Editorials
Vehicular Combat Series ‘Twisted Metal’ Still Holds Its Own After 30 Years
Growing up, I was always a Nintendo kid. Mario had its hooks in me from the moment they wheeled an NES into my hospital room while I was recovering from a tonsillectomy at the age of six. But I feel like I turned a corner in my appreciation for the medium with the original PlayStation console. That system had so many amazing experiences that completely changed the way I looked at video games, from Metal Gear Solid to Silent Hill to Final Fantasy VII. They were games unlike anything I’d tried on any Nintendo system before, and for me it all started with one game – Twisted Metal.
I still remember going over to my neighbors’ house after they rented a PlayStation from the local video store. We were passing the controller around doing versus matches of this wild car combat game, with over the top characters gunning each other down with missiles and machine guns. To an 11-year-old me, it felt like a transgressive version of Mario Kart’s battle mode, a demolition derby for the mad, featuring characters that felt like B-movie rejects. And to me, it was perfect.
Twisted Metal was developed by newly formed SingleTrac, led by David Jaffe, in approximately 12 months by a team of about 20 people, which feels so wild given the way development cycles have ballooned in recent years. The game was worked on alongside Warhawk, which initially shared a common code base, and came to the designers during a frustrating traffic jam that made them fantasize about arming their vehicles with guns and missiles. Sony was looking for something to show off their new PlayStation hardware, but during development SingleTrac were frequently asked by executives when the graphics were going to get better. Despite all the fears about the game while it was being made, which also included poor responses from focus testing groups, the game went on to sell over one million units on an $850,000 budget.
One of the most immediately apparent elements of Twisted Metal that makes it feel unique is that it has a roster that feels like one you’d find in a fighting game. The setup of the game involves a mysterious man named Calypso who holds a car combat tournament that promises to grant a wish, which draws in a cast of characters including the Grim Reaper, a restless spirit, and, of course, the iconic killer clown Needles Kane, the driver of the ice cream truck Sweet Tooth. It’s very easy to browse the characters selection page and immediately attach yourself to a character based either on their character picture or their vehicle, before you even know how they play.
Aside from their aesthetic distinction, they all have different stats for their car, and a special weapon that’s exclusive to them, and often themed around their character. Beating the game grants you a text screen that gives you a little short story about what they did with their wish, but an earlier version of the game had live action cutscenes that were cut because some members of the team found them offensive. These were eventually included as bonus content in the PlayStation 2 release Twisted Metal Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition, and you can still find them floating around on YouTube.
Since my main point of comparison at the time of the game’s release for this type of gameplay was Mario Kart, it was exciting to see that the levels were more grounded in real life than the more abstract Mushroom Kingdom locations. City streets, suburbs, and rooftops were all turned into destructible battlegrounds, making for something that felt more dangerous and exciting. The level design of these can be pretty basic, with some of the six levels feeling a little too big for the number of characters in a match, but most of them provide enough interconnected areas to provide space for fun car chases between you and your opponents as you zip around, collecting weapon power ups and blasting each other to bits.
When revisiting Twisted Metal for this article, it’s clear that this is a first draft that gets improved upon greatly in its sequels. The campaign is pretty short, with only six stages to beat, but the variety of characters that feel meaningfully different gives it a lot of replay value, especially if you’ve got someone who wants to play versus mode with you. The levels are neat, but don’t have the imagination or flair of the other games, which add a lot of visual variety into the mix. I still love this game, but would much rather revisit one of its many sequels instead.
Twisted Metal 2, aka Twisted Metal: World Tour, was the game that I played most during the PS1 era. Many nights with my friends were spent passing the controllers around as we kept track of our wins and losses throughout the evening. The sequel had a revamped set of characters, some returning, some new, and a set of levels that were inspired by locations all over the world, giving each level its own distinct identity. I’m so fond of this game that this year for my birthday, I actually hooked up an original PlayStation to a TV in my office and got some people to play it with me over lunch – and it still was a blast.
Twisted Metal 3 and Twisted Metal 4 were designed by 989 Studios after SingleTrac was purchased by GT Interactive. I don’t have as much experience with either of these two games, and they felt like one of the first instances in my life that I was aware of a developer change in a series and could immediately feel the difference. The first two games succeeded based on how good it felt to drive and shoot in the cars, and these two sequels just didn’t have the feel down in the same way, which led to disappointment. They seemed to over rely on the power of the franchise’s name value rather than innovating in meaningful ways.
David Jaffe and company would get another shot at the series when Incog Inc. formed from previous SingleTrac employees to work on two new games in the series – Black and Small Brawl. Jaffe headed up Twisted Metal: Black, which was for the new-at-the-time PlayStation 2, while Steve Ceragioli directed Small Brawl, a kids version of the game that was the final game in the series on the original PlayStation. Twisted Metal: Black is hands down my favorite in the series, and one of my all time favorite games, with blisteringly fast gameplay and a dark and disturbing take on the series. There would be a couple others in the series, including entries for the PSP and PS3, but none of them ever reached the heights of Black for me.
Not only did Twisted Metal establish this long and storied series, but it spawned several other competitors that tried to jump on the bandwagon, creating a thriving car combat subgenre, for a time. Vigilante 8, Carmageddon, and Interstate ‘76 all followed in its wake, each providing their own take on driving-based mayhem. SingleTrac even returned to the genre twice after leaving Twisted Metal behind with Critical Depth and Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012. Critical Depth was actually one of the first games I purchased when I ended up getting my own PlayStation, and its submarine-based take on the genre was a blast. Eventually the car combat craze died down, with far less notable titles on the PlayStation 2 and beyond.
Despite not having a game released in the series since the 2012 reboot on the PlayStation 3, the franchise re-entered the cultural zeitgeist recently with the Peacock original TV series based on the games. While it changes a lot of the premise and important details, the game manages to capture some of the over the top fun, especially once it finds its footing a bit more in season 2. It’s the kind of show that’s broadly fun for general audiences, while also providing Easter Eggs that reward longtime fans of the series, even when those same fans might be frustrated by some of the changes made to the general concept.
Even though it definitely feels like a 30 year old game, the original Twisted Metal is still fun to revisit, which is easy to do via the Playstation Network. The fast-paced car combat that was so trendsetting in its day still feels exciting, making for an over-the-top demolition derby that feels like Mario Kart by way of Mad Max. With the recent success of the TV series, I’ve been hoping beyond hope that they find a way to bring back the series in video game form, even if it’s a smaller scoped project. If not, I’d love for an indie dev to take the concepts and run with it, as it feels like we’re due for that genre to come back into style.
To me, there are few things more exciting in video games that speeding around and slamming cars into each other as they pelt each other with machine guns and missiles, and even if we don’t get a modern revival, we’ve still got enough entries in this series that can be accessed on modern hardware that I can satiate my need for vehicular carnage any time I need it.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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