Known as Twisted Metal 2 in the US and fondly remembered by all…

Gameplay

Twisted Metal 2 is a vehicular combat game, so you drive around various bowl shaped levels.

The themes? Well you may be able to guess as the PAL name gives it away a little. You see, you “tour” the “world”. This means you’ll fight in and around the Eiffel Tower, generic storm drains of L.A, generic Russian thing, a lava pit in the Amazon, windmills of Holland, and others.

Sweet Tooth in LA

Difficulty

Alright, so Twisted Metal 2 is bastardingly hard and you will probably resort to cheats to get to the end. Even on easy I find it impossible, as it takes me 2 lives just to beat level 1. And since you only get 3 lives you be fucked unless you are good.

As an added kicker Twisted Metal 2 has that thing older games used to have in that if you play on easy the game ends after 5 levels.

Warthog in Paris

You can use an invulnerability code, but even with this, when you get to the New York level, you can die from falling off the skyscrapers. Same with Antarctica. It means that even if you are a lame little bitch-cheater you can still bork your shit by being the idiot you probably are.

As a result, I would say this game is unbeatable, *if* it wasn’t for the password system. Here you get to skip to a level with your lives intact meaning if you can get to a level you can use a password to get back there. Though the final stage has 3 parts, with each a bigger clusterfuck than the last, so you will have to git gud to beat Twisted Metal 2! But, with patience, even the most incompetent person will be able to at least see the final boss and eventually kill it.

Outlaw leaping between skyscrapers

Characters

Surprisingly, the characters all play differently, be it their; speed, accelation, and/or handling. But more crucially each character gets their own special weapon. These are never overpowered game winners, but in a mass brawl with 4-5 opponents all spamming special it is a sight to behold, with my personal favourite being Mr. Slam as he picks up the opponents car and casually tosses it about.

However, the character names and the car are not the same which is confusing. Sweet Tooth, the Evil Clown Ice Cream Van is called Needles Kane, his car is called Sweet Tooth. However, Axel is both the car and the bloke, but then… He is a dude fused into a car…

Two-player in the Netherlands

Conclusion

Twisted Metal 2 is undeniably fun, but it isn’t great. The graphics are migraine inducing at times, the levels are pretty ugly, and the cars are awkward as hell to drive.

However,Twisted Metal is fun. You can look passed the flaws and enjoy a daft experience, and with a high degree of difficulty there will be a significant time investment to beat the game. Adding in different endings for each character means there are reasons to keep playing.

Pros: fun as hell, the endings are funny as fuck. By level 7 you’re facing 9 opponents at once. Metal version of Frére Jacque!

Cons: looks like arse pudding, a little on the difficult side. The enemy AI isn’t exactly smart.

81%

Back in the Day:

The PlayStation version of Twisted Metal 2 scored well, with average scores being 85%+.

The PC port however faired much worse scoring in the 40s.

About Van Rockingham

I'm awesome. I write about videogames and play bass guitar.