Twisted Metal III

Twisted Metal was great, Twisted Metal II was mediocre and Twisted Metal III is going under for the third time. 989 Studios have acquired the Twisted Metal franchise from the previous developer, Singletrac and have kept the atmosphere of the previous games but improved very little and ruined much.

Cardboard Cars

If you are going to develop a combat driving game, the core of the project needs to be a good driving game. Twisted Metal III has failed to deliver. All of the vehicles handle poorly. None of them feel rooted to the terrain and they all feel like they are made out of cardboard. What I mean is that the cars all float around the environments almost like you are playing a forward scrolling space shooter. You can't do a decent donut or even burn out. Here I am driving a big-block, street-rod roadster and I can't spin the tires? All of the vehicles corner exactly the same, except at different speeds. Evidently Dodge Vipers, Austin Minis, Heavy Equipment, Semi Tractors and Ice Cream Trucks all have the same turning radius. The only difference is that some of the vehicles are faster than others so they take the same turns at different speeds. I can tell when I am playing a good driving game because I lean into the corners and bob with the jumps and drop offs. I sat bored through all of the driving in Twisted Metal III. Trying to master Analog control is even worse since you have to be very precise. If your right turn is slightly rear of center then your vehicle goes into reverse. This left me constantly fighting between forward and reverse when I didn't want to be.

As for the cardboard cars, my reference is to roll-overs. Turning too sharp results in a roll-over. Most of the levels have rounded walls that you can drive up and roll over off of. Nearly every collision results in a roll-over. If I smash into the Austin Mini with the Auger, which is a big, heavy, industrial machine with a drill on the front of it, the Auger is just about as likely to flip as is the Mini. You are forever rolling over in this game at the slightest provocation. The vehicles feel so light, even the heavy equipment and semi tractors, that they all seem made of cardboard. Even the collisions feel meaningless. Colliding with the environment does not damage your car and collisions with other vehicles are unsatisfactorily light and have little effect on your speed, unless you roll over.

Speaking of speed, this is another area where Twisted Metal III feels wrong. Your speedometer almost always reads somewhere around 100 mph and other vehicles disappear into the background at that rate, but the environments don't seem to scroll past fast enough to give the illusion of speed.

I did not have these driving complaints about Twisted Metal II. In Twisted Metal II, the vehicles felt and handles like they had weight. You could hack donuts and U-turns. Collisions felt heavy and it felt like you were going fast.

Same Lo-Res Graphics

989 Studios have substantially cleaned up the graphics over Twisted Metal II and improved the weapon effects, but the lo-resolution of the graphics still make anything near the horizon impossible to distinguish. The environments are well rendered and look good, but lack of clarity hampers the game, especially in multiplayer divided screen matches. 989 Studios have added different view perspectives, which help a little bit, but there are many driving games available with clearer resolution.

More Of The Same

Now, I understand that when you are making a sequel, you need to keep the popular elements of the original. A little creativity ought to be expected as well. The vehicles in Twisted Metal III are, for the most part identical, to those of the earlier games. Thumper, Hammer Head, Mr. Grimm, Warthog, Spectre, Axel and others are back. There is nothing creative or original about any of the vehicles in Twisted Metal III. I'm also getting sick of reading in the documentation about drivers from Hell! Basically all of the bosses are from Hell! Yawn...

The levels are also nearly identical to previous games. Trade London for Paris, The North Pole for Antarctica and so on. What's worse, many of the areas are dull and poorly designed. The Washington area is a big walled rectangle with a teleporter at one end that takes you to the top of a building at the other end. Hanger 18 is simply a circular track that you either circle endlessly, shooting enemies as you pass them or sit in a corner and snipe as they drive past. This level in particular and others suffer from bad Z-Buffering problems. Anytime you approach the sloped center of the track the ceiling disappears, leaving you that black view of the torn space-time continuum that occurs with bad Z-Buffering. This also happens very commonly at walls and especially in the corners of all the other levels. There are tons of power ups and some secret areas in each level but that hardly makes up for the boring layout of many of them. Another thing missing from Twisted Metal III is the pedestrians running around the levels that you could shoot in the previous games.

Rob Zombie

The coolest part of Twisted Metal III is the soundtrack. It features tunes by Rob Zombie and also by Pitch Shifter. Fortunately the music is loud enough to drown out the pitiful sound effects of the game. Machine guns and driving through water or grass sound the same. Every character makes the same sound when they die. Engines make that monotonous whine that most games replaced after Pole Position II. Tires rarely squeal in Twisted Metal III since you can't do any donuts or brake stands or anything cool, but when your tires do squeal it always sounds like it happened a mile away. The music is awesome though and, thankfully, drowns out the bad sound effects. If you can't find a copy of Rob Zombie's Dragula anywhere else, it is on the soundtrack of Twisted Metal III.

Improved AI

One thing that 989 Studios have improved is the enemy AI. In Twisted Metal III, the enemies are fiendishly clever. They use their special weapons extremely well and beeline for health power-ups when they are injured. If they are burning they try to chase you down and collide with you to set you aflame as well. When they are out of special weapons, they go get more. The AI vehicles are much more efficient at killing one another and you in Twisted Metal III than they have been before. The single player game is quite challenging.

Trash Heap

Basically, Twisted Metal III belongs on the trash heap. The game engine at the root of the game is bad and the levels designed around it are also weak. A game like Crime Killer, which had some level and concept flaws but that had an excellent physics engine deserves a creative sequel. Twisted Metal has worn out its welcome. Only the atmosphere and tone of the original have any entertainment value. After two sequels that has also worn off and aspects of it have purposefully been removed from the latest game. I'm just hoping that 989 Studios will trash compact the franchise and let it rest while we can still remember that the original Twisted Metal was an exciting game.

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