Twisted Metal: Fighting Edition

Twisted Metal: Fighting Edition is a 2022 fighting video game developed by NetherRealm Studios and Mad Ninja Studios and published by WarnerBros. Interactive Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Samsung Zeo, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One. It is the sequel to 2001's installment, Twisted Metal Black, taking place 10 years later after the events of its predecessor.

Unlike previous Twisted Metal games, Twisted Metal: Fighting Edition 's gameplay consists of two players, or one player and the CPU, fighting against each other with their selected character, using a large, varied array of character-specific attacks. The game contains several modes, such as a story mode, which takes place twenty-five years after the previous game, numerous online modes, and the 'Drive', a mode played in a first person perspective, where players explore the areas unlocking a variety of in-game items while driving ther vehicles.

The console versions of Twisted Metal Fighting Edition received critical acclaim upon release. Most praise was directed at the game's controls, overall gameplay, graphics, story, and characters. Taking a car combat game and turning it into a one-on-one fighting game was also praised. Selling more than 10 million copies, the game was the fastest-selling game in the franchise and the ninth best-selling retail game of 2022 in United States. Twisted Metal: Fighting Edition is the second best-selling game in the franchise.

Gameplay
Twisted Metal: Fighting Edition is a fighting game in which two characters fight against each other using a variety of attacks, including special moves, and gruesome finishing moves. It was highly based upon the Mortal Kombat series, both in its mechanics and the gore and violence graphic levels displayed in the matches.

Twisted Metal: Fighting Edition's director Ed Boon has been a well-known name in the gaming industry ever since Mortal Kombat became a cultural phenomenon in the early ‘90s. Despite having almost two decades of experience in the genre, Twisted Metal is his first fighting game that exists entirely outside of the Mortal Kombat universe, after the Injustice series.

"Understandably, a lot of people ask, 'are you going to have fatalities? Are you going to do this?', he says in a recent interview. "Yes, it has fatalities and finishing moves, but the curiosity is specifically because we are NetherRealm Studios, we did Mortal Kombat, we have done a bunch of Mortal Kombats, and I think there is an assumption that this is part of every game that we do. But the real message is that this is brand new, that this game has its own identity and we don’t feel like we have to follow any kind of previous template of Mortal Kombat."

The game allows two players to face each other (either locally or online), or a single player to play against the CPU. The energy meter, similarly to the Mortal Kombat series, allows players to perform techniques such as "X-Ray" special moves. Similarly to NetherRealm Studios' previous title, Injustice: Gods Among Us, fighters are able to interact with the environment, using parts of the scenery to reposition themselves or using available objects as weapons. There is also the Energy Meter, which is divided in three sections, and provides access to enhanced special moves (costing one section), breaking combos (costing two sections) and performing X-ray moves (costing all three sections of the bar). Additionally, a Stamina Meter has been added under the health bar, which consists of two sections, and is consumed whenever the player runs, performs a back dash, a combo breaker, a stage interaction, or certain special techniques, such as cancelling Sweet Tooth's stomps.

In addition to the newly added Fatalities, Twisted Metal: Fighting Edition features Brutality finishing moves. They take the form of enhanced versions of certain moves that are triggered when said move is used as the final blow to win the final round in a fight, provided certain conditions are met. In addition, the game features stage Fatalities and Brutalities, which are triggered when certain environment interactions are used to finish the opponent.

For local single-player, the game offers Arcade mode, with an ending to all playable characters being showed after completing the game; also locally, player vs. player mode is available. Playing online, the play modes include 1 vs. 1 (ranked or random), King of the Hill and Survivor.

Plot
Twisted Metal: Fighting Edition is set 10 years after the events of Twisted Metal Black, in the town of Midtown, a very corrupt city that is both heavily polluted and crime-ridden. All the stories focus on the perspective of each of the characters. Most of the characters in the games are being held in Blackfield Asylum, a mental institution.

They meet the man named Calypso once again, whom people believe to have ability to grant anyone's wishes. However, the characters will have to win Calypso's Twisted Metal fighting and brutal death-match tournament to make their wishes.

Characters

 * Needles Kane: The first time Needles murdered his original victim, he didn't even flinch. He did it as skillfully as a trained surgeon and without regrets. After the first one, it was obvious that he had found his calling in life. He quickly developed an insatiable thirst for blood. Sometimes his victims were meticulously hunted down, but most were randomly chosen and just unlucky to have crossed his path. His brother is trying to kill him before the deranged clown can kill another innocent.
 * Dollface: Choosing to stay locked in her dollmask, this once young girl has become a woman. While her body and skull grow bigger, the mask does not yield. The crushing pressure on her brain has begun to take its toll. She doesn't believe in hurting the weak or in senseless killing, and believes being in the asylum would keep her from hurting anyone or anything, but she is considered a vengeful-vigilante when it comes to discrimination/abuse.
 * Mr. Grimm: Grimm's taste for human flesh has not abated. Grimm's sanity has not returned. He now spends his nights racing through the streets of Midtown, searching for his next meal while speaking to the rotting skull of his dead friend that he wears as a helmet. In recent years he has begun to think he may actually be the Grim Reaper.
 * Raven: Her friends called her "Raven" because of her fixation with the starkly black bird and also the black leather dress and dark makeup she wears. After setting the score with the men that killed her bestfriend, she has become a hero to the people of Midtown; an urban legend who protects the innocent from the freaks and killers who roam the streets of this cursed city. There is so much to do, so much to clean. Soon she'll have the chance to set things right...
 * Preacher: This rejected evangelist tried to take his own life to silence the voices in his head, with no success. Rejected by Heaven and Hell, Jebidiah now roams the Earth searching for those who wronged him, keeping with persecutory and grandiose delusions. Locals say if you see him, you will be dead from a car accident within a year.
 * No-Face: No Face is obsessed with rebuilding his mutilated mug. Tracking and killing those he deems evil, he steals the eyes and tongues of his victims. He struggles to create a new face for himself, one that will allow him to smile at his baby daughter without making her burst into tears. After all this years, still no luck.
 * Bloody Mary: Believing love is naive and impossible, Mary has lost all hold on reality and has suicidal tendencies. She is not sure what she wants anymore. She simply does what comes naturally to her: killing. Secretly, she hopes to be killed in the contest, and have her suffering come to an end.
 * Mortimer: A keeper of lost souls, Mortimer helps those who met an untimely death get revenge on their killers. But this year, he's carrying a very strange cargo that will not rest until Calypso has been taken out.
 * Lance Wilder: He cruises in the hottest car, wears the coolest clothes and sports the slickest shades. Lance is so obsessed with being famous that he's entered the Twisted Metal tournament to make a name for himself.
 * Axel: Axel is still aching over the murder of his wife. Feeling her death was his fault and failing to get revenge, he chooses to inflicts wounds to himself, creating new ways to feel tremendous pain. One day he hopes he will have done his penance and the spirit of his wife will forgive him.
 * John Doe: An undercover cop trying to bring down the Twisted Metal contest. The original John Doe was killed by Calypso at the end of Twisted Metal: Black. Rumor is, Midtown P.D. has a whole team of John Does, all with the same mission: take down Calypso.
 * Charlie Kane: The brother of Needles Kane trained all these years with a clear goal. He has decided to track and kill his brother and then himself. Doing so will destroy the family bloodline, putting an end to generations of murderers and psychopaths.
 * Krista Sparks: She will stop at nothing to find her father whom she believed dead for the last years. When they meet face to face, sparks will fly, and she will claim the place she owns by his side.
 * Billy Ray Stillwell: Billy Ray embarked on his life's ambition: to outdo Sweet Tooth as midtown's most notorious serial killer. It's been 10 years since that vow, and he has yet to kill another soul. Until tonight...
 * Damien Coles: He gives pyromaniacs everywhere a bad name. As a child, he torched his four-story house, the local middle school and the county fire station. This untreated deviant has also mastered the fine art of spontaneous combustion (Rumor has it he has lighter fluid coursing through his veins).
 * Bruce Cochrane: Bruce has fought all his life for the dignity of his friends and family. But no matter how hard he fights, he can never win. This year he's asking for revenge on all those who have kept him down. But what he gets is Hell on earth.
 * Black: His face is completely covered (except for his eyes) by a thief mask with two zippers (looking almost like a gimp mask), one going along the middle of the top of his head and the other across his mouth. No one knows where Black comes from, but he has only one goal: to kill Calypso.