Story time. This game was something of a gem between me and my younger brother. He played it a lot more than me since he was into cars and I’m into more fighting games so this title had a mix of both for us. Whether playing cooperatively or against each other, we played it for a good while until its wear and tear started to diminish the use of the disc. Eventually it failed and we gotten somewhat replacements, by that I mean we got the second installment in a demo disc and third installment of the full game. It helped a bit but it wasn’t the same. Fast forward to 2020 when the pandemic started and I thought I’d buy the disc for old times sake and a PlayStation and played it again. Was it as good as I remember or nostalgia again played a factor. Anyways this game isn’t the first installment of the soon to be tv series but rather the fourth one. This is twisted metal 4 for the PlayStation. 

Story : 7

Since 989 studios took over the game (back in twisted metal III), things just seem convoluted and confusing. Some say it’s not canon, though I don’t know myself but here’s the story. 

Vehicles have come across a town and a young sweet tooth experienced the destruction and mayhem of the weaponized automobiles attacking one another. Wanting to be a part of it, he ran away and became a contestant for the tournament or “carnival” (no kidding that’s what he said, a carnival came into town), and destroyed people and their vehicles. The host of the tournament, Calypso, steals the souls of the dead contestants and in turn makes him stronger with some powers I have never seen except making wishes. Sweet tooth won a tournament and wished to be the star of the twisted metal tournament. His wish became true and eventually developed a plan to overthrow the host of the tournament and become the twisted metal organizer. 

With this, you can get a more fleshed out story from the CGI intro and get to see how it plays out. With that every character has a reason for entering the tournament, for a single wish. Pretty straightforward and really not that much else to say. A little bland. 

A 7 out of 10. They could’ve made it more with personality than with edginess but it’s the 90s. 

Graphics : 6

When starting off the game, the menu looks pretty good. A bit of a carnival theme going on which isn’t bad. Going to the vehicle models they’re not great, but aren’t bad either. Nothing too flashy or stand out from other games, basically mid. Click on the vehicle with  ▢  on the PlayStation it’ll show a bio for the character and let me tell you, the character models are ugly. This goes from mid to bad. 

When playing the game that’s when you see the issue. Other than changing camera angles which I think is the only positive here… Frame rate drops severely, choppy animation is present, glitches and such are easy to exploit, and clipping is inevitable at times, especially on ledges where you get stuck either trying to fall down or trying to rev back up. Some stages are too large to play and others feel bland. The design of the stages look good for most but they just feel like they’re missing a personality. Worst of the bit is Minion’s maze, one of the worst stages in the game. Too large to play, too much walls to navigate and it just doesn’t fit the twisted metal gameplay. 

Playing the game and getting far unlocks bonus stages to play at different game modes and they’re just grids and 3D grid obstacles, nothing too fancy and felt a tad lazy. 

Overall the graphics is a pitiful 6 out of 10. They could’ve done better but there’s a reason why they couldn’t. 

Depth : 8

The game was rushed into release. Less than a year after Twisted Metal III, 989 studios were rushed to create the fourth game and it suffered greatly. Other than the usual tournament mode they offer a death match mode where you can face up to 6 opponents in a stage and be the last one surviving. 

In order to survive, you must destroy other vehicles in the stage until you are the last one alive. You are present with machine guns, a “Special” weapon, and a set amount of weapons already available in your inventory. You can collect more weapons found throughout the stage and some are more powerful than the others. Most weapons are basically missiles and rockets from homing missiles, power missiles. Napalms and mortar shells to name a few. Game also offers an elemental weapon called “lightning” in a few stages and this is one of the most broken weapons in the game. Knowing an exploit you can continuously activate the weapon indefinitely when it is the last weapon in your inventory and spam rear attack until you have another weapon stocked up in your arsenal, usually a special weapon. 

Special weapons are unique to each car and they replenish after a set cooldown time and stack up in your inventory when not in use. Some are more powerful than others for each vehicle and I’ll talk about this issue in difficulty. 

As for tournament you have an option to have an ally with you whether you want to or play with a friend. It’s a decent option if you want to complete the tournament a bit easier. As I stated earlier there are weapons around the stages to help out and replenish your inventory but also there is health to repair your damages. A regular health pick up restores half your life while a super health pick up restores all of your life. 

With this you also have a meter which you can use to shoot “attacks” or go defensive. For offense “attacks” you can do a freeze attack, rear freeze attack, rear attack, massive attack and rear massive attack. For defense you got the typical shield, invisibility, hyperspace, and jump. They do take up a bit of meter depending which one you use, jump coating 10 points and massive attack taking all 100. They do replenish but it’s 1 point per second. So use it when needed. 

With that we can’t forget the “create a car” feature. This is a good idea on paper but a terrible job at making it. You get to choose a set of 9 cars and customize them with a set color and designs. Then the special you get to choose from a small selection which personally, most suck. After that the worst part is the battle cry. You can’t skip this and when playing the game it gets annoying and old. They had potential with this feature and they messed it up. 

One last thing is with each stage there is a boss and beating the stage unlocks the boss from thar stage to play in all game modes. What sucks about it is that they don’t have a wish and gives a generic ending whenever you beat the game with a boss character. 

There’s a total of 22 cars not including the create a car to play as. With those 22, 13 are playable from the start. 

Overall it’s an 8 out of 10 before I start bashing on this. I’m being generous with the content it has for the vehicles and different ending of each vehicle, but being rushed really hindered the game. 

Sound : 8

The sound isn’t bad one bit. A good banging soundtrack, sound effects doesn’t sound compressed. Though here are the issues. 

The enemy exploding and hearing the scream gets tiresome, when using a crest a car the battle cry gets so old so easily, the little speed boost or jumping platforms in the levels also are a tad dull when overused, overall it does get annoying in the end. 

The soundtrack makes up for the game. From Rob Zombie, White Zombie, even One Minute Silence. This game is more into the heavy metal aspect of the genre and it fits with some levels while others just seem out of place (Cypress Hill). Some of the songs are pretty memorable for the game, mostly the Rob Zombie songs and the Carnival stage. 

Overall sound is an 8 out of 10. The soundtrack saved it from being lower. 

Addictive : 7

The game was pretty fun back in the past and I played it for hours on end with my sibling since it was his favorite game. Playing it these days is more of a leisure time but with what I said about graphics, it does hinder my enjoyment of the game. Playing with each character has their own own stats and handling which gives a play through a fresh feel at times, especially when trying to play the game to get a wish. Though overall this game is more of a once a year type of thing these days. 

It’s a 7 out of 10. 

Difficulty : 5

The game isn’t difficult at all in the beginning and that’s really pitiful. It’s rather easy to beat the game on normal mode. Vehicles are unbalanced and the stats usually lie. Some vehicles tend to deal more damage than the stats states on special moves while others tend to be weaker. They’re not constant among similar vehicles stats and I feel like it’s a bummer. The worst offender is Sweet Tooth, the most broken vehicle in the game where his special can destroy a vehicle most of the time with ease if it can’t escape. This makes the game so much easier and less fun to play and just defeats the purpose of a challenge. 

The difficulty does get harder through a ranking system during tournament mode but it’s very tedious. You have to beat it multiple times to get the highest rank of difficulty and I don’t have that kind of patience at all. 

Overall it’s a 5 out of 10. The game is easy but broken. Only by a ranking system it gives a challenge but it’s tedious. 

Overall, the game was so much fun as a kid but these days it’s just not as appealing as it was before. There are so many cons in this game that it really ruins the experience knowing how much more play time I put through to review the game. Don’t get me wrong, I like the game but with it being rushed and its shortcomings, it had so much potential but it was wasted. A rental at most, once a year type of play through. 

My rating: 7.5 out of 10

Review rating. 6.8 out of 10

In my opinion the first two Twisted Metal games were awesome. I remember playing them with my friends. My class was small and we finished the material for the year 3 days earlier from when the last of school was supposed to be. Our teachers hooked video game systems up and let us play them. I played the first game with my friends. The second game I played at one of my cousins's house. My cousin got this game and I played it once that was about it. I agree with what you said in your review. It felt like this game was rushed. The graphics were not just as good as the first two. I found the game when I played it kind of be glitchy. Yeah, this game def does not have the awesomeness that the first two games did.

I mean it’s more so on the 989 studio acquiring the rights to create the third and fourth games of the series. Only time I ever hear of that studio is for the NCAA Gamebreaker games which are pretty good so tackling on a car combat game… I don’t think it was their forte.

I mean yeah the game was rushed and many glitches are present, but you have to give merit on how they managed to make a more than capable working game on the console with the limited time that they had. I just wished Sony would’ve given them an extension to at least flesh out the bugs and frame rate to be more enjoyable.


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