Next week, the “Twisted Metal” franchise is set to release its newest installment. Even though I have preordered it, I’m not totally sold on the game, especially after a few games that were total disasters in 2011.
Last summer, one of those disasters, “Duke Nukem: Forever,” was released after a 15-year development phase. While the game was a huge commercial success, it received a lot of negative criticism. People often said that the only good thing about the game was that it had the Duke character.
I was one of those people. Last summer when I reviewed the game, I scored it six out of 10 and said, “This game gets a score of six. But it gets one point for the game itself and five points because it’s Duke Nukem.”
Next Tuesday, the “Twisted Metal” franchise will release its newest game in nearly seven years, simply called “Twisted Metal.”
I fell in love with the “Twisted Metal” series much in the same way that I did with Duke. I grew up playing them over the years. I’ve had each of the first four “Twisted Metal” games and “Twisted Metal: Black,” the first game I owned for my PlayStation 2 when I was a teen.
What happened with Duke has me concerned that the new “Twisted Metal,” a game that I have been looking forward to and even craving for months, will fall to the same fate.
One of the reasons I’m worried about “Twisted Metal” is because it was originally set to come out last October, but was delayed because of some other big-name releases that were scheduled to come out at that time that were similar to Duke. However, this wait was not as extreme as the nearly dozen hiccups that caused the 15-year delay.
The “Twisted Metal” demo should have eased some of my concerns, but after its Jan. 31 release, there were some bugs, mostly with online matchmaking, a new feature to the “Twisted Metal” franchise.
The “Twisted Metal” franchise is going in a different direction than the games in the past, and that makes me a little apprehensive as well. The first “Twisted Metal” all the way through “Black” have been solely single-player-focused and story-driven. The stories have been good enough to make you want to play with different characters.
But there are some things that are going well for the game.
The demo looks amazing. While you only get one level with a bunch of things you can destroy, updating the game to 1080p and adding in some detail makes this game shine … in a dirty, dingy sort of way. While there are way more controls, commands and things to remember than I’d like, everything — minus the broken online matchmaking — seems to be fully functioning.
So here is to the hope that “Twisted Metal” will be the game I want, and not some highly publicized flop that gets dumped in my lap.
