Twisted Metal Designer Talks About Party Mode, Split-Screen and More

David Jaffe, the lead designer on the upcoming Twisted Metal combat racing game, has highlighted some of the combat racing game's features. He talked about the Party system, the splitscreen co-op mode, as well as the presence of human adversaries in some levels.

Twisted Metal is the first big PlayStation 3 exclusive release of the year, breathing fresh life into the long running combat racing franchise, courtesy of David Jaffe and developer Eat Sleep Play.

Now, right after the release of the multiplayer demo, which we tried out yesterday, Jaffe went to the PlayStation blog and elaborated on some of the things that were included in the final version of the game.

The designer mentioned the Party system, which is going to allow people to easily jump into ranked and unranked matches with their friends, no matter their location.

“The new Twisted Metal supports Party and Clan systems allowing players to easily jump into ranked and unranked matches together,” Jaffe said.

“The party system was key, not just because it’s a staple for online games, but because we heard from so many players who came up playing this game with friends (be it as little kids, or college students) and now their crew have scattered across the globe and they were asking us for a fast, easy way to jump into games with friends so they could relive some of those fun memories (and ideally make a lot more new ones)!”

Jaffe, who also masterminded the first God of War game, also talked about Twisted Metal’s split-screen capability, which supports up to four players at the same time.

“Split screen local co-op has been a staple of the series since TM2 and it’s back and better than ever. The campaign that you and a buddy can go through together is more varied than any other TM campaign we’ve done. And the other split screen modes - for 2 to 4 players on the same TV- allow for free for all and team games with lots of host options for players so they can tweak and adjust the game so it always says fresh. In 2 player split the players have 30+ levels to choose from. In 3 and 4 player split, players can choose from 10 battlegrounds.”

Last but not least, the Eat Sleep Play designer also talked about human enemies in the game. He went on to say that, once you killed an opponent’s car, the driver and gunner run around while on fire. If the player gets to drive over the gunner, he receives a random weapon drop. If he targets the driver, extra health is delivered.

As you can see, there are plenty of impressive features in the full version of Twisted Metal, which is set to reach store shelves on February 14, in North America, and February 17, in Europe, only for the PS3.