Well, it's my fave game of the series.  By a LONG SHOT.  

People always praise the stories.  I actually found the majority of them pretty forgettable and lame.  Preacher's was ridiculously awesome, and Roadkill's was pretty good too.  Manslaughter's cracked me up.  I can't say the rest really stuck with me as awesome.  Disturbing and full of temporary shock value, yeah, but not a lot of artistic merit, and far far too many revenge plots.  

The game's atmosphere was superb.  I loved the levels, I loved the colors.  I like dark stuff.  So the levels for me were never "blah."  I never gave a shit, even once, that there weren't vibrant and colorful levels because I didn't expect it.  It's like someone wanting a frackin' rainbow in Silent Hill.  It just doesn't fit, and why do you give a shit that it isn't there?  Snowy Roads was so creepy.  Junkyard so exciting.  Suburbs so huge.  Prison Passage so creative.  Wow.  The game SAID it was BLACK, and that's what it damn well was.  It's still sometimes fun for me to take the lift in Junkyard up to the very top and look out at the level.  It's fun to do that in most levels, though the computer will kill you if you watch too long.  They make you wonder.  You FEEL like there is a dark world out there watching you.   After a decade of driving around in them, I know them better than I know some places in the real world.  It's a virtual home in some respects.

Obviously, ten years ago was a dark time for Twisted Metal.  We were all wondering if it would ever recover.  Personally, I have to say in many ways the majority of the last decade has been equally dark (up until recently), but that's another story.  All of the atmosphere, the level design, the stories . . . all would have been worthless crap if the gameplay hadn't held up.  

Its gameplay always seems to get short thrift which is just bullshit.  Short praise from Jaffe, which, no offense to the great God of TM, he's hasn't played it half as much as the hardcore have.  Or a third as much.  Or even 1/20th I'd wager.  To be fair to him he is looking at it from a different lens than we are, but no matter how you toss it, its gameplay often gets overlooked.  Over looked by fans.  Over looked by almost everyone it seems sometimes.  

Everyone focuses on the stories and atmopshere which, I have to admit, it wanted to be known for.  It wanted to be liked more for its creepy factor than anything else, and it largely succeeded.  It was designed to kick the memory of the 989 games in the teeth, and it did.

Then it tore off their heads, crapped down their throats, buried them, and spit on their damn graves.   

For many of us though, after the freshness of the new paint job wore off, we focused on the gameplay.  The gameplay, in my opinion, is the best TM has ever brought.  It became even more obvious for those of us who got to take it online.  For all the "radical" changes people sometimes say TMBO had, it was essentially the same game.  Some tweeks for better, some for worse, but over all the same brilliant Black.

Counter, defend, counter, defend.  Balanced freeze, balanced shield, powerful powerful special weapons.  It's not for everyone.  Some people will always choose TM2 and FOR GOOD REASON, it's a classic too.  I don't dispute that.  

Many of us though will choose Black.  Even after the new game comes out many, possibly myself included, will choose Black, and we will do so because of its amazing gameplay.  Gameplay that caused me, ten years later, to spend two hours playing it TONIGHT on Kai with some TMA buds.  

I will always remember the time everything went Black.  It is my gold standard, the one I will be comparing the new TM to.  For me, it is the game it has to beat, and it has a tough as hell act to follow.  I think it has a good chance to do so, but there is also a good chance it won't.  That's because Twisted Metal: Black is just that damn awesome.  

Did anyone ever tried to play this game with the brightness all the way in the darkside in the option? I use to do that. Since the game is suppose to be dark, why not play it in the dark?

I actually liked the idea of being able to shoot two freezes. If they combined the ability to shoot two freezes with the shortness of TMB freeze, I'd be so happy. For some reason, TM2PC freeze lasted like a million years.

RoaDiE-

That is very true.  Because of the leap ahead with technology that allowed for weapons to now pop out of cars as you cycled through, Incog was able to provide that additional depth.

Also, it is little things like the fact that (most) missiles now fired from the side of your car and not the front bumper.  This meant you could start turning a half second earlier and still keep the missile firing straight (useful when using power missiles).

I was too young to play TM2 as it was meant to be played.  I experienced the game through God mode at the time.  For that reason TMB is my favorite (although recently I've been playing TM2 more simply because i have the PSN download and can't play TMB).  While I am better at, and enjoy, TMB more, I do recognize that TM2 had several elements which I wish had been included in TMB.  Ramming is a big one.  I also felt that TM2's weapons had more depth (homings make you jump, you can combine Slam's specials with powers and napalms, etc).

However, the speed and fluidity of TMB keeps it more fun (or perhaps just more modern) for me.  I liked the fact that, while you could die quickly against a skilled opponent, it took more than one freeze, a power missile and turbo ram to do it.

I loved the stories, and continue to enjoy them.  TMB came out the day after my 13th B Day.  It marked the first M game I'd ever played, so the deal I had with my parents was that I could play the game, but had to watch the movies with a parent in the room in case they found anything unsuitable lol.  So that whole mystique of the ending movies was built up for me because of this.

I think TMB is an outstanding graphical achievement.  It still holds up better than many PS2 games in my opinion.  Seeing weapons pop out of cars breathed new life into the stagnant pixelated block "cars" we were used to driving around.

And the creativity of the team highlights what separates a great Twisted Metal from an attempt at Twisted Metal (Read: 989, arguable TMHO).  Whoever's idea it was to put a police car as the front bumper of Darkside deserves an award, or a least a cuddle.  Giving YJ spikes as a special is one of those "OH DUH!" moments, and they knocked it out of the park with the gameplay implications.  (Think about how YJ's specials would have turned out if 989 had gone with the same concept.  "Hmm, YellowJackets have singers, we should do something with that...Maybe we will give him a big spike on the back of the car that he can reverse into other cars with!  That will take skill!  Hell yea!" ::989 Group Hi Five:

I mean it is little things in the car design and levels which I love.  The crashed plane on Rooftops.  The whole cell/boat/prison concept.  Preacher's special.  Warthog's entire design!  The changing weather.  These are examples of things which not only set TMB's design beyond what other games would have done with the concept, but beyond what other Twisted Metals have done with the concept!

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While not every story was a classic (Although Preacher, Roadkill, Grimm, and Dollface were really good), I simply like how it flowed with the presentation of the game as a whole. Yeah the shock value wore off quick like a lot of shock value does, but the stories even the lesser ones help to set the tone of the game.

And the freeze in Black was easily breakable and could have maybe lasted a second or so longer. But I always prefer freezes to be a little shorter than longer. I don't want the freeze to dominate the gameplay like it did in TM2.

I also liked how Minion didn't have an ending.

His revelation came gradually through the codes.

A classic.

Hopefully something similar in the new game as Jaffe seems to like those special mysteries.

Dude, Kilrahi, you took the mother-loving words right out of my mind! TMB, there is no other, it is the standard.

That which you said about the color being perfect in your aesthetic eye is what I experienced as well. The game may not have been "perfect", but it was damn close! The Darkness, the dismal feeling you're being interacted with by some aphotic entity in that world.

When you said you commemorate the world in Black more than some places in the real world, that also spoke to me in scathingly truthful words. I have been obsessed with that world for so long and still am as many of us are.

Sweet Tooth took my soul the instant I saw his story and heard the voice of a real serial killer, - for me it felt that way.

I was 15 when the game finally found itself in my hands, I almost wanted to be just like Needles Kane, it was bad, real bad. I got sick, lol. (Not a joke actually, but funny)

The gameplay, is absurdly addicting and complex, giving it an extended learning curve that tm2 had meager ellipses of.
TMB really has been overlooked and impugned by many that haven't been graced with the prolonged experience that the hardcore have.

As said, the audio/visual ques of the weapons during cycle and execution were meticulous touches. The fact that each vehicle had unique placement for each weapon made every bit of difference in the deciding factor of usefulness to the player. One of the many examples of creative profoundness that makes a TM game different from most other games.

We've dedicated a significant portion of our lifetime to this creation.