Consider your wish...granted.
In the past few weeks, we've talked a lot about series' first games and how their predecessors improved upon the foundations they laid. I decided it was fitting to continue that trend with our next 10's game, one of the truly great sequels of all time and a game that's truly special to me.
I reviewed the original Twisted Metal a few months ago and I talked a lot about how transformational it was. I also talked about how flawed it was, which, as we've seen the past few weeks, was common. You have to experiment and try different things, how are you going to know what gamers like and don't like if you don't try different things? This was especially true of early generation games, which the original Twisted Metal was, where developers were still trying to figure out what the new hardware could do and what users wanted from it. But not everyone takes to heart the feedback they receive from critics and gamers. Some developers aren't going to take the effort to make a good game great, electing instead to keep churning out mediocre copycats again and again. But some developers take that feedback, make the changes necessary to make their series' the best versions of themselves and create some truly outstanding games. Capcom did it with Street Fighter and Mega Man. And Singletrac definitely did it with Twisted Metal.
Sometimes with a sequel, they make mostly positive changes but also make others that remove some of the charm of the first game. But that wasn't the case here, Twisted Metal 2 is better than the first game pretty much across the board. The graphics are better, the sound is better, the controls are better, the characters are better, the design is better, everything is just better. And not just a little bit better, way better. I will admit, there is a little bit of nostalgia here. I have a lot of memories tied to TM2, as much as the first one made me stop and look, it was the second that grabbed my attention and screamed "PAY ATTENTION DAMMIT!" The unique, chaotic gameplay of the first game was still there. But the presentation here was taken to a different level. That starts with the story, which takes place a year after the first game. Twisted Metal has left the city of Los Angeles in ruins, leaving it unsuitable for the next tournament. Ever the opportunist, the maniacal Calypso has decided he will take his show on the road. The next Twisted Metal tournament will take place at a variety of locations throughout the world, from North America to Europe to Asia to Antarctica. The prize, however, will be the same. Calypso will grant the winner one wish, anything in the world they could possibly ask for. If that sounds too good to be true...it's because it is. Calypso is a snake oil salesman of the highest order, he will give the competitors everything they want, the exact way they don't want it. It's similar to the first game, but the presentation is far stronger. Gone are the scrolling text and the still image of a guy with a potato sack on his face that's supposed to be Calypso. The story is presented with outstanding, disturbing, hand drawn graphics. We will get to the endings later, but let's start with perhaps the most memorable aspect of TM: The characters.
Everything about the characters has been kicked up a notch, from the vehicle design to the character portraits to the backstories. Hammerhead, Warthog, Mr. Grimm, Thumper, Sweet Tooth and Specter return pretty much unchanged, while Outlaw and Roadkill are given more substantial updates. New to TM2 are Twister, an F1 car, Mr. Slam, a construction vehicle, Grasshopper, a dune buggy similar to Pit Viper from the last game, Shadow, a hearse, and Axel, a...dude trapped between two giant wheels. Hey, I said the characters were more out there than last time. No longer are their drivers represented by stock images of random people (my guess is the people in the first TM were members of Singletrac's staff). Instead, they are hand-drawn, comic book style 2D portraits, which put the drivers' personality on full display. From a gameplay perspective, they play far more uniquely than characters did in the first game, where all of the similarly sized characters felt the same. The new characters fill the niches that were not covered by the original characters and all are fun to play. The returning characters have all been fleshed out and are better balanced. It isn't perfect, some of the characters are definitely stronger than others and the game still favors the slower, more heavily armored vehicles, but not nearly as much as the previous game.
The upgrades to the characters are great, but it's the new levels that truly set TM2 apart from TM1. The relatively small stages with simplistic layouts and identical color palates have gone the way of the dodo. Instead, you have eight expansive, colorful, secret packed levels to battle in, each with plenty to interact with and destroy. From the wide open fields in Holland to the rooftop battle in New York to the shortcut crammed streets of Paris, every level has something unique to look at or interesting to find. And these aren't secrets for the sake of having secrets. Shoot a napalm shot at the Mona Lisa in Paris and it will burn away to reveal a code. Tired of just fighting in the streets? You can use a remote bomb to destroy the Eifel Tower, giving you access to additional weapons and health. TM1 couldn't even bother to leave Los Angeles, but TM2 has us blasting away on a glacier in the middle of Antarctica. All of the levels in TM1 also felt very similar, with the exception of the first arena stage. But TM2 offers variety, New York and Paris are maze-like with various routes and paths to take, Moscow and Holland are straightforward and focus more on direct combat, Amazonia and LA have make the player decide whether they want to play it safe or take risks. The design here is great and as big as the vehicular combat genre got, I don't know if it ever reached this level again.
The selection of weapons have also been vastly improved. Fire, homing and power missiles return, as do land mines. But new additions like ricochet bombs, remote detonators and napalm launchers add new elements and strategies that the first game just didn't offer. New to TM2 were button combo moves, which included things like jumping and freezing. These were especially impactful for characters that relied on their special moves as they could be used to incapacitate and enemy or gain positioning. The specials are pretty much unchanged for the returning characters, but the new characters all have attacks that are at least interesting. I will say they feel weaker overall than the ones from the original characters, but they are at least fun. Health is also more plentiful and it comes in the form of pickups you can just drive over rather than the obnoxious platforms. This was a good decision, it was hard enough dodging all that enemy fire, but having to do it when trying to get onto a ramp was a bear. Also, the snipers from the original are mercifully gone. If you are taking hits, you know it's from your enemies and not some random NPCs that are just there to piss you off.
One player and versus mode return, but TM2 also added a co-op mode, which was a revelation. I definitely put more time in playing co-op than anything else. The one problem with said mode was you were unable to see character endings once you beat the game. Because boy, are the endings memorable. Just about every single one of them are some level of disturbing, with plenty of cruel irony and body horror to go around. They're a far cry from a still image with scrolling text, that's for sure. Basically, they all boil down to the contestant asking Calypso for something, and him granting their wish. But usually, the characters get more than they bargained for. Calypso is like a human version of the monkey's paw, he always gives the winner a twisted version of what they want. Warthog, Thumper and, especially, Specter's endings are burned into my head forever for all the wrong reasons. Most of them are creepy, though there are a few that add some comical elements (at least these plane tickets are refundable!) or even some legitimately heartfelt moments (even though I'm just a machine, I'm afraid it's going to hurt...). TM2 also officially marks the tradition of at least one contestant getting one over on Calypso (spoiler alert, it's Shadow this time around) as well as other tropes that would continue throughout the series.
A series, I might add, looks like it's finally due for a comeback...as an action comedy show. I guess it's better to have Twisted Metal as a show on Peacock than no Twisted Metal at all, but where's our new TM game? It's been 10 years since we saw a new entry into what was once one of Sony's flagship franchises and we are nearing F-Zero level forgotten-ness here. I guess I get it, vehicular combat games just aren't as popular as they used to be. But it would be nice to see what they could do with the genre on newer consoles and it just screams to be made into a battle royale type game. I don't much care for those kinds of games, but a Twisted Metal battle royale would most definitely have my attention. Even an open world game would be cool, apparently that's the direction they were going with a planned sequel to Twisted Metal:Black called Harbor City. But that game was canceled when the series' co-creators left the development team. Other potential titles, including Twisted Metal Apocalypse and Twisted Metal Revolution, never got off the ground. It really is a shame just how forgotten the series has become. Even if a few stinkers did bring it down and it never really reached the highs of the second game again, I feel like it has a lot to offer. So much so that I am going to spend the next few weeks looking at some other TM titles. Playing TM2 again really got me fired up about the series, so I'm going to do kind of what I did with Street Fighter II and dedicate the next few weeks to it. But regardless of what I, or anyone else thinks about the rest of the series, the second game is an absolute classic that all gamers should experience.
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