Following the release of Twisted Metal II the developer behind this games had a falling out with Sony. They lost the rights to the very franchise they created. Sony knew there was money to be made with the Twisted Metal name and they gave the third installment to their own developer 989 Studios. Twisted Metal III was met with wide criticism, but I ignored the sea of angry voices and asked for it as a Christmas gift shortly after it came out. It was disappointing, but I’ll be darned if it hasn’t aged better than just about every other Twisted Metal game. Let’s dive in!
Twisted Metal III takes place two years after the completion of Calypso’s tournament as detailed in the previous game. Earth has largely been destroyed via a series of natural disasters. Despite this the Twisted Metal tournament lives on amidst the rubble, and the winner is still rewarded a wish no matter how grand. There are many returning characters, but Twisted Metal III has its fair share of new faces. Each character has their own background story and reasons for competing. It’s typical angsty late nineties fare that hasn’t aged particularly well. The story is pretty ridiculous.
Sweet Tooth of course returns, but he’s not a playable character. Well he IS but you need to enter a password to unlock him. You have other colorful returning faces such as the Hammerhead monster truck, the police car Outlaw, Axel who has his hands stuck in over-sized tires, and more. I’m pretty happy with the returning cast. I feel like they managed to do away with some of the fluff. The new characters, especially Club Kid and Firestarter are fun and fit right in with the universe. There’s no weak link in the new cast members as far as I’m concerned. I might even go so far as to say that the line-up here is better than in Twisted Metal 2.
Vehicular combat is still the name of the game here. After selecting your mode of play, difficulty, and character you’re off to a series of different three dimensional multi-tiered arenas to drive around and wreak havoc. By default you have a special attack (exclusive to your character) and machine guns which cause only small amounts of damage. Littered in every level are other weapons, health pick-ups, and turbo boosts that both you and any of your opponents can pick up and use. You win by attacking and draining the life bars of all of the competing vehicles at which point you move on to the next arena. Rinse, lather, and repeat.
Twisted Metal 3 ups the ante in terms of difficulty. The AI is significantly improved and I found myself being forced to play more tactically. Your opponents are very good at retreating to find health restoration on anything besides the easiest difficulty. I found myself becoming extremely frustrated at being forced to drain their life bars more than once. They seem to be able to take many more hits this time around too. The new weapons (especially the environmental ones) circumvent this issue a bit, but I felt that searching these out was a little distracting.
Most of the complaints I’ve read about this one have a lot to do with the physics engine. It’s true that I found opponents getting stuck on more elements in the environment (especially on the edge of a cliff before falling) but in general this is actually improved from the last game. Driving feels more like driving this time around, and not like you’re ice skating like it did in part 2. The cars all feel heavier and so it’s more significant when you run into each other this time around with roll-overs being more common.
If there’s one area where the complaints are warranted it’s in the level designs. The opening area is okay with intertwined ruins of freeway used as the play field. The arena is super small however, and it’s clear that not a lot of thought went into it. That’s par for the course because many of these levels are too confined for their own good. I did really like the snow and Christmas themed stage with its canyon, but that’s about it. Why did we need so many empty rectangle arenas?
The high point of any Twisted Metal game is its multiplayer mode, and part 3 does not disappoint. This is the first game in the series that offered four player split-screen, but if you’re like me then you didn’t own a multi-tap for the console (did anyone, really?) The option is still nice. The real highlight however is that you can now select a CPU controlled ally to fight alongside you in each level. This is a huge help and a feature that should have been in the original games. It adds a lot to the experience for people like me who often play these games solo.
Twisted Metal III is a really good looking game considering the hardware on which it played. The opening stage, along with the winter one, feature a host of neon lights. These look really pretty and set it apart from the others. The car designs have been upped in polygon count, and all of the textures are higher quality. I do have a few complaints however. First of all Sweet Tooth’s ice cream truck looks significantly worse. They ditched the iconic design for a more grungy look, and it just doesn’t work in my opinion. I was really turned off by this. Additionally some characters (Axel in particular) have weird scaling and should be much bigger than they actually are.
Rather than create an entire soundtrack for this game 989 Studios instead just bought the right to use licensed tracks. Back in the day I found the soundtrack hugely enjoyable with songs from both Rob Zombie and Pitchshifter. Nowadays I was pretty lukewarm on it. Some songs such as Superbeast fit, and Microwaved, but many of the others feel out of place. Besides this the voice acting from the guy playing Calypso is on point and highly memorable, and the sound effects are pretty good as well.
I feel that Twisted Metal III was unfairly judged back when it was released. Yeah, the darker tone didn’t work out that well, but it still felt like it belonged with the rest of the games. The stage design took a hit, but in my opinion the physics were improved and this makes it easier to stomach nowadays. I never expected that I would find this one to be better than Twisted Metal 2, yet here we are…
