Reviewed: March 11, 2008
Reviewed by: Brian Wylie

Publisher
Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer
Eat, Sleep, Play

Released: February 5, 2008
Genre: Action
Players: 1-2

8
6
7
10
7.6

Supported Features:

In multiplayer mode you have two different modes to choose from; 2 player Death Match and a 2 player split screen co-op. With the 2 player Death Match you get to battle against your friend in a variety of battlegrounds. This is a one-on-one fight to see who can be the first to destroy the others vehicle. In the 2 player split screen, you fight as a team to progress through the competition.

Just like any other Twisted Metal game, you drive around various places and destroy the other vehicles. Some of the places that you get to drive around are: Rome, Russia, Greece, Monaco, and Tokyo. Throughout your playing you get the opportunity to unlock bonus levels, mini-games, and even characters. The more you play the more you unlock. The biggest bonuses come in the form of the most popular character: Sweet Tooth. You get to access an asylum of extras from the game developers while you run around as Sweet Tooth.

The controls are very similar to what they have always been. If you want to move you have to hit the square button to accelerate. You steer by using the left analog stick or with the d-pad. Hitting the O button causes you to break and if you want a tight turn you hit the X button. For a turbo boost you can do one of two things; you can click down on the right analog stick or tap the square button while moving.

When dealing with your weapons all you have to worry about is the R and L buttons on the top of the controllers. To select a weapon you hit the L1or R1 button. Every time you hit it you will scroll through the weapons you have in your arsonel. To fire the desired weapon you hit the L2 button. If you are all out of the special weapons, you can always fall back to your machine guns by hitting the R2 button. You never run out of bullets on your machine gun, but you do stop shooting them if you hold down that button for too long. This is to help cool off your guns, or maybe it is the games way of reloading.

There are different types of weapons that you can use in this game. The basics are, your machine guns, homing missiles, fire missiles, power missiles, and ricochet disc. Then you have yours skill weapons that consist of: napalm, remote bombs, swarm missiles, environment weapons, and your character weapons. The environment weapons change dealing with what level you are playing. Just like your environment weapons, your character weapons vary depending on who you play as. The final sets of weapons are the energy attacks. These weapons demand a set of commands from the d-pad. You can freeze your opponents, drop mines behind you to take out a tailing opponent, use a shield to temporally withstand strong attacks, become invisible, fire weapons from the rear, use a flak to intercept and destroy missiles and damage any opponent around you, and finally add napalm projectile to any weapon that you fire.

With all of these different weapons come upgrades. You can acquire upgrades by destroying other vehicles and running over the upgrade they leave behind. Upgrades do carry over to the next levels but if you do die you lose them. There are seven upgrades available: Turbo and energy regeneration, jump height, ram damage, machine gun, armor, special weapon, and random power-up. Use these upgrades to help elude enemies or to help you destroy them.