989 and Twisted Metal are back for another go at car combat, and the results are better, but still not up to par with the unparalleled game play of Twisted Metal 2. The graphics are pretty good overall, with a few major deficiencies, and a few moments of brilliance. The cars on the whole, aren’t that great. They’re pretty small and relatively undetailed and plain looking. The weapons and explosions, however, are just awesome. Watching Calypso nuke the hell out of people with that super huge blast of fiery death, complete with mushroom cloud and all, just brings a tear to my eye. It’s beautiful. There’s quite a few new weapons available to fill out you’re arsenal, including the Freeze Remote, Rain Missiles, M.I.R.V’s, and Proximity Bombs. The Proximity Bomb and Freeze Remote have added a much improved ability to lay traps.

The level designs are a giant step forward from Twisted Metal 3. They’re creative, varied, and interactive. If anything they’re a bit too large for the number of enemies on ‘em, but hey, I’m not complaining. Sweet Tooth’s Bedroom, Minions Maze, and the Carnival all make great levels. All of the levels have loads of hidden areas on them, and it usually takes several times through to find them all. In addition, all levels come complete with a special weapon that adds a new way to deal destruction. Each level also has its own boss, or bosses, that you have to defeat to move on to the next level. There are eight regular game levels, and eight hidden, death match only levels. Speaking of death matches, if you have a multi-tap, up to four players can slug it out at once. This is a good thing; this is a very good thing.

There are thirteen vehicles to select, and they’re all pretty good. They provide you with enough variety to satisfy pretty much everyone. The game also includes a pretty cool create-a-car function. You select from nine different body types, three different paint jobs per body, four different special weapons, and a slew of taunts to shout out as you wax the competition. This is a pretty cool feature that essentially allows you to customize four additional cars, one for each special weapon. The taunts are pretty funny as well, and you have a pretty good selection. If there’s anything better than blowing the hell out of your friends, its blowing the hell out of your friends and then having the your characters rough drill sergeant voice shout out, "Is that crying I hear?" Among the other highlights is the Elvis impersonator who whips out  a well-delivered, "Hail to the king, baby!" as he explodes the competition.

Like Twisted Metal 3, the latest incarnation suffers from a tragically poor physics engine and super loose control that prevens the game from living up to its full potential. While admittedly the last two games have had a more "realistic" driving system, this is actually counter-productive. A real world car very rarely needs to do 80 flying off a building, put their shields up to deflect the ice blast in mid air, and nail two bad guys with homing missiles before it hits the ground, where it promptly busts a 180 and floors it out of the path of the maniacal dump truck falling from the skies above. My point here is that the arcade control of the first two installments is infinitely better than the present system.

As it stands, it is way too hard to do a simple high speed U-Turn, it is disappointingly difficult to do simple things like line up with a ramp, and the cars are always flipping and rolling. And I do mean always. The cars always land on their wheels, but it’s still distracting to roll all the time. Talk about a momentum killer. What’s worse is you occasionally defy gravity when you flip; you can end up driving sideways along the wall, or balanced on your trunk hopping around and waiting to fall back over. The control is the weakest aspect of the game. Another draw back to the current system is that running other cars over is no longer a real threat. It used to be the little guys could hit and run, but if they got cornered they were flat. The control is squirrily enough to make it darn hard to run into other cars, and when you do you’ll just toss ‘em to the side with minimal damage.

The sound effects of the game are done very well, the weapon explosions and the sounds of the guns rattling complement the game perfectly. The sound track works equally well and offers you tracks from Rob Zombie, Cirrus, Cyprus Hill, Skold, Ghoulspoon, and One Minute Silence. All in all it makes pretty good theme music.