Skywalker wrote on 06/06/15 at 16:01:52:


Skywalker, even if you ignore all of the gameplay criticisms that we didn't like about it, it is impossible to ignore the fact that a dead horse runs better than it does.

Muddeh wrote on 06/07/15 at 02:07:14:


We never went the rounds in the first place because you aren't someone you can go the rounds with. You're more like a religious zealot for TM 2012, but with the brains of a Sudafed tablet.

Take the 989 games. They have A LOT of flaws but technical problems aren't one of them. I played 2012 for two good months and quit, so I make no personal claims to personal knowledge now, but I talk to plenty of people more honest about the game than you are who still play it, and it still trips over itself constantly.  IT FRUSTRATES THE HELL OUT OF THEM. IT IS STILL THE MOST COMMON COMPLAINT ON ACTIVE BOARDS.

I don't think you're trying to lie to us, I just think you long ago forgot that you were lying to yourself.

Malefactor wrote on 06/07/15 at 05:22:15:

What do you take me for? I've never put down TM2 or Black, and I've never argued that TM 2012 is better than either. I've never argued that you must love this game like a fanboy. You're fine to dislike it, but what I'm not fine with is how you force that opinion without logically explaining it, and personally insult those who don't take the same stance as you.

Malefactor wrote on 06/07/15 at 05:22:15:

TM4 doesn't have technical issues? You have to be joking. This is how TM4 plays in multiplayer. You can't even play the game in multiplayer to start with. It staggers with two players too, and a number of things will cause it to lag in single player even. Not to mention the unintended glitches that technically break the game like proximity mines on teleporter spawns that insta-kill, firing auto lob/MIRV/Rain 2 into the corner and having it glitch through walls and become basically undodgeable, and how many textures glitch commonly and get you stuck in the environment (maybe that's why they added hyperspace to the game). Those are just a few off the top of my head. You should replay TM4, as well as TM 2012, so you know what you're talking about.

Malefactor wrote on 06/07/15 at 06:14:44:

A lot of people complain about the errors trying to join games because the Quick Online Option feature doesn't work properly. It will always just throw a person into a lobby by themselves, and have to wait for others to join, who typically won't because it's obvious by the automated lobby title that the host doesn't know what they're doing. That's another reason why people falsely claim the game is dead, because you'll rarely get a lobby going with that method. Using the standard method of joining/creating a lobby, there's less issues. So, a large reason lots of unknown players complain about network issues ruining the game, or calling the game dead, is because of ignorance.  I'm not saying he couldn't be having issues joining the standard way, and although there are more-relevant issues that exist, regular players will tell you that they are relatively minor. There's other tricks to help you get into lobbies easier as well, a few of them are in this tutorial.

Malefactor wrote on 06/07/15 at 05:22:15:

And your PSN ID? Two months is really nothing, because the vast majority of elements which give the game its depth and balance hadn't been discovered yet. Back then I was bitching about the same issues TMA bitched about, but as players got better and more things were discovered, the game evolved greatly. In my opinion, if you haven't played in the two years, haven't played in unranked games with proper settings, and played with veterans of the game, then your opinion is uninformed.

Malefactor wrote on 06/07/15 at 08:56:32:

Thanks. I saw your pre-edit post, and I appreciate that you revised it.

Malefactor wrote on 06/07/15 at 08:56:32:

I'm sorry, but no. Games lagging in multi-player was not the norm for the day, especially considering that there were multi-tap games that were stable coming out three years before TM4 hit the shelves. Typically if a game had issues handling multi-player, the devs would do something like restrict players to smaller environments or strip out some textures to ensure the game ran smoothly at the desired framerate. 989 didn't go to that effort, and just tossed you into the full environments with no adjustments, and wished you luck. Really, multi-player was nothing more than a bullet point on the back of the box to sell the game, so by that, I cannot agree that all of the features promised by the box worked. The game did receive critisism for its multi-player, and I'll paste a few quotes here to prove it.

GameSpot - "The problem is that the frame rate in the multiplayer modes isn't nearly as fast as in the single-player levels. If you play as one of the larger, slower vehicles, you'll end up using the turbo quite a bit out of frustration"

PSX Extreme - "And a final note, TM 4's 4 player action is very choppy (if set on gameplay), and is more smoother on graphics mode (surprisingly), although not a lot more smoother."

And for my own amusement, I looked up the review in an old issue of Official U.S. PlayStation Magaine, which coincided with the criticism. Here's a photo of the review. The funny thing is, two issues prior to this one their cover story was Crash Team Racing, and their praise for the game and its multiplayer. Although there we a few environment textures removed, the game ran perfectly at the same framerate as single player, in tracks and environments as large as TM4 (if not larger). I sure have memories playing CTR with 3-4 players back in the day, and little of TM4, for a good reason. TM4 just was poor, and wasn't a consequence of hardware limitations. It's just a hallmark of a bad game.

Malefactor wrote on 06/07/15 at 08:56:32:

A number of the issues are a bit of a stretch.

1.      The game will stutter when there's high ping, but otherwise is stable. It doesn't slowdown in single player. The only exception is that Diesel City sometimes (as in, about ten times in my three years of playing) will lag extremely bad, but I'm not sure what causes it.
2.      I'll agree freezes are annoying. I think the frequency is a bit overexaggerated, since I only get them about once or twice a week on average, but maybe I'm luckier than most.
3.      Haven't heard of this one, would you mind linking it? A couple people I know developed issues playing certain maps, but getting a new disc/playing it digitally fixed it.
4.      Can't say I've ever experienced a random shut down. Only freezes, and a couple times been booted to the XMB, but I've experienced that with other games too.
5.      Haven't heard of save files being corrupted, aside from the skins glitch which is somewhat independent. So you can add the skins glitch in place of this.
6.      Not entirely sure if that's a real issue, since the times it says the room is full, it usually lets me in a try or two later. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt though, in that it's a minor issue.
7.      The voice chat isn't up to par, I agree. Not indistinguishable, but not great. We use Skype to communicate for serious battles, as you guys do for Black.
8.      Not sure what you're referring to here. Teams can sometimes get uneven in ranked matches after teams are locked and people drop out, but that's an issue in any online game really.

Maybe I'm just lucky in the fact that I don't experience as many issues, but I do believe the issues with the game are overexaggerated, especially considering basically all of them don't matter once you're in a match playing. I agree that the game has issues and isn't up to the current standards, so although I don't agree with your point regarding TM4, I get your analogy. You could navigate the menus fine in TM4, but you sure couldn't play it in multi-player without it being a laggy mess. As for TM 2012 aside from the occasional freeze, once you're playing with others who aren't using the internet from the McDonald's across the street, it's generally pretty stable. At least, it's not flawed to the extent of disowning it from the series, as you seem to suggest. As I've stated before, my major gripe is that you seem to be basing your argument off of what others have said, and your early experiences with the game, since it was patched and tweaked up until October 2012.

Malefactor wrote on 06/07/15 at 08:56:32:

By tricks, I meant ways to make it easier to join a room, not methods that you must use to join one. For example, receiving a party invite to join a lobby will get you in pretty much 100% of the time. But yes, it's not up to current standards. However, we should at least celebrate the fact that the game still runs on its original servers, and the fact you can play a match with a large community pretty much whenever you have the urge without having to organize a match like in TM2 and Black. Fact is, it takes some amount of effort to play any Twisted Metal game online, and not meaning to bash the great work that's been done getting Black Online running again, but at least TM 2012 doesn't require a 15 step setup. Just know not to use quick online action, and you'll get into most lobbies on your first try with TM 2012, and there's tricks for the pesky lobbies that give you trouble. So I'm not meaning to defend the game and pretend that the issues don't exist, but as a whole, I don't think they take enough away from the core experience to not warrant playing them, outside of issues you might have with the gameplay mechanics. At least, if you're looking to play vehicle combat online, TM 2012 off par of what other titles have to offer.

Muddeh wrote on 06/07/15 at 12:13:49:



Frame rate issues were TOO the norm for the day.  I grew up in that day!  It happened in numerous games other than FPS and over head dungeon crawlers.  It happened in Vigilante 8 as another example.

In fact, they STILL plague games TODAY.  Yes, we all noticed it, and we all dreamed off day for something better, but it's mentioned in the same way that gamers today wish that Borderlands on the Vita didn't have a lower frame rate.  We WISH it was better, but we don't actually believe the programming for it was awful.

That's not what we're referring to with technical issues in TMX.  NO ONE thinks it's excusable for a PS3 to be unable to play a PS3 game, or to shut off regularly, or to have to have "tricks" to get into rooms. 

Those are real technical issues.

Edit: I should say I never played CT Racing and so I can't evaluate that claim. Assuming it had the same amount of on screen action, same level sizes, and same player counts it seems like it had to use a combination of tricks for four player (lower frame rates, reduced level detail, reduced gameplay options). Even TMB, heralded for its technical prowess, reduced the frame rate from sixty to thirty for multiplayer and cut the available levels for four player. Borderlands is a modern example that did the same. If so though, CT Racing was no less than a marvel for its day.

Double Edit: I read several reviews of Crash (IGN for example) which confirms your opinion of its technical amazement, but by the way, also made it clear they were shocked and this was not the norm.

Skywalker wrote on 06/07/15 at 15:27:05:


I should mention your entire reply here was a thoughtful one and I appreciate the feedback. 

You're also right . . . YES all games have SOME very minor issues that we have to accept.  However, as a counter example, this week I playing "Dying Light" online.  It ran for three hours and I never once ran into any issues I had to accept, nor did I have to do any tricks to get people to play with me.

I regularly play Diablo 3 online for PS4 and PS3 and during the last eight months of doing so I ran into ONE game breaking problem . . . and it turned out to be a PSN issue in the end. 

Those experiences are light years better than a TMX day on any given day of the week, and that SHOULD piss the fans of Twisted Metal off.  We shouldn't pretend it's okay.

I guess we'll have to disagree on the TM4 example.  I personally don't feel like it could have been much better than it was.  The CTR game is a rare example of what could be, but I don't think many people actually felt TM4 was bad in that regard.

As to the new game, I think that's where we differ the most.  In my opinion, the game is a lot worse than most video games.  It's not just a kind of sort of worse, it's a WAY worse.  The fact that here we are years later and people still feel it's got serious problems is very unusual for video games.

You propose the idea that it's better as fans to support it anyway so that the community is divided, but I oppose it on the concept that as consumers we get what we ask for.  Take pre-ordering games.  Consumers continue to do it and it has allowed sloppier and sloppier game releases.  Same holds true for Twisted Metal.  If we support a Twisted Metal title JUST because it has Jaffe's name on it, or ESPs, but it is fundamentally flawed, then IF we ever get another game they might allow the same crap to continue.

Fifteen years ago TMA refused to accept the 989 games based on their quality.  The result was TMB.  Why aren't we refusing to accept a shoddy product today?

You get what you wish for, in the end. 

I think you keep coming back to Twisted Metal 2012 because you love car combat a ton and it's the first car combat game you've ever known in an online setting which is naturally thrilling.

I think if I were in your shoes I may be able to forgive it's atrocious technical issues for the love of car combat too.

I'm not in your shoes though, and while it may be tempting to believe all of TMA are angry old farts that simply couldn't change, the fact is we aren't. More than 90% of us were being quite serious when we said the core gameplay of 2012 bored us to tears.

I think if you were in our shoes, and had played TMBO for five years aggressively, you too would feel the only thing this new game has to offer is fresh blood, and that just wouldn't be enough. Before you scoff, keep in mind historical statistical analysis of the fan base backs me up.

I gave 2012 up years ago and have never looked back. It offers nothing for me, but since it is Twisted's last hurrah, I'm glad someone can get some type of thrill from it.