How Can Twisted Metal Be Made Relevant Again

There are some games that unfortunately fall under the radar now and then and Twisted Metal is one of them. In case you didn't know, Twisted Metal is a franchise that started on the first PlayStation console and it was all about participating in a deathmatch tournament created by a strange being called Calypso. You chose a character to play with and if you won you could see that character's dream come true (or so Calypso said). Today, I am going to share some personal ideas about how can such a dark and twisted game come back to life on this generation. It would be a reboot that mixes both old and new ideas so here it goes.

The Story
I am really not a fan of super "realism" in games, but in the case of Twisted Metal it could make for an interesting approach. This time the story would have to be a little more believable in order for the game to look different. The setting would still be our world, but instead of a fictional post-apocalyptic version, let's have a very close contemporary one. On this story line, an all new Calypso, seen the sad state of affairs that the world is in, opens the Twisted Metal tournament as a mean for people to get their desires or fulfill their dreams in a world that isn't fair anymore. People all around the world sign themselves in through a special and bizarre social network and build their own cars as they get ready for the carnage that awaits them. At first it would seem like Calypso is in complete control, but halfway through the game Minion (a boss in the previous games) comes back from hell and makes him to be the final contestant (or final boss).  

The Environment
The battlegrounds on the game would be real life cities that will more or less resemble a mini sand box game. Each contestant is placed on one place of the map and they would have to look for resources in order to for them to be able to battle the others. This means that some "realistic" things will happen like running low on gas, getting a flat tire or even a malfunctioning engine. If any of these things happen to you, you would have to go to certain places in order to fix them before your opponent blows you up or else the performance of your vehicle is affected and that will make you an easy target.

While all this happens and as the battle heats up, the government begins to try to stop the battle by force. They will release waves of extra foes, ranging from cops, to the army and even special weapons of their own that will make the battle a little more interesting and challenging. To top things off, if your car is destroyed you would have the chance to jump out of it and make a final stand with a weapon of your own. The battles can also feature elemental hazards like deep water, fires or even natural disasters coming at random. All of these details make for a very active and action packed battle where the winner is the one who can use everything around him/her and an advantage.

Customization
We can have a cast of original characters to choose from in case we just want to pick the game and play, but there should be an emphasis on customization. This time the player should be able to make their own cars and characters. Starting with the car, customization begins to look like a really fun feature, so let's look at an example. Let's say you build a battle vehicle that has the chassis of a military hummer which will be the main body of your vehicle including stats like armor, weight, etc. Then you choose the kind of tires you want (could be dirt oriented, slick, monster truck like, etc). After that you choose one basic weapon (like machine gun, rail gun,etc) and set it where ever you want on the vehicle, a special weapon (missiles, laser, etc) and an ultimate weapon (nuclear bomb, satellite laser, etc). These weapons can either be ranged or melee and the variety would depend on the type of chassis you chose.

After that you get to choose perks/weaknesses based on a point system. Perks would be little extra goodies like special armor, keeping your speed underwater and cool stuff like that. Weaknesses on the other hand would be like small sacrifices you make in order to have more perks. Let's say that you choose that your vehicle runs low on gasoline quickly, but that gives you some extra points to get the "Ram damage" perk. A system like this would make building a battle vehicle to feel like making a character build on an rpg game, but a lot simpler.

Your Own Character
Customization of your vehicle is interesting, but it shouldn't stop there. You should also have to be able to make your own character. First you can choose a stock picture for it, or just put one of your own. Then, you would have to choose character traits. Character traits would be certain characteristics that will give your character a personality and will serve as information that the game would take to generate a story line and ending for you. These traits would be classified into 5 categories that would be:

• Type of person: Who would you be.
• Personality: How would you behave.
• Setbacks: Bad stuff about you.
• Virtues: Good stuff about you.
• Desires: Things you want in life.

You would have the opportunity to choose 2 types of person, 1 personality, 3 set backs, 3 virtues and 3 desires and each of these categories would have tons of options to choose from. Let's say you chose to be a retired soldier who is also a cab driver and your personality is gloomy. 

For setbacks: You are an orphan, you are addicted to betting in casinos and were involved in a scientific experiment accident. 

For virtues: you are physically strong, immune to most diseases and have a good reputation.

For desires: You want for a dead friend to still be alive, you want to be rich and you want to have a family.

When you finish making your character the game generates a story line for you. You were a cab driver that decided to enlist in the army for some time. When you came back after a big conflict in the middle east you came back with PTSD because of the death of your best friend on one of your missions. You decide to enter the tournament in order to get the riches necessary to get back on with your life the way you want to, so you can re-build everything you lost.

As for the ending, you would enter the tournament with those desires in mind and after winning, Calypso would trick you. He makes you rich and lets you fix your life and live comfortably with your new family, but one day your dead friend comes back from the dead as a zombie and eats you.

Wrapping it up

As you can see, this is a concept that could make this franchise interesting to gamers again. The whole customization feature lets the players to live their own version of the Twisted Metal tournament and could also serve as the character used on an online mode. Mix this up with cleverly designed stages, mechanics that feel a little more realistic and the chance to develop your character for both offline and online modes and I think that you have a new version of Twisted Metal that can be very appealing to both the old and new schools in gaming.

The King's Field - Demon/Dark Souls Connection

If you have played any of the "Souls" games (Demon Souls, Dark Souls), you know they are one of the cool surprises of the previous generation and one of the few gaming franchises that made the old school style of gaming new again with all its challenge and deep game play elements. Now, you know that these games are very good, but did you know that they are not a completely new thing? By "not new" I don't exactly mean that their style has been used before because that is pretty obvious. What I mean is that the "Souls" games are a spiritual sequel to a gaming franchise of the past in the same way that Bio Shock is a spiritual sequel to System Shock.

That franchise from the past is called King's Field. It was one of those rare RPG games that appeared on the 32 and 128 bit eras and was one of those games that you used to find on game stores and asked yourself "what the hell is this about?" as you held the jewel case in your hands and saw that it was something different to what you were used to see at the time, a 3D first person RPG on a time where the Elder Scrolls saga was not as popular as it is now. The curious thing about this is that some of the creative minds behind the "Souls" franchise are also the ones that worked on King's Field back in the day and they managed to keep their "high difficulty - great reward" mindset even to this day. This series spawned 4 games, the first 3 of them releasing on the PS ONE and the fourth one on the PlayStation 2 with the name of King's Field: The Ancient City.

One mistake and our hero ends up joining the mummy club.

As stated before, King's Field was a first person RPG that focused its game play on exploration and puzzle solving with a really steep learning curve and hardcore difficulty. The games had a back story, but most of the time you were alone, exploring various dungeons and towns with certain death just looking at you from around the corner and NPC characters that talked to you in cryptic ways. The King's Field games were really hard and building up your character was even harder at least through the first 10 levels or so, mostly because attacking was so slow that most of the enemies could pretty easily hit you more times that you could hit them unless you used magic or ranged weapons and that just made it a little easier. All these things made up for a game that was so challenging, that gamers were divided into those who loved it and those who hated it, without any middle ground at all.

King's Field: The Ancient City addressed some of the issues of the previous games.

All of these hardcore game play elements may seem may seem familiar to you and this is because King's Field was the predecessor to the "Souls" (Bloodborne in a near future) line of games. All of the elements are there from the very beginning: a dark story line developing on a desolated and twisted world, enemies that can instantly kill you if you stray too far, lots of secrets and treasures to find, cryptic NPC characters that you can kill and lose for the rest of the playthrough, lots of mini stories within the main story, a defensive style of battle (which is going to change to an offensive one in Bloodborne) and even the classic bonfires appear on both franchises although they are not that useful in King's Field. In fact the game atmospheres on these two franchises are so similar, that you could just take any of the "Souls" games, put it on a first person perspective and there you go, King's Field V.

Two rpg game franchises united by bonfires.

Wrapping it up

There you go people, if you are a "Souls" fan, now you know the deep roots of the game you like so much. If you feel a little adventurous and you can't wait for Bloodborne to come out, you can give the King's Field games a try. Of course they are not as comfortable and good looking as the "Souls" series, but if you manage to get the hang of them, they can become very good experiences as their emphasis on exploration is something pretty rare nowadays that only survived on the "Souls" series.  

Bonus stage!

If you like to make mods or would like to make your own hardcore first person RPG, you can try King's Field: Sword of the Moonlight, which is a design tool that lets you create your own stand alone King's Field style games while also including the complete remake of the first title in the franchise. This was only released in Japan, but there is an unofficial English patch you could use.

If you like to try it, you can get Sword of Moonlight HERE with all the tools you need including the English patch. This sparks my curiosity so I will try it too, maybe later on we can compare some of our Moonlight sword made games.

Sources:
VG-24/7: From King's Field to Bloodborne
Sword of Moonlight Community
 

Playstation Now beta pricing is...Not so motivational

Playstation Now seems to be Sony's answer to their fans for the lack of backwards compatibility on the PS4. Since they bought Gaikai (streaming technology) they have been promising that their game streaming service will be the next big thing and while most of the gaming community has remained optimistic about it (except some video game industry analysts), right now it doesn't look that appetizing and it is not because of technical issues, but because of the pricing showed for the Playstation Now beta.

The example that everybody is talking about is Final Fantasy XIII-2. As shown on some popular gaming pages, the pricing for been able to "rent" this game go as follows:

5 dollars for 4 hours of gaming

This is pretty much like paying 5 dollars for a long demo, sort of like the ones found on those classic "Jam pack" demo discs of the PS ONE days, not to mention that those discs could be found on retail stores for like a buck. Only that on this occasion the demo vanishes after 4 hours.

8 dollars for 7 days of gaming

It seems pretty fair if you consider playing the game non-stop for those 7 days like some sort of gaming pilgrimage (including the hand lotion for cramps and the magic bucket like in that south park episode).

15 dollars for 30 days of gaming

It seems like a good deal until you realize that some of these games can actually be bought for a similar price and nobody is going to take them from you after 30 days.

30 dollars for 90 days of gaming

Half the price of a new release for approximately 3 months of gaming. It is very likely that you will be able to finish the game before reaching that time (games are a lot shorter nowadays) and considering that this is an rpg, there not much replay value to talk about. So this is more like "ok I paid 30 dollars I must finish this game no matter what" and there will still be a lot of wasted time/value. 

Wrapping things up

Now keep the game in mind as we see how much it would cost you to buy it online:

Ebay: 16-18 dollars

Amazon: 18 dollars

Gamestop: 15 dollars

This means that actually buying the game is 50% cheaper than renting it, which means that unless prices get a little more competitive, you are better off keeping your PS3. It is important to say that not all games will have the same rental fees, but if Final Fantasy XIII-2 is to be an example, this doesn't look so great. Hopefully Sony will implement some sort of subscription service and that will level the field and make it all worthwhile.There is also the possibility that these are just some test prices for the beta phase and it is subject to change for the official version, so don't count Sony's streaming service out just yet.

Sources: Gamespot, Kotaku

An alternate universe: Sony and Nintendo making the SNES-CD.

It is quite certain that most of you are well aware of what the gaming world looks like now. We have 3 major home consoles coming from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, two handhelds coming from Sony and Nintendo and gaming PCs that have always been there. You know who are the top players and who are the underdogs, but do you know how different it could had been if certain decisions were made at specific points in time? Today we are going to look into one personal theory I have about a particular "alternate universe" that would had happened if:

If this had happened, maybe we would had played Donkey Kong Country as a 2.5D game.

Nintendo and Sony had kept their partnership (1991).

Note: This is just a personal theory so your own opinions may greatly differ from the ones expressed on this article, so bear with me and if you have any different ideas, leave them on the comment section as it is always interesting to talk about these things.

The classic champion of the 90's

The origin of the first Sony home console is a story of separation. It is said that at first, what we came to know as the PlayStation (or PS ONE) was just going to be a disc drive peripheral for the Super Nintendo, that would had enabled the console to jump to the next generation without having to actually make a new machine. For a while it seemed that Nintendo was going to take that path, until they decided otherwise and then Sony decided to go solo which led to the birth of the PlayStation which meant the end of Nintendo's dominance over the industry and the beginning of Sega's downfall.

What could had happened differently if the Nintendo/Sony alliance had been kept?

Imagine if this war had never ended...

(1991 - 1999)

•  The Nintendo/Sony alliance would had crushed the Genesis and later on the Sega CD even before it had a chance, because they would simply have the better games vs the unimpressive library of interactive movies that the Sega CD is known for. 
•  Sega would had realized that it wouldn't be wise to make the 32X because they would had been cut to size again, so they would had jumped straight to the Saturn, later on overtaking the SNES-CD because of having superior technology and more advanced looking games. Another important thing would be that because of the success of the Saturn, Sega of America and Sega of Japan would had most likely kept the peace instead of going against each other and because of that, promising games like Sonic Xtreme would had been released without any problems. 
•  Sega had become a fan favorite, but Nintendo was not stupid and had been in development of the Nintendo 64 all along so now the Sega Saturn and a disc based Nintendo 64 would lead another classic console showdown. With superb first and third party games evenly separated between the two platforms, this would had sparked a fan boy war that would had been worse than anything we had even seen.
•  Sony, seen that both the Saturn and the CD based Nintendo 64 were too far ahead for them to enter the competition, would had then began working on the PlayStation concept in complete secrecy, preparing for a later release (1998-1999), but it would had kept the CD format instead of jumping into DVD territory because the technology would had been too expensive to put on a console at the time. Also the machine itself would had been as powerful as a Dreamcast so this would mark a time of success for Sony as everybody would had been very impressed with their machine. Making the console market stand at a virtual tie before Nintendo and Sega unveiled their new consoles.

Because with disc media, size matters!

(2002 - 2006)

• After a long battle without a clear winner, Nintendo and Sega would had moved to release their new consoles which would had toppled the PlayStation in terms of power. Sega would had jumped to the DVD format while Nintendo would still had gone to the mini-disc because of fears of piracy and both consoles would had been released approximately in the 2002 to 2003 time span. 
• The battle would had been fierce and Microsoft would had come up with the original Xbox a lot earlier than they really did (2002), but would had been kept at a very distant third place followed only by the PlayStation who's original lifespan was at its end. 
• At the end of that generation, the battle would had been won by Sega (mostly because of the difference in disc format) with Nintendo learning its lesson and Microsoft gearing up for a second try while Sony who played the waiting game on that generation, would be ready to release the PlayStation 2 in the year 2007. 

War...War never changes...

(2007 to the present day)

From here on, there would had been a 4 way death match with all major companies having a console at once. This one would have Nintendo with a slight lead, with Sega and Sony almost tied at the second position while Microsoft stands at a 4th place and would be already showing signs of dropping out of the console race and sticking to PC gaming instead (quite possibly having a Steam like store or even making a partnership with Valve). At our present day, we would probably be seen the great presentation of the new Nintendo, Sega and Sony machines, with so much hype that we would be counting the days until the event.

To wrap things up:

Alternate universes... Sparking our imaginations like always.

Effects of this alternate universe on our present time:

• The tight competition would had left so little space for error, that companies would not had the chance to experiment into new audiences meaning that the casual gaming movement that the Wii started would not had happened at the gigantic scale it did on real life.
• Console gaming technology would not be as advanced as it is now so the PC gaming platform would be far ahead of consoles in terms of power, which would make gaming PCs to be even more popular than they already are.
• The indie gaming scene would be something that would be almost exclusive to the PC platform, with Microsoft and Valve at front.
• Formats like Blu-ray and HD-DVD would be something relatively new for consoles at the present time, but with the arrival of the digital game age, the use of physical media would not be as favored as it is now.
• Game exclusives would still be something that happened very often, while the multi-platform trend would be held back by the intense battle that the companies would be having to bring the best games into their platform.
• We would see a bigger number of localized games reaching our shores because the Japanese style of making games would had never lost its focus so American and Japanese types of games would still be separate things instead of one trying to imitate the other.
• The motion-controlled gaming craze would had never happened and we would be more inclined towards virtual reality and VR headsets a lot more early than we currently are.
• All major companies would had been forced to create at least twice the quantity of first party games while keeping their classic heavy hitters from becoming dormant. This because the market would had not become complacent, so companies would had felt pressured to outdo themselves at every chance they got.
• Much of the franchises we in reality see as dead or missing in action, would be pretty much alive and kicking.

Now imagine for a moment that this little alternate universe is real. Do you think that gaming would be better or worse? I leave that judgement call on your hands.