What do you get when you take sixteen online gamers, speeding cars firing homing missiles, motorcycles armed with machine guns and helicopters packed with napalm then twist it up in shiny new HD graphics all running silky smooth? If you guessed the PS3’s upcoming ‘Twisted Metal: (insert subtitle)’, well you’d be right and wrong.
No subtitles need apply as Game Director David Jaffe pointed out recently in an interview posted on the US PlayStation Blog.
Twisted Metal is the final name. The series has been out of the spotlight long enough that naming it ‘Twisted Metal 8’ or whatever would be problematic. You’d have people saying, ‘well, I didn’t play the first seven…’ Calling it Twisted Metal is like planting a flag in the ground and saying that our heartbeat is still strong.
On the multiplayer front, Jaffe stressed the importance of a cohesive team, though maintained that utilizing new tag-team actions would be an optional tactic. Examples of such actions ranged from a player, who was driving a semi-truck, opening their rear doors so that teammates might take advantage of the turret gun which had been concealed within, to a player flying a helicopter dropping a teammate a line and lifting them above the battlefield to rain carnage down upon their foes. Also debuting in the new Twisted Metal is a mechanic tentatively named “Turbo Ram” which will grant players the ability – should they have enough turbo stockpiled – to utilize the DualShock 3’s SixAxis capabilities by jolting the controller forward in order to slam their vehicle into that of their opponents. Alongside these gameplay additions and new weapons such as Swarmer Missiles comes Companion Gunners. Passengers in your ride who’s sole mission is to annihilate anyone standing between you and victory. David Jaffe also discussed their inclusion:
The companion is fantasy. You are the car, just like in every Twisted Metal. You see your driver more, and you see your gunner a lot more. Some [of the gunners] actually tie into the single-player story. We still have weapons that come out of panels and things like that, but we thought it was fun and cinematic for a guy to lean out the window of a sportscar and fire a shotgun. It just feels more relevant and cool and movie-like. The gunner isn’t really a different mechanic, it’s presentation.
The only other mention of the single-player story came when it was revealed players will be provided only one life. If that life is close to being snuffed out, players may be lucky enough to have stored another vehicle or two throughout the level, and if they can reach a new set of wheels or chopper-blades before that final vanilla-napalm cone ices them for good, they may have a new lease on life.
Watch for Twisted Metal October 4th, 2011 exclusively for the PlayStation 3.
