Circuit Jerk

I can understand why game companies think reboots are a good idea. They create brand recognition, a certain inert loyalty, an enduring legacy. These games are the good children who promised long ago to return and protect their abusive, neglectful parents.

I can’t understand why people who buy games ask for reboots. What’s the point? If you still have the old game, why don’t you go play that? If you’re looking for something that approximates the spirit of that game, seek out the creative minds behind it and follow where they lead you.

This is not always easy advice to follow. I was a little too excited about the Alien versus Predator reboot, and look where that got me. And I don’t care what the reviews say, I will be there day and date for Deus Ex 3 if it ever comes out, even if that means I buy it shrink wrapped with a bowling game and Harvest Moon Again: Wait, Is Farming Supposed to Be Fun?

But it’s advice that should be superlatively easy to follow in the most hallowed cases. Games like Rev, Goldeneye, Sonic, Star Fox, Kid Icarus (to some extent) and yes, Deus Ex were built to play very well within very specific technical and ecological expectations. What those games did was bend expectations without breaking to offer ridiculous experiences that would have seemed just out of reach for the time. If you were to play Star Fox again as a Spartan on-rails shooter, you would probably ask yourself what the point was in the first place. You shouldn’t of course, because the point was exactly that an on-rails shooter that looked like that was ABSURD for the time, and your damn face melted off.

But this brings me to my sheer bafflement at any sort of revisit to the Twisted Metal universe. There is perhaps no more blatant example of a product built for its time than that. “And what can be done with the driving?” the next generation asked eagerly in 1995. Why, we can add shooting to it!

On its face, it was a simple, revelatory conceit. Now, what was once austere seems childish. What was unpretentious seems gauche. I can think of a million other things I would want to do rather than playing a game that’s sort of like deathmatch but in which turning around means slamming on the e-brake. It’s a game wherea  psychotic clown is not only menacing, but totally rad, bro, and maybe even icon fergodsake.

Maybe this is just what Sony needs after a year where the most important titles were Heavy Rain and The Last Guardian — games that don’t announce their lineage in their titles, games that wear the air of importance and have the very literal sound of ground breaking underneath them. Maybe a big, stupid arena shooter with cars is just what we all need.

There is no concrete proof that what David Jaffe is making is a Twisted Metal game. He may be making something far more sinister. Or he may be making something even more facile than God of War or Twisted Metal. That he is back at all is a good thing. But, please, let this not be Twisted Metal.