The Twisted Metal Multiplayer demo is almost at it's end, it technically ends tomorrow sometime, at least the multiplayer portion of it. The demo does have some offline challenges and training modes, but they aren't very length or nearly as interesting as the multiplayer modes. If you haven't followed this game at all, ever, it is a remake of the classic Twisted Metal series that was on Playstation. The original games focuses on car versus car combat with unique vehicles, and drivers, destruction filled maps and tons of different abilities. There was nothing else like it at the time and two Playstation consoles later we finally have a new addition to the series. The game will be coming out on Valentine's Day, February 14th, but for now you can try the demo available on PSN. It offers two multiplayer modes, a classic free for all death match mode and a nuke mode. The nuke mode is team based and sort of a capture of the flag type of mode, except it has to do with stealing leaders from the enemy team and launching nukes. You can read about the demo on the Twisted Metal Blog that revealed all the demo information. The demo is 1.5 gigs and is exclusive to PS3. Read on for my impressions from my multiplayer and offline experiences with the demo.



The first thing I noticed when jumping into the demo was the controls, they hurt my being. I have played many racing games, action, adventure games, basically games with all kinds of control schemes but none of them fit into the control scheme for Twisted Metal. You would expect movement to be down with joysticks and acceleration to be done with X or R1 or L1, but it doesn't use any of those for movement, it merely uses Square. It's fine once you get used to it, but everything was unfamiliar control wise and it took me a while to get even semi competent. The lesson of this is to do the tutorial first, even if you've played the original games or other games that look similar. The demo also offers you a variety of different cars to use, all of which have different speeds, armor and unique abilities. Everything feels like Twisted Metal should, but the fun is gone. There is tons of destruction to be had, tons of chaos and tons of weapons to use, but it wasn't enthralling in anyway. I didn't care about experience, killing other players or defending my leaders. I tried constantly to get into the game and enjoy it, but the somehow I didn't even get any feelings of nostalgia. There is a lot to unlock in the real game, plus a ton of modes and maps, but the chaos it offers absolutely isn't for me. The nuke mode, which is team based, didn't feel a whole lot different than deathmatch. Maybe I just had a ton of bad experiences all rolled into an unpleasant experience, or maybe, just maybe, the magic that Twisted Metal once had is no longer there. I would recommend skipping it unless you really love: destruction, lots of explosions, car based combat and the Twisted Metal universe.  See for yourself and check out the demo on PSN. Also, take a look at this video from Gamespot to see the some of the demo.
Main Website: http://twistedmetal.com/blog/


-Written by Sean Cargle