thing first, I changed the controls to Run’n’Gun (or something like that). This way, I had better control over my movements without mixing controls up. Later, I understood how to use rockets. Turns out the basic guns were of no use. Rockets and special abilities were the kings of the game. And last but not least, I found how I could heal. With those three elements in check, the game turned out to be easy. I didn’t even have to rewind time anymore. Neither was the final boss difficult either.
I beat it with every character, and after that went on the rampage to beat the rest of the game. Paired with regular AI enemies, they had no chance since now I spammed rockets, rammed them, and healed myself whenever it was necessary.
Now, there’s also a second game available, but truth be told, I don’t feel like it. I mean, I beat the first game since I played it a lot as a kid and never had a chance to beat it. Now I did it, and that’s it. Go further? Eh, not sure about that.
Anyway, the game is still hard but manageable. It was a nice trip to the past. I even had a certain amount of fun with it. Reminded me that games back then were much harder and unforgiving. If you couldn’t master the game, you basically were fucked. Well, if only you didn’t find cheat codes. Then the game turned into your personal playground. And since there were no trophies and other shit to achieve, you had more reasons to have fun and experiment instead of being in fear of turning on the cheats and being locked out of trophies. Yeah, it was a good time. Weird time, too. And that’s pretty much it. There will be no conclusion to it.