365//365: Day 040 – Twisted Metal 3 (PSX)

Twisted Metal 3 is a lot like Spider Man 3. Obviously they are both the third installment in their respective series. They both came off an incredible sophomore installment. They were both highly anticipated by many fans of their respective series. In the end though, they both disappointed many long time fans of the series.

You can tell how TM3 takes the series backwards, based off the loading screen when you first boot the game up. Instead of a left to right load bar fill, it goes from right to left, emptying the full bar, almost like the new publisher to the series, 989 Studios, emptied out everything you enjoyed about the series.

Don't be deceived by how good this looks. Stages are quite small and lack any sort of creativity or imagination.

Every aspect of TM3 has shown a near total regression from the previous two titles. 989 implemented a new physics system, which really destroys the gameplay. Whatever vehicle you choose, you encounter what feels like a .25 – .50 second delay between your movement input and the movement happening. That doesn’t sound like a huge discrepancy, but it is when you actually try to turn and you have a delay. Not only that, you have almost no ability to turn without moving almost 90 degrees in whatever direction you’re turning. Add in the fact that you can get your vehicle knocked over and flipped upside down as easily and often as a baby cries, and you have a total break in controls and physics.

Remember that great music from the second game? Gone. Replaced by what would soon become an over saturation of Rob Zombie in video games. There are other artists and songs featured in the game, but the songs are woefully boring, and don’t inspire me to go out there and blow stuff up. Even the sound of stuff blowing up comes off much weaker. The punch and power of each explosions is seriously lacking.

The stages you play through are completely uninspiring. No only did they drastically decrease most of the map sizes, but there’s no real interactivity with them. The design is poor as well, lacking variety, twists and turn and anything non linear. With weaker looking stages, we have mixed vehicular visuals. On one end, they look pretty good when not blown up, which leads to the other end, and how bad they look when damaged. Some of the vehicles look like they are driving upside down with the amount of damage done and how indistinguishable they look from being flipped over.

Twisted Metal 3 was originally going to be called Paris Hilton's Drive Thru, since, like Paris Hilton, your vehicle will be on its back more often than not.

Singletrac’s blueprint for a successful vehicular combat game seemed to have been burned and buried, replaced by something that fails in every important aspect. Twisted Metal 3 is a huge let down, with busted controls and physics, unimaginative stages and a weak soundtrack leading the way. Definitely pass on this one. You won’t find much to enjoy while playing Twisted Metal 3. Stick with the first two, pretend this one never came out.

Rating: 4.2