Twisted Metal 4 is the second game from 989 Studios and I'm probably gonna get sacked for rating this as good as TM1.
It feels like the guys behind this game heard my complaints from 20 years in the future about the gameplay of TM3 and actually improved a ton of things. They made it a lot faster, going upside down no longer makes you vulnerable and just instantly puts you rightside up, cars are a lot looser, etc. Some could argue the cars feel a bit too loose, but I think it's amazing. They also thankfully brought back the shield advanced technique from the SingleTrac games, and also added a "hyperspace" move that teleports you to a point on the map to save yourself from a hairy situation or falling into a pit.
Unfortunately despite these improvements there is some really bad slowdown at times when a lot of stuff goes on either onscreen or just nearby, it's particularly bad on the Oil Rig. For maximum powerpoint presentation level slowdown, put yourself as Sweet Tooth and fight five other Sweet Tooths on Oil Rig. The playable non-boss roster is also filled with incredibly bad new characters and "revisions" of past characters that have been made cheesier like Mr. Grimm suddenly becoming a pirate for some reason and losing his motorcycle gimmick(giving it to Quattro who's a hoverbike user) and Warthog now gives up his armored truck/hummer for a WWI tank that actually makes him less unique since Minion is in this game. Orbital and Quattro I guess are okay, but Orbital is quite literally just James Bond in everything but the stuff that would be copyright infringing which is an automatic disqualification at least from me.
On the flipside there is now a boss on every stage, which I think is actually pretty cool. It just sucks that they proceeded to put characters from past games as the bosses. They're "stronger" now in a way, but it also denies them a bio/ending which kinda sucks. The boss characters who aren't past characters are also super faceless with very generic sounding names like "Crusher" and "RC Car", though they're still a ton cooler than the non-boss new characters.
There's a really weird "create-a-car" mode which is just as limited as you'd expect it to be from a PS1 era game, with it basically just being a selection of nine car models to choose from and picking a pre-set paintjob for them and only four specials. You can make a "Hammerhead" or "Crimson Fury" for this game, but you're not gonna be able to crush cars with Hammerhead like in the old games which just makes you go "what's even the point then?".
It's a shame it suffers from the slowdown and terrible playable cast the way it does, because I think if those were fixed it'd be an amazing Twisted Metal entry in its own right since I think it's really fun to play and thus it's just "good". Sweet Tooth usurping Calypso as the runner of Twisted Metal is actually kinda cool imo and it's a nice apology for how bad he played in 3.
It feels like the guys behind this game heard my complaints from 20 years in the future about the gameplay of TM3 and actually improved a ton of things. They made it a lot faster, going upside down no longer makes you vulnerable and just instantly puts you rightside up, cars are a lot looser, etc. Some could argue the cars feel a bit too loose, but I think it's amazing. They also thankfully brought back the shield advanced technique from the SingleTrac games, and also added a "hyperspace" move that teleports you to a point on the map to save yourself from a hairy situation or falling into a pit.
Unfortunately despite these improvements there is some really bad slowdown at times when a lot of stuff goes on either onscreen or just nearby, it's particularly bad on the Oil Rig. For maximum powerpoint presentation level slowdown, put yourself as Sweet Tooth and fight five other Sweet Tooths on Oil Rig. The playable non-boss roster is also filled with incredibly bad new characters and "revisions" of past characters that have been made cheesier like Mr. Grimm suddenly becoming a pirate for some reason and losing his motorcycle gimmick(giving it to Quattro who's a hoverbike user) and Warthog now gives up his armored truck/hummer for a WWI tank that actually makes him less unique since Minion is in this game. Orbital and Quattro I guess are okay, but Orbital is quite literally just James Bond in everything but the stuff that would be copyright infringing which is an automatic disqualification at least from me.
On the flipside there is now a boss on every stage, which I think is actually pretty cool. It just sucks that they proceeded to put characters from past games as the bosses. They're "stronger" now in a way, but it also denies them a bio/ending which kinda sucks. The boss characters who aren't past characters are also super faceless with very generic sounding names like "Crusher" and "RC Car", though they're still a ton cooler than the non-boss new characters.
There's a really weird "create-a-car" mode which is just as limited as you'd expect it to be from a PS1 era game, with it basically just being a selection of nine car models to choose from and picking a pre-set paintjob for them and only four specials. You can make a "Hammerhead" or "Crimson Fury" for this game, but you're not gonna be able to crush cars with Hammerhead like in the old games which just makes you go "what's even the point then?".
It's a shame it suffers from the slowdown and terrible playable cast the way it does, because I think if those were fixed it'd be an amazing Twisted Metal entry in its own right since I think it's really fun to play and thus it's just "good". Sweet Tooth usurping Calypso as the runner of Twisted Metal is actually kinda cool imo and it's a nice apology for how bad he played in 3.