I once considered the Twisted Metal series a guilty pleasure of mine. But now that I’m older and at peace with my tastes, there is no guilt whatsoever; I love (most of) this series, and this genre deeply.
So what is this genre anyway? Vehicular combat, as it is known, involves driving weaponized vehicles to survive. It’s Spy Hunter meets Quake, and it’s one of humankind’s greatest achievements.
While the concept dated back to games (and films) from the 70s, Twisted Metal is the name most associated with the genre. It established the template and the series had a pretty prolific release cadence during the decade or so of the genre’s heyday.
Twisted Metal takes place in a gritty, almost post-apocalyptic version of Los Angeles. Despite the low-res textures and graphical glitches, it’s extremely evocative. Combining this setting with the Juggalo-coded characters and story gives Twisted Metal a unique (and divisive) vibe.
Sequels would take this vibe to wild (and ridiculous) places, but the original keeps things relatively simple, in terms of both story and mechanics.
After acclimating to the very of-the-era controls and physics, its easy to get into the rhythm of driving and shooting. Find weapons, heal up when needed, kill and survive is basically it. The stages are relatively contained, so there isn’t a ton of room for strategy. While later games would add button combinations for special attacks and asymmetrical stages with plenty of secrets, there’s a certain appeal to the simplicity here.
This isn’t my favorite game in the series, and probably the hardest to go back to, but I still think it’s worth revisiting just for the vibe. It feels like a grindhouse film a decade before people were trying to make games with grindhouse aesthetics. Despite many sequels and even more imitators, there’s nothing, for better or worse, quite like the original Twisted Metal.
All screenshots and gameplay here were captured from the PS5 digital version of the game.
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