The Psyko Drome: Twisted Metal 2

Twisted Metal 2 Characters

I'm a bit of a camper in TM2 -- I like to find hiding places and snipe at people. Spec's ghost missiles are perfect for this. Fire and forget! For this reason, Paris and Amazonia are two of my favorite levels. Yet, even though it's almost impossible to beat, I also have a soft spot for Holland -- again, maybe it's something to do with the sheer odds against the player. Least favorite level: New York. Can't stand that one at all. Even Antarctica is more fun to play.

Spectre's ending is okay. His reason for doing the Twisted Metal contest is kinda fun.

A note of caution: If you're driving a "fast" character, like Spectre, Twister, Mr. Grimm, etc., for heaven's sakes be careful around places with ledges, New York in particular. New York is probably the worst one for falling fatalities.

That having been said, Grasshopper is indeed a character for the more experienced TM2 player, or a novice as long as you set the difficulty to Easy. You can beat the game with her... but it's not easy. (Sweettooth is much harder, but only because he has special restrictions.) On the other hand, killing enemies by jumping on them in a bright green dune buggy has its own rewards. :) If you get killed by Grasshopper, it's not something to be proud of.

Grasshopper's ending is very cool, though. I've noticed that in general, the more difficult the character, the better the ending.

Outlaw 2 is a good character for a novice player to choose; okay armor, decent speed, and reasonably good special weapon.

Outlaw 2's ending is very cool, and one of the few where the character doesn't "get what they deserve".

Warthog's ending is a good example of why it's so important to be a wish-lawyer. (Another reference for D&D'ers and RPG'ers.) The off-key trumpet blast when he fires his special is odd at first, but you get used to it.

That having been said, a good tactic is to freeze someone in place using the ice code, then run up and flame 'em good. The flame will melt the ice; you've been warned. The flamethrower also works great for certain camping spots, such as the Louvre in Paris, or if you're daring, the bottom of the elevator shaft in New York (if you arrange yourself right, you can shoot the flame through the wall and not damage the door you're hiding behind). The flamethrower also takes longer to recover, in the time-honored tradition of "weak attacks recover quickly, strong attacks recover slowly". The special-weapon recovery does not seem affected by the status of the energy bar.

Thumper's car doesn't careen nearly as bad as some of the lighter-weight vehicles, which is a nice change of pace. Also, as a low-rider, it nearly disappears in the tall grass of Holland.

Hammerhead's special weapon is another up-close variety, and in true monster-truck fashion, involves running over things. On the one hand, this is really simple: simply aim for an enemy and try to ram them! (Broadsides or T-bones work best.) On the other manipulatory appendage, this is really bad news if you're attacking Outlaw, Axel, or Darktooth, to name a few -- anyone with an omnidirectional up-close weapon. Hammerhead's handling is a bit sluggish at times, and the truck's not real fast, but the special weapon is great on low-armor enemies like Spectre, Grasshopper, and Twister.

It may just be me, but it seems that Hammerhead's ram attack does better if the enemy is smaller than the monster truck. Maybe it's because watching Hammerhead try to run over something bigger than itself would lead to that conclusion. However, this is only my opinion -- I don't know if the game would follow that same conclusion.

Hammerhead's ending is difficult to get (though not as hard as Grasshopper) but well worth it.

Shadow's special -- "spirit missiles" (not to be confused with Spectre's ghost missiles) -- can be very effective if done right. However, it's also a little more difficult to pull off. After firing the special as with any other weapon, you need to press the fire button again to make the spirit missile "go off". Thus, you don't want to drive so fast that you run into your own missile, and you have to keep the spirit missile in view if you want to make it go off accurately. The missile is straight-line of fire, and as near as I can tell, is only good over level or near-level surfaces. I've tried shooting spirit missiles off the Louvre campground and across the docks of Hong Kong, but they don't seem to follow exact contours, so use spirit missiles with caution in these areas.

In theory, backward-firing spirits could work great, but how could you tell if the spirit was lined up properly? It appears the spirit missile must "go off" by command, by remote control, as it were; an enemy who "runs into" a spirit missile is unharmed.

Needless to say, this is totally irrelevant when Shadow is run by the AI. Game-controlled characters may, at any time and for no reason, have unlimited supplies of their special weapons, napalm, and/or ice.

Twister's special is the tornado -- the car whips around, causing a vortex of air, with Twister at the center of it (!) and doing damage to all who get caught up in it. This is extremely effective, if dangerous, in enclosed spaces (most buildings, for example). It's very possible -- in fact, highly likely -- you'll injure yourself while using the tornado, particularly if Thumper gets caught up in it and fires off his flamethrower. An awesome sight if you're not involved at the time.

The good news is, with the fastest car in the game, you're likely to outrun most people and weapons (except maybe Darktooth's attacks). The bad news is, with the fastest car in the game, you slew worse than Spectre ever does. And if you thought Spec careened badly in turns, such as in Moscow....

Twister's ending is also pretty cool.

Mr. Grimm's specials are the only ones I've ever seen behind me when playing another character -- as in, I barely squeak out of the way as the death skull comes in from the side.

Motorbikes aren't known for a whole lot of armor in real life, and Mr. Grimm is no exception -- expect to take piles of damage playing him. His better than average speed helps out a little bit, but the undead biker's best bet is to hide and camp, more than most characters. Grimm's ending is okay, but there are several better ones.

Axel is the tallest of all the vehicles and you really shouldn't use the Jump command in enclosed spaces with him. He's also easy to spot at distances, even in Holland's tall grass. The Axel Power is good for drive-bys, and the Louvre campground, but not many other hideouts.

A question: How come the tires spin, but Axel himself doesn't? Maybe it's something to do with grooves and ball-bearings...

Mister Slam will go for you to the exclusion of everyone else. He homes in on you without delay and does his best to ice you repeatedly. Axel and Shadow both somehow have infinite specials when you're fighting them; Mister Slam has infinite ice weapons, which he uses within seconds of each other. Sweettooth's weapons may do more damage, but Mister Slam just doesn't give up. If he gets you once with the ice, he will probably ice you a couple more times before the pickup-and-shake routine.

Mister Slam is the slowest vehicle (expect to use lots o' turbos when fighting Darktooth) and when you play him, you don't get all the wonderful goodies he does. On the upside, he's got great armor.

Roadkill is a good "starter" car for the beginning player. Medium armor, decent distance-weapon, okay speed; Roadkill is a fairly average-to-good vehicle all the way around.

Minion, on the other hand -- if you can't finish with Minion, you need help! ^_^ Minion has great armor, great weapons, decent speed -- it's hard to mess up too much with good ol' Minion. Like Sweettooth, Minion has no level passwords, but then, you really don't need 'em with this guy. You don't even need the Eternal Life code, he's so tough. Minion is, coincidentally, the boss at the end of Amazonia. His ending's interesting. (Sweettooth's is weird.)