Malefactor
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It’s always interesting seeing Jaffe’s take on the series. I actually think he’s right when it comes to what it would take for the series to come back. The two options are either a lower budget option similar to Rocket League, or to reinvent the series so that it still has car combat as an option, but it adds so much more. A grand theft auto realization, if they’d done it prior to Grand Theft Auto III, would have probably kept the series going indefinitely. It’s interesting to wonder what might have been, but no one was brave enough to pony that much money up back in the day. It’s clear from the recent documents shared on here that Incog had considered such a move as early as 1999.
However, I have to laugh when he talks about the fractured fan base. He HAS to hold to that reality, because if he doesn’t, then he has to fess up to the idea that his most recent Twisted, despite all his hard work, was pretty “meh” compared to the previous titles. The truth is what it is though. The hardcore hated it for two very simple reasons:
1. It was broken as *?!@#! (online was completely unplayable the first month, nearly unplayable for three months after, and consistently crashy with features that never worked even to this date – and add to that that fat PS3’s sometimes couldn’t play it – this is just HORRIBLE and remains to this day one of the most buggy unplayable messes I’ve ever bought).
2. It was significantly dumbed down.
Both of those reasons are legitimate reasons for rejecting a game. What’s interesting, is if he had managed to nail the first one many of the hardcore still would have messed with it for a while and had some fun. TMHO was very dumbed down next to Black, but despite that I still fooled around with it for a good eight months until its own bugs began to be exploited to such a degree that it was unplayable. Admittedly TMHO is a superior game to TMX, but still, it’s important to keep in mind that if your game is a buggy mess it significantly impacts how much your consumer will put up with it.
The second option is just a stupid one to ignore. There are no casual fans out there who despise depth so long as they can still play casual, and making it so that defensive options exist to the same degree as offensive doesn’t turn anybody off. He talks about how much fun people tell him they had playing TMX multiplayer which is no surprise – the core of TM multiplayer, even when dumbed down, is vastly superior, different, and unique to most of the stuff out there right now. If you add the depth of the previous games it keeps the hardcore players coming back, and the casuals still have fun. Win/win. There’s not a player on the planet who would have turned off TMX if they found out that you can dodge missiles. “OMG – depth – this game is crap!”
The worldwide argument is a serious one. Twisted Metal has always struggled worldwide, but at the same time, it has never had a fair shake worldwide. The damage both Sony and ESP have done to the franchise has never done it any favors. With TMB, they gutted the single player game. In an era where that was still the big draw in all video games that was just patently stupid. In the ESP era, they released a non-functioning multiplayer focused product to a country that already didn’t believe in the product – that’s like throwing sodium in a toilet bowl right there.
Here’s what Twisted needs, on any level, to be reborn:
1. It needs to be a functioning non buggy mess that does exactly what it says it will do. If it says you can do 8 vs 8 multiplayer, you’d better be able to.
2. It should have the depth of the previous games, and the features of the previous games that fans loved (ability to remove healths – easy peasy – and why not reinsert relics which was a cool idea and people loved them). In short, it has to pay respect to what came before it instead of completely ignoring its existing evolution.
3. It needs to ditch the M rating – Twisted always sold best as a series that the family could sit around and blow each other away in. A mass murdering Sweet Tooth dropping f bombs relegates it to late night gaming away from kids, and prevents numerous 12 year olds from convincing their mom to buy it for them. First person shooters and survival horror gets away with it, but it doesn’t do other genres as many favors.
Do I think it will happen? No.
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