Twisted Metal (2012 video game)

This article is about the PlayStation 3 version of Twisted Metal. For the original PlayStation game of the same name, see Twisted Metal (video game).

Twisted Metal
North American cover art
Developer(s)	Eat Sleep Play
Publisher(s)	Sony Computer Entertainment
Director(s)	David Jaffe
Producer(s)	Scott Campbell
Designer(s)	David Jaffe (lead), Scott Campbell
Programmer(s)	Gene D. Martin, T. Don Henderson (lead), Mike Giam
Artist(s)	David Jaffe, Scott Campbell
Writer(s)	Tom Kling (story), Gene D. Martin
Composer(s)	Steven A. Warner, Mikey Russell
Series	Twisted Metal series
Platform(s)	PlayStation 3
Release	NA: February 14, 2012 AU: March 8, 2012 EU: March 16, 2012
Genre(s)	Vehicle combat
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer

Twisted Metal (sometimes referred to as "Twisted Metal PS3") is a vehicle combat video game developed by Eat Sleep Play and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3. It is the eighth installment in the series of the same name. The game was originally planned to be released in October 2011 but it was delayed to Winter 2012.

Synopsis

The plot focuses on contestants trying to win Calypso's Twisted Metal Tournament. The game passes through three segments, focusing on each of the three playable characters.

The first arc features Sweet Tooth, a demented killer who dresses as a clown. In his past, his real name was Marcus Kane, he had a family of his wife and children and he worked as an ice cream man. His normal and dull life causes him to feel depressed and he tries to suppress a rage inside him but soon fails. His suppressed feelings turn him into the psycho killer "Sweet Tooth". He murders almost all of his family but fails to kill his daughter Sophie. She gets away and he has always looked back and laments this while trying to still hunt her down with no luck. He decides to enter the contest to find his daughter. When he wins though, Calypso transports him to a coffin and it is explained to him that Sophie became manically depressed by the events and committed suicide and Sweet Tooth is left locked within Sophie's coffin, deeply underground.

The second arc features Mr. Grimm, a enraged stuntman who is anguished by his current life but mostly his past. His father was also a stuntman like him and rode motorcycles and performed for many audiences. During one of his shows, Grimm's father had crashed and died leaving his son an orphan. From there, it is speculated that he had a terrible life, leading him to become a violent man and it is implied by screams for mercy by another man that Grimm had killed an innocent person. Grimm enters the contest to go back to the past and stop his father from dying, changing his future. When Grimm wins, he is sent back in time by Calypso as granted. A problem arises when he realizes that he was sent back in adult form and inside a car with his younger self and father and causes a crash. The crash kills his father but young and old Grimm survive. Young Grimm decides to kill the older self which in the end leads him to still have a terrible life.

The third and final arc features Krista Sparks AKA "Dollface". In her story, she is a narcissistic, obsessive and violent model. Due to her issues, she feels she must ruin and hurt every competing model in her way by doing dangerous things to their career. She loosens the heel of a model's shoe, causing her to trip and fall during a walk show and brutally attacks another model by hitting her with a sledgehammer. One day she gets in a car accident and is left with a scar. She becomes violently paranoid and attacks and kills the doctor, thinking he is working with the other models. Krista eventually visits a more stranger doctor who straps on a doll mask and tells her to come back soon to remove it and she will be beautiful. She returns but soon realizes he has left and now is unable to remove the mask. Her wish is to remove the mask to become a model again. When she wins the contest, she instead wishes to become the most famous model ever but also wishes to be on a runway which Calypso grants. She soon finds out that she has been transported to a airport runway and is killed by a landing plane.

The final ending of the game shows that the Preacher, another Twisted Metal character, is ranting about the contest but is actually imprisoned. It is also shown that a large castle is the actual Calypso Industries, where he traps the souls of the driving contestants. Later on, Charlie Kane, Sweet Tooth's son, finds the grave of Sophie and reveals his plan to replace his father due to the theory that Sweet Tooth let his son survive so that if anything happened to him, Charlie would take his place as Sweet Tooth. Also, Calypso returns to the grave to resurrect Sophie and wants her to replace her father and a glimpse is shown of her new transformation.

Gameplay

The game focuses heavily on multiplayer combat, including various online game modes with up to 4 player split-screen and 16-players online. For example, the Nuke Mode is a new online game mode where you choose a faction to play against an opposing faction. In this mode, each faction has a giant metal statue that is being held in the air by a helicopter, which the opposing team must try to destroy. In order to destroy these statues, the player must abduct the enemy team's leader, then sacrifice the leader to a missile launcher that will, in turn, launch a nuclear missile.

The person who sacrifices the leader and launches the missile has to control it to hit the opposing teams statue in the air. In order to win the opposing team has to repeat the process 3 times before the statue is destroyed for a team to win. There are four factions: the Clowns, the Dolls, the Skulls, and the Holy Men. The former having been announced as being inspired by Sweet Tooth and Dollface respectively. The latter are led by Mr. Grimm and the Preacher respectively.

Background and vehicles

The game has nothing to do with previous Twisted Metal installments, being a new universe altogether. The only similarities are that some of characters names are the same.

Selectable vehicles in the game include Reaper (a motorcycle), Roadboat (a car that looks similar to a Cadillac), Death Warrant (a fifth-generation Ford Mustang), Vermin (a rodent catcher van), Meat Wagon (a medical 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor Combination Car), and Talon (a helicopter). The game, of course, has Sweet Tooth's iconic ice cream truck, which transforms into a mecha-robot for its special, similar to Sweet Tooth's special in Black. Axel (a vehicle consisting of two giant wheels) also returns as a pre-order exclusive. There are also cars that were announced at comic-con 2011 such as Shadow (a hearse), Kamikaze (a Japanese themed sports car), Darkside (a semi truck), Juggernaut (an 18 wheeled semi truck), Warthog (a pair of tank treads with the body of a station wagon strapped to the top), Roadkill (a junker with hot rod flames), and Outlaw (a police SUV). Drivers and cars are interchangeable in this game. There is also a "paint shop" that allows players to customize the appearance of each vehicle; this was hinted at in another interview with David Jaffe. New weapons include Sniper Rifle and Shotgun.

Development

Twisted Metal was in development for three years. In early stages of the game, the background setting for Twisted Metal was in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The name of the project was tentatively titled, Twisted Metal: Apocalypse. This idea was later dropped, due to co-director, Scott Campbell, not being in favor for this post-apocalyptic version of the franchise. The game began development as a downloadable PlayStation Network title, similar to Jaffe's previous Calling All Cars! title. Sony Computer Entertainment was impressed by the title and requested for the title to be expanded into a full retail game. The development of the title then shifted from a PlayStation Network game to a "(USD)$39 product" which was multiplayer-only, similar to 2007's Warhawk and 2008's SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation. Sony then requested for the game to contain a single-player mode with a story element, while Sony's marketing department said "Yeah, you guys don’t realize how many fans love the Twisted Metal universe, you gotta give us the stories."

The game was first unofficially announced to be developed by Jaffe and his new company, Eat Sleep Play, developing a new title in the Twisted Metal franchise for the PlayStation 3. The announcement, not officially confirmed by Sony, came from a hidden message that was decoded in the Twisted Metal: Head-On "Dark Past" documentary where groups of numbers appeared on screen at points during the video which corresponded to letters of the alphabet. When deciphered, the message reads "Twisted Metal is coming on PS3". The title of the game is believed to have been displayed various times throughout the documentary which is the original Twisted Metal logo but in colors of rustic browns and yellows.

For two years, Sony would not officially confirm the existence of the game, and upon further questioning on multiple occasions Jaffe would insistently decline to comment further, and in general refused to officially announce the title of Eat Sleep Play's first major game until Sony was ready for him to do so. Despite this, rumors persisted heavily that Eat Sleep Play was indeed developing another Twisted Metal. While presenting an award at the AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony in the States, a heckler in the crowd yelled, "Twisted Metal!" To which Jaffe replied, "Soon, bitch. Eight or nine months." In the months leading up to the Electronic Entertainment Expo of 2010, rumors surfaced that a new Twisted Metal would be announced under the names of either Twisted Metal X or Twisted Metal: Harbor City, the same name as the cancelled sequel to Twisted Metal: Black. In response to this, Jaffe posted on his Twitter, which he later confirmed in an email to the games site Joystiq that Eat Sleep Play was not working on a new Twisted Metal game.

However, at the very end of Sony's E3 2010 press conference, a surprise live-action teaser trailer was shown, with no previous indication as to what it was, that revealed a new Twisted Metal game. The trailer was followed up by a real-life replica of the character Sweet Tooth's ice cream truck driving onto the stage, driven by a man in a Sweet Tooth costume (based on Twisted Metal: Black). David Jaffe and Scott Campbell appeared out of the back, revealed that Eat Sleep Play was in fact developing a new Twisted Metal game, simply entitled Twisted Metal, and then proceeded to give a gameplay demonstration. After the press conference, a blog post went up on the official PlayStation web site by Jaffe explaining why he had outright lied about the existence of Twisted Metal for PS3 and Eat Sleep Play's involvement. He explained that he felt E3 was a show all about joyful surprises, and that because of the internet, those were becoming increasingly rare. In light of this, Sony approached him to make a surprise E3 announcement, and he decided to do whatever it took to keep it a surprise in hopes that the fans of the series would experience such a reaction of joy and wonder. At E3, Jaffe and Campbell further detailed the new online multiplayer mode, and gave the official tentative 2011 release date.

Marketing and release

Prior to its release, Twisted Metal was marketed and promoted heavily through the use of numerous Internet and TV trailers. In addition, Sony offered anyone who logged into the Shoot My Truck website on February 13 and 14 the opportunity to activate an M249-SAW aimed at the Sweet Tooth truck Sony constructed to promote the series. For marketing considerations, the original release date of the game was pushed back to apply some "extra time, polish, and love". In addition, Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe asked fans to help pick what goes on the back of the box by voting for one of a number of choices.

Buyers of the first batch of copies (Limited Edition) will receive a voucher to download Twisted Metal: Black for free. It is not a high-definition remake, however, it is simply a port of the original PlayStation 2 version; lacking the online function that was added in a later re-release. In addition, every copy of Twisted Metal will include a voucher to download the Sweet Tooth Outcast multiplayer skin for Starhawk. Sony collaborated with several retail outlets on a pre-order bonus (early access to Axel) available through several store chains throughout the world.

PSN Pass

Justin Trease, Twisted Metal's QA lead, confirmed to press at CES that the game will come equipped with the PSN Pass code system - a system that requires players who purchased used copies of the game to purchase a pass to access online features. Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe hoped to avoid implementing an online pass for the game, but said it wasn't his decision. Jaffe acknowledged that an online pass is "probably good business" for publisher Sony, but said it could be counter-productive when trying to earn the trust of gamers.

Demo

On the January 26, 2012, edition of the podcast "PlayStation Blogcast", Sleep Play founder and Twisted Metal director David Jaffe confirmed that a demo of the game would be released on the PlayStation Network, although no specific release date was announced. The demo was released on January 31, featuring eight vehicles to try out in two online modes Deathmatch and Nuke, as well as an offline single-player challenge mode. The servers as of February 8th are no longer up.The demo is no longer available.

Soundtrack

Untitled

The game's score has a collection of original compositions by a multiple artists such as Brain, Larry LaLonde, Dan Monti & Greg Tripi. The soundtrack also features a collection of licensed tracks from well known artists such as Rob Zombie, Iggy Pop and Wolfmother. The song “Get Twisted” was debuted by HipHopGamer, who is known more for being a video game journalist with the artist Brain performing the music.

Twisted Metal ™ (Original Soundtrack)

No.	Title	Artist	Length
1.	"Twisted Metal Theme"	Larry LaLonde, Dan Monti and Greg Tripi	2:18
2.	"Gentlemen, Start Your Weapons"	Chuck Carr	3:24
3.	"Boom"	Dan Monti	3:25
4.	"Deathwish"	Larry LaLonde and Dan Monti	2:57
5.	"The Twisted Fate of Sweet Tooth the Clown"	Michael Wandmacher	3:33
6.	"Race to Destruction"	Brain	2:58
7.	"Shotgunner"	Larry LaLonde and Dan Monti	2:52
8.	"Carmageddon"	Tommy Hopkins, Jake Bowen, Joel Stevenett and Chuck E. Myers	2:54
9.	"Object Identified"	Lovechild	3:14
10.	"Mr. Grimm’s Dark Trip Back"	Michael Wandmacher	2:37
11.	"Ready Set Destroy"	Sascha Dikiciyan	3:37
12.	"Roadkill"	Larry LaLonde and Dan Monti	2:47
13.	"Motopsycho"	Chuck Carr	3:31
14.	"The Madness of Doll Face"	Michael Wandmacher	2:16
15.	"Ready to Die"	Brain and Buckethead	3:11
16.	"Bruise Control"	Lovechild	4:21
17.	"Hells on Wheels"	Chuck Carr	3:06
18.	"Shoot to Kill"	Lovechild	2:58
19.	"Calypso Industries"	Michael Wandmacher	2:19
20.	"Get Twisted"	Brain and Hip Hop Gamer	3:12

Licensed Tracks in Twisted Metal

No.	Title	Artist	Length
1.	"California Queen"	Wolfmother
2.	"The Champ"	Ghostface Killah
3.	"Cold Metal"	Iggy Pop
4.	"Crazy"	Patsy Cline
5.	"Don’t Smile"	The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
6.	"Dragula"	Rob Zombie
7.	"Frenetica"	Wolfgang Gartner
8.	"Heavy Metal"	Sammy Hagar
9.	"I Can’t Drive 55"	Sammy Hagar
10.	"Mask"	Sepultura
11.	"More Human than Human"	White Zombie
12.	"Natural Born Killer"	Avenged Sevenfold
13.	"Raise the Flag"	Airbourne
14.	"Riding on the Wind"	Judas Priest
15.	"Sea Shanty Medley"	Phillip Green (PRS) (C)
16.	"Straight Outta Compton"	N.W.A.

Reception

Reception

Aggregate scores

Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	77.07%
Metacritic	76/100

Review scores

Publication	Score
1Up.com	B
Electronic Gaming Monthly	8.5/10
G4
Game Informer	8.5/10
GameSpot	8/10
GamesRadar+	8/10
GameTrailers	8.1/10
IGN	9/10
Destructoid	7/10
Joystiq

Twisted Metal has received generally positive reviews. Aggregating review websites GameRankings and Metacritic gave the game 77.07% and 76/100. Reviewers praised the multiplayer and gameplay, but several criticized its story mode, lack of characters compared to earlier installments, and somewhat difficult controls.

External links

• Twisted Metal
• Official website