The Twisted Metal Black 2 Alpha

this is Twisted Metal Man you were literally twisting the metal over this guy's head for quite a few years now there's been builds floating around of this canceled Twisted Metal project that have always been unplayable to the general public that was until recently we're going to take a look at what this cancelled Twisted Metal project has to offer and by the end of it hopefully we'll be able to answer the question why did this happen well to get down to the roots of where this project actually started we got to go all the way back to 2005 before we even knew anything about this project and it was mainly because we were preoccupied with something else 2005 would see the launch of the greatest portable console ever made the PlayStation Portable but alongside that we also saw the release of Twisted Metal head-on boasting impressive Graphics great gameplay and online multiplayer on a handheld back in 2005 I think it's safe to say that this is one of the series Staples Twisted Metal head-on was spearheaded by series veteran Scott Campbell alongside his team over at incog entertainment but as fate would have it this wouldn't be the only Twisted Metal project that they were actually working on at the time and we would have no idea until years later fools is now inable let the world beware in 2008 we get a port of Twisted Metal head-on for the PlayStation 2 Under the title Twisted Metal head-on extra Twisted Edition while this would feature the same game that released on the PSP a few years prior it would come with some extra [Music] content some of that extra content being from an unfinished Twisted Metal title this would be featured on the disc's Twisted Metal loss but as we got into that content we would notice the formal working title Twisted Metal Harbor City it's from this point that the details of why this game exists how it was conceptualized and why it was canceled get a little muddy but we do get some key details that'll solidify themselves we know that the formal title of the game is Twisted Metal Harbor City and it was essentially going to be a sequel to Twisted Metal black the most notable gameplay element about this sequel is that all of the levels would have been interconnected through a highway system of sorts this would essentially allow you to bounce from level to level similar to what you would do in Tony Hawk's American Wasteland special announcement like And subscribe for more trash knowing what we know now about Twisted Metal Harbor City there's two different ways you can really look at this build of the game or at least the remnants of it that are put into Twisted Metal head-on the content playable here in this build of the game is a heavily curated cleaned up version of what we actually would have seen in Harbor City but we'll get into that portion a little bit later however one thing was undeniable about this content that was present in the extra Twisted edition of headon another Twisted Metal game was in development that did exist and likely there was a lot more to see here than what we were being presented with according to the Twisted Metal Wii there's three builds of Twisted Metal Harbor City floating around in various stages of development a build from September 12 2013 a build from January 29th 2004 and a build from August 11th 2005 these builds of Twisted Metal Harbor City would give us the clearest look at what this game was and what it could have been the first one came in 2009 and this was an early version of the game and I believe this build and the second build have a lot in common in the sense that they're very early a lot of stages are unfinished or untextured and if we just left it here it would be easy to write this game off as just an early build that was kind of conceptualized then thrown away right but things got a lot more interesting in late 202 when a build from August 11 2005 dropped this would be the most complete look at Twisted Metal Harbor City we got yet but there was a big caveat this was only playable on a PS2 dev kit that means unless you owned this piece of expensive and rare Hardware there was no way to play or look at this game you would have to go off of whatever footage that person was able to capture and upload and that was pretty much the end of the story until 4 years later in April of 2024 in April of 2024 a user that goes by the name zombie would release a playable build of Twisted Metal Harbor City on a modified version of pcsx2 all you have to do to get this build running is download the build that's included with the modified version of pcsx2 as well as provide your own PS2 bios file and you're good to go booting into the main menu would give the options that you would be familiar with if you played a twisted metal title but the interesting part is that you're also given a mission option because that's never been a thing in Twisted Metal it also begs the question what's the difference between a story mode in a mission mode how would these two things be separate were they supposed to be together who knows before jumping into the story mode here I think it's worth giving a little disclaimer that all of the vehicles that you're going to be using and characters that you're going to be using are most likely just placeholder content while this build does include some interesting new character models like the return of pit viper and an old pickup truck the new vehicles don't have any animations or specials really attached to them they're all placeholder options and the rest of them are mainly carryovers from Twisted Metal but I think the real star of the show in this Builder is going to definitely be the environments that you're traveling through you start off in a level called the ghetto which is this rundown industrial urban area with some Living Spaces which is fairly well detailed and has a good bit of verticality to it there's a nuclear plant that'll leave a crater in the ground if you destroy it as well as a whole array of buildings that you can destroy which shows you right off of the bat that destructibility was going to be a big feature in this game this starting level definitely shows you the mood and the atmosphere that they were going going for and after taking out a couple enemies the scope of what they were going for starts to become very clear there's a section of the highway that's blocked off with roadblock post but after defeating a few enemies you're able to drive straight through that tunnel and into the next level this is similar to what you would do in a game like Tony Hog's American Wasteland no loading times you just go straight through it and load to the next one the interesting thing is that you can travel back and forth from these levels the next level bringing us into a downtown area and as you drive through this tunnel into the downtown the scope of this game starts to become very apparent beams of light destroyed buildings and Tall skyscrapers towering over you really show you that you're driving into this big city and for this being an alpha build of a game this city is pretty damn Lively when you first drive into it there's a lot of pedestrian cars crowding the streets and these actually end up being sort of a uh a shield against bullets and missiles flying into the enemy's directions if you're weaving in and out of traffic it's kind of a way to dodge incoming attacks and that destructibility that we initially talked about in the first level is just ramped up to 11 in this area you can watch these skyscrapers fall all around you as everyone's fighting and it's genuinely impressive and I really love the lighting and the atmosphere in this level it's really good it's kind of what I wanted Twisted Metal black to be I guess it's dark it's Moody and it feels realistic but there's also these splashes of color here and there that don't make it feel completely Bleak and hopeless it's almost like going through downtown Atlanta it's run down and everything around you is closed and dilapitated in some way but there's these these glimmers of Art and hope around you and it's it's just sweet man but when you have all of the darkness and destruction contrasting with the neon Billboards and signs up on the walls in the rooftops of these buildings it just really stands out and it's a really cool art style you'll also notice Billboards pointing to the next level or the previous level that you just went to kind of showing you that this is where you would travel when you're going between these level levels which would be the city center and this is an interesting Little slice of the city featuring a basketball arena as well as the carnival level that you were able to play some of in Twisted Metal loss back over on headon and this is where I kind of got a bone to pick with Twisted Metal head-ons loss content when you're playing this unreleased build of Twisted Metal Harbor City you really get the feeling and the scope that they were going for in this game and when you jump into the city center level for example it's so much more detailed and interesting than what the Twisted Metal loss content would lead you on to believe when you drive into the carnival there's these walking paths with grass and concrete and then you have the carnival rides which are brimming with detail and life there's this water slide with the skull having the water come out of its mouth with a ship on fire next to it and none of these details are present in the Lost versions of these Maps if we go back over to the Twisted Metal lost versions of these maps you can clearly see the lack of detail and texture in this and uh I don't know if this was just time constraints or if it was engine limitations but it just really looks awful in comparison and that also translates to all of the other maps in this game that were also present in the Twisted Metal lost version these three levels are the only ones that kind of function in this interconnected element and then the rest are just Deathmatch maps that you can play but while we're on the subject of Twisted Metal loss let's just go ahead and discuss those ones they're also playable in that version of Twisted Metal head-on first off we have this stadium level here which is kind of this dirt track monster truck esque thing with Stadium seats surrounding the entire Arena there's lots of hills you can jump off of you can drive up into the Stadium seats and there's even a little concession area that I managed to get stuck in the stadium itself with the arena section has a lot of detail there's kind of like a parking lot of sorts and everything behind the stadium starts to lose a little bit of detail if we move into the Twisted Metal lost version of this map you can actually drive out into the parking lot which looks pretty cool but as you get into the stadium you'll notice a significant difference in detail and gameplay here first off The Stadium seats and everything surrounding the middle of the arena is Walled off so you can't drive up into the Raptors and into the seating area but then you also have the center of the Arena itself you're missing all of the detail and all of the ramp jumps in the middle of the map the Harbor City Map has this really great lighting effect to emphasize that you're in this arena in a dark nighttime setting and you got the lights beaming down on the center and I feel like all of that detail gets lost in the Lost version ironically the same goes for the suburbs map this map is a fairly small more simplistic area you got a movie theater and a bowling alley and then a series of suburbs that surround the entire environment you have a mountain side you could drive up in all of the city has these walking paths and grass areas separating each building it feels again realistic and convincing and again the lighting in this map is really good it's a really dark map but you have these Street lamps that are lighting up the surrounding area you got spotlight shooting up in the air and kind of Illuminating the center piece of the map and in the Harbor City version of this map you can get onto the highway and if you start driving down the highway towards the center of the map you're kind of greeted with the spotlights bringing you into this city area so you can kind of see what they were going for there but of course this connected highway system is Lost in Translation when you go over to the twist of metal lost version of this map but that's not the only thing that's Lost in Translation because most of this map is kind of unplayable there's no suburbs to explore and Destroy in this suburbs map now everything is Walled off this map essentially turns an arena shooter into a corridor shooter if you played this map and you've thought that it felt very awkward and small and limited that's because it is in the introduction to the Twisted Metal lost content they tell you that they've kind of cut off the highway system that's been removed but they don't tell you just how much of the map has actually been altered here one interesting detail is that if you go to the playable build of City there's no detail in the pizza parlor but that seems to be added in the Twisted Metal lost version so they did add that they just took out everything else and of course that's the case for the city center map aka the carnival map so much of this map has been altered that it's pretty much unrecognizable from the original version of this map there's a big basketball stadium that you can explore that sits next to the carnival which has been removed as well as all of the grass and concrete walking paths and some of the rides and equipment and interesting features that kind of gave this this map its charm and its presentation but not only did they remove the detail out of these Maps they also put up these weird barriers for some reason which is also what they did in the suburbs map they put up these tall walls so you couldn't actually access the suburbs or any of the houses so now instead of driving through the field of a carnival or driving through the houses in the suburbs you're driving through hallways and when I actually saw the differences in these Maps it kind of hurt man I'm not going to lie like maybe to some people this is really dumb but it really hurts to see these artist original Visions be kind of shoehorned and streamlined in this way that just ruins the original vision and gameplay focus of these Maps removing these aesthetic elements and changing the way the map fundamentally plays just kind of ruins the flow of it almost to the point that kind of makes me wonder what was the point of even bringing these Maps back at all in some way I guess you should be glad that there's a way to play these maps at all but at the same time it's like you kind of just ruined what they or to be fair I'm sure there's a logical reasoning for some of this stuff they probably had to clean these Maps up and make them playable and functional in a way that the AI would respond correctly and considering this is an official release all of this stuff has to get approved and regulated so it's understandable that some changes had to be made it's just unfortunate that it had to come to the fundamental design of these maps and it's also a shame that a lot of these Maps didn't end up making the cut to the cut content of Twisted Metal Head On because there's a lot more maps here than what we got in that version of the game and luckily we have the build right in front of us to play these Maps interestingly you can play a version of the downtown area in Twisted Metal head-on through a special code but once again this isn't really ideal however there are a series of maps that are locked to this version of the game that will never see the light of day first off we have the docks which is an interesting smaller map where you fight around a cargo ship there's some interesting areas to this map like the residential City area that sits right next to the docks as well as the highway system that sits right next to it again just giving leverage to the idea that this would have all have been connected through some sort of highway system and apparently in this world you can just Barrel through shipping containers no problem and then we have a map labeled goth which is a shopping mall connected to a parking l in small set of roadways the name of this map will make sense when you drive to the outside of it given that it looks like this Gody Gothic Cathedral type beat and like the other maps in this game it is just full with a ton of damn detail man this map looks really good especially from the outside I love this Castle vibe that it's got going on then you go inside and you have all these lit up storefronts with multiple levels and this is also an area that you would have explored on the on foot sections of this game which is something we'll get into in a little bit I could have seen this map going crazy in multiplayer man weaving in and out of the parking lot full of cars and then going into the mall crowded with people it really is a damn shame that we lost this one we also have Rail Yard which is more of a simplistic one I didn't really have a lot of fun with this one it's kind of mid in my opinion but at least it's in a playable State I know that this was in an earlier build of the game where it was very unfinished and very untextured so it's cool to see that this map did make some progress it's a very long map that you can travel on for quite a while and there's these ramps that are really fun to jump off of with dark side special and then we finally have a playable version of the airport level that we can sink our teeth into and this was something that was made apparent years ago but it's something that's finally publicly playable in this version of the game so you have a big hanger with tons of different planes and you also have your main lobby with all of your computers and desks and then you have your concession stands and shops that you can plow through this is probably one of the glitcher maps because there is a lot of Popin which is something that you will see throughout the entire build of this game but the Popin is very apparent in this Airport map for some reason I wouldn't say it's the most fun addition to the game or the most fun map to play but it's definitely something cool to look a map that I wasn't able to play was Shipyard because I just kept falling through the floor every time I spawned unfortunately but I have a feeling that it's similar to the final map you're able to play in Twisted Metal head-on bonus content once you beat the content in Twisted Metal head-on extra Twisted Edition they give you an extra map that's playable and I'm not 100% on which one that's supposed to be but I'm assuming it's the shipyard map other than that when it comes to playable Maps were just left with the dirt track and Suburban areas that we previously mentioned as well as the names of some other maps that don't seem to exist in this build of the game freeway estate as well as Harbor 1 and 2 are all map names that seem to be completely unplayable according to the wikii I think there's some build of the freeway map that actually exists but I'm not too sure how you would even get into that if you do have any more knowledge about the maps in this game or playable content that I'm not familiar with definitely drop it down in the comments and while we are done talking about the playable maps in this game we're not done talking about the playable content in this game because there's one more thing we have to look at which is a really weird Edition what you're looking at here are the playable onf foot sections of this game those of which I believe are two which I also believe are too too many yeah there's on foot sections in this build of the game and they're they're not very good from what I understand in the Wii in doing my own research of the game it seems that these were going to be the last Stitch effort saving great of the game to prove that we could add more functionality to this than just car combat with this game going up against the current juggernauts at the time like GTA you had to have some on foot stuff so that was kind of included as a last minute thing in the alpha builds and it doesn't seem that that was working out too well for him this was something that was also repurposed in the Twisted Metal lost version of the game where they kind of turned it into a museum of sorts where you would run through the levels and get little tidbits of information about the series which I actually thought was pretty cool this is a really neat addition but there's actually more to the missions tab in this game than what was present in the Lost content after doing the onf foot sections which would presumably be you escaping the asane Asylum and getting your truck back you would also have a driving mission where you would fight with the cops in the downtown area as well as Chase one of Calypso's moles through the city center and visit the mall on foot why you were doing this is anyone's guess because there's really not a whole lot of information on the story mode in this game there's also a driving mission in between the two onf foot sections of this game where it seems you steal an asylum vehicle and you're being chased by police yeah this is very weird off the rail stuff if you thought the racing sections in the Twisted Metal reboot were weird I think this one definitely takes the cake and if this was The Smoking Gun for what killed the franchise or killed this is a project it's not hard to see why this is pretty damn bad but hey man kudos for at least trying to innovate and bring some kind of gameplay element to save this game it's just a damn shame that it didn't work out that's pretty much all I have to say about the on foot sections in this game but if you want to see me play through all of them as well as just my first hour of Impressions on this I'll have that up for channel members oh I just I like the the sign to the ghetto this is a huge Mall outside of split screen multiplayer I think I've exercised pretty much all of the content on offer here in this build of the the game as to what engine this game is actually running on it's still anyone's guess I noticed if I went into the multiplayer menu or I tried to connect to the internet in some way a Twisted Metal head-on menu would pop up so maybe it's running on the head-on engine but it also kind of feels like Twisted Metal black so I'm not sure dude it's crazy to take a look at what could have been and I'm just thankful that a playable build of this game actually exists that we can jump into with all of this information we have and this build now readily available with everyone it really just leaves us with one question why did this game get cancelled and with all the information that I've been able to research and experience for myself through the build of this game I feel that it was just because this game was too ambitious for what it was twisted metal was existing in an era where car combat as a genre was on the decline when I spoke to David Goodrich in my interview with him on Vigilante 8 that was a point that came up in discussion a reason that we didn't see a vigilante 83 was simply because there wasn't really interest for Activision in the executives higher up at Sony most likely just said why are we going to keep funding this but on the same token I would ask the question why would you not finish it at this point in development all of this time all of this energy all of these assets just ended up going to the scrap bin how much did it cost to get to this stage in development and how much would it have cost to just get this thing out the door to me it just feels like a total waste of resources to not have this game see the light of day well I guess at least we did in some aspect I think the only person that would know the true reason is to why this was officially canceled would be the director Scott Campbell himself unfortunately judging by the fact that he hasn't done any interviews past the Twisted Metal reboot it doesn't seem he has any interest in discussing this topic I'd love to be wrong and see him or even more developers come forward than the few that did put in their input that you can find over on the twist of metal Weeki but as it sits I think this final build of the game is the best guess we have as to why any of this turned out the way it did if you're interested in this game at all and you have a PC I highly encourage you to check it out I'll leave the video with the build of this game in the description so you can look into it yourself if you want to see more car combat videos check out the vigilan 8 and twist Metal Small Bra videos I did with David Goodrich those are really cool and if you want to hear my opinions on the Twisted Metal reboot I did a video on that a few years back as well so you can check that out otherwise I think that's it for Twist of metal for now hopefully you guys enjoyed the video let me know what you think in the comments and hopefully I'll see you in the next one it's been Josh AKA t later [Music]

Channel: Sometimesidrinktea

Views: 261

Keywords: twisted metal 2, twisted metal ps3, twisted metal 3, Twisted metal harbor city, twisted metal beta gameplay, twisted metal alpha gameplay, twisted metal lost media, twisted metal build found, twisted metal alpha build found, twisted metal harbor city beta, harbor city beta gameplay, harbor city alpha gameplay, twisted metal black 2, twisted metal black lost, lost twisted metal black sequel, twisted metal remake, twisted metal roadkill, twisted metal 2 playthrough roadkill

Id: elOkz_O5GGw

Length: 22min 8sec (1328 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2024