PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a home video game console, developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the successor to the original PlayStation console and is the second iteration in the PlayStation lineup of consoles, it was released in 2000 and competed with Sega's Dreamcast, Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox in the sixth generation of video game consoles. Announced in 1999, the PlayStation 2 offered backwards compatibility for its predecessor's DualShock controller, as well as for its games; the PlayStation 2 is the best-selling video game console of all time, selling over 155 million units, with 150 million confirmed by Sony in 2011. More than 3,874 game titles have been released for the PS2 since launch, more than 1.5 billion copies have been sold. Sony manufactured several smaller, lighter revisions of the console known as Slimline models in 2004. In 2006, Sony announced and launched its successor, the PlayStation 3. With the release of its successor, the PlayStation 2 remained popular well into the seventh generation and continued to be produced until January 4, 2013, when Sony announced that the PlayStation 2 had been discontinued after 12 years of production – one of the longest runs for a video game console.
Despite the announcement, new games for the console continued to be produced until the end of 2013, including Final Fantasy XI: Seekers of Adoulin for Japan, FIFA 13 for North America, Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 for Europe. Repair services for the system in Japan ended on September 7, 2018. Though Sony has kept details of the PlayStation 2's development secret, work on the console began around the time that the original PlayStation was released. Insiders stated that it was developed in the U. S. West Coast by former members of Argonaut Software. By 1997 word had leaked to the press that the console would have backwards compatibility with the original PlayStation, a built-in DVD player, Internet connectivity. Sony announced the PlayStation 2 on March 1, 1999; the video game console was positioned as a competitor to Sega's Dreamcast, the first sixth-generation console to be released, although the main rivals of the PS2 were Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox. The Dreamcast itself launched successfully in North America that year, selling over 500,000 units within two weeks.
Soon after the Dreamcast's North American launch, Sony unveiled the PlayStation 2 at the Tokyo Game Show on September 20, 1999. Sony showed playable demos of upcoming PlayStation 2 games including Gran Turismo 2000 and Tekken Tag Tournament – which showed the console's graphic abilities and power; the PS2 was launched in March 2000 in Japan, October in North America, November in Europe. Sales of the console and accessories pulled in $250 million on the first day, beating the $97 million made on the first day of the Dreamcast. Directly after its release, it was difficult to find PS2 units on retailer shelves due to manufacturing delays. Another option was purchasing the console online through auction websites such as eBay, where people paid over a thousand dollars for the console; the PS2 sold well on the basis of the strength of the PlayStation brand and the console's backward compatibility, selling over 980,000 units in Japan by March 5, 2000, one day after launch. This allowed the PS2 to tap the large install base established by the PlayStation – another major selling point over the competition.
Sony added new development kits for game developers and more PS2 units for consumers. The PS2's built-in functionality expanded its audience beyond the gamer, as its debut pricing was the same or less than a standalone DVD player; this made the console a low cost entry into the home theater market. The success of the PS2 at the end of 2000 caused Sega problems both financially and competitively, Sega announced the discontinuation of the Dreamcast in March 2001, just 18 months after its successful launch; the PS2 remained as the only active sixth generation console for over 6 months, before it would face competition from newer rivals. Many analysts predicted a close three-way matchup among the three consoles. While the PlayStation 2 theoretically had the weakest specification of the three, it had a head start due to its installed base plus strong developer commitment, as well as a built-in DVD player. While the PlayStation 2's initial games lineup was considered mediocre, this changed during the 2001 holiday season with the release of several blockbuster games that maintained the PS2's sales momentum and held off its newer rivals.
Sony countered the Xbox by temporarily securing PlayStation 2 exclusives for anticipated games such as the Grand Theft Auto series and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Sony cut the price of the console in May 2002 from US$299 to $199 in North America, making it the same price as the GameCube and $100 less than the Xbox, it planned to cut the price in Japan around that time. It cut the price twice in Japan in 2003. In 2006, Sony cut the cost of the console in anticipation of the release of the PlayStation 3. Sony, unlike Sega with its Dreamcast placed little emphasis on online gaming during its first few years, although that changed upon the launch of the online-capable Xbox. Coinciding with the release of Xbox Live, Sony released the PlayStation Network Adapter in late 2002, with several online first–party titles released alongside it, such as SOCOM: U. S. Navy SEALs to demon
Twisted Metal (1995 video game)
Twisted Metal is a vehicular combat video game developed by SingleTrac, produced by Sony Interactive Studios America and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. The game was released in North America on November 5, 1995, in Europe on January 13, 1996 and in Japan on November 15, 1996; the North American version was rereleased for the Sony Greatest Hits line-up on March 3, 1997. It is the first installment in the Twisted Metal series; the game's plot is centered on the titular competition in which various drivers in modified vehicles must destroy the other vehicles in an attempt to be the last one alive. The winner meets the organizer of the competition, a mysterious man named Calypso, who will grant the winner a single wish, regardless of price, size or reality. Twisted Metal is a vehicular combat game in which the player takes control of one of twelve unique vehicles. While in control of a vehicle, the player can accelerate, brake, activate the turbo, turn toggle between and activate weapons using the game controller's d-pad and buttons.
The game can be played in either the Duel Mode. In the one-player mode, the player must progress through six combat arenas of progressively increasing size and featuring progressively more opponents. To clear a level, the player must destroy all of the enemy vehicles in that level; the game lasts until all of the player's lives have expired or until all six levels have been cleared. The player begins the game with three lives, indicated by the stacked green boxes on the bottom right corner of the screen; the length of each of the player's lives is tied to their health bar, which decreases whenever the player's vehicle is damaged by enemy attacks. The player can replenish a portion of their vehicle's health bar by driving through blue ramps called "Health Stations" scattered throughout the environments; the difficulty level the game is set on determines how much of the vehicle's health is replenished and how fast the stations recharge once the player has used them. Each time the health bar is depleted, the player loses a life.
If the last life is lost, the game ends. Weapons play a key role in winning the game. All vehicles come with a pair of mounted machine guns, they have unlimited ammunition. However, the guns can overheat if used for too long at a time, preluded by the overheat light on the bottom-right corner of the screen blinking red; when the light becomes red, the machine guns will cease to function and the player will have to allow the guns to cool off before they can be used again. Additional weapons scattered throughout the environments can be picked up and utilized if the player drives through them; these weapons include a variety of land mines, tire spikes and oil slicks. All vehicles can carry up to 30 weapons; the game takes place in the streets of Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, 2005. The contest featured in the game is the tenth annual running of the competition thus far; the first level, the "Arena", is an underground arena. The second level, "Warehouse District Warfare", takes place in the warehouse district of downtown Los Angeles.
The third level, "Freeway Free for All", takes place on the freeways of Los Angeles. The fourth level, "River Park Rumble", takes place in Beverly Hills; the fifth and largest of the six levels, "Cyburbia", takes place in the suburbs. The sixth and final level, "Rooftop Combat", takes place on the rooftops of Los Angeles' tallest skyscrapers. After defeating all the opponents, the player must face the final boss Minion; the game is won. Once a year the legendary Calypso, a man who dwells beneath the streets of Los Angeles, holds the "Twisted Metal" competition; the contest takes place all around the Los Angeles area and calls upon drivers in various different vehicles to battle to the death. The contestants are selected and contacted by Calypso via an e-mail message that reads "WILL YOU DRIVE?" in red letters. The one driver still alive at the end of the night is granted a single wish, with no limits on price, size or, according to some reality. Twisted Metal was produced by Sony Interactive Studios America.
David Jaffe, a tester and designer for Sony Imagesoft was appointed to head the design of a game for its first home console, the PlayStation. Jaffe had difficulty establishing positive relationships among industry developers due to his hubris. Given one final chance, Jaffe joined fellow designer Mike Giam and their boss, Sony Santa Monica's Alan Becker, for a meeting with the Evans & Sutherland company in Salt Lake City. Evans & Sutherland, a commercial and military computer simulation firm, had been contracted by Sony to create a 3D game for the new system; the development team members had difficulty coming up with ideas to implement the Evans & Sutherland technology. Upon returning from the meeting, the brainstorming lead designers were inspired while being stuck in a traffic jam on Interstate 405, when they jokingly fantasized about using guns and missiles on the other cars. Jaffe recalled, "We had these amazing visions of this Michael Bay or Michael Mann action movie going down the 405 freeway in LA, with car combat out of Mad Max and a potpourri of explosions."
When the vehicular combat idea was pitched to the Utah programmers, they modified it as a pizza delivery simulation. However, Sony demurred and the more violent concept won out. Members of Evans & Sutherland joined the game designers in forming SingleTrac in the spring of 1994. Given a deadline of less than 12 months, Single
Black comedy
Black comedy known as dark comedy or gallows humor, is a comic style that makes light of subject matter, considered taboo subjects that are considered serious or painful to discuss. Comedians use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues, thus provoking discomfort and serious thought as well as amusement in their audience. Popular themes of the genre include death and violence, disease, sexuality and barbarism. Black comedy differs from blue comedy which focuses more on crude topics such as nudity and bodily fluids. Although the two are interrelated, black comedy is different from straightforward obscenity in that it is more subtle and does not have the explicit intention of offending people. In obscene humor, much of the humorous element comes from shock and revulsion, while black comedy might include an element of irony, or fatalism. For example, an archetypal example of black comedy in the form of self-mutilation appears in the English novel Tristram Shandy. Tristram, five years old at the time, starts to urinate out of an open window for lack of a chamber pot.
The sash circumcises him. Literary critics have associated black comedy and black humor with authors as early as the ancient Greeks with Aristophanes. Whereas the term black comedy is a broad term covering humor relating to many serious subjects, gallows humor tends to be used more in relation to death, or situations that are reminiscent of dying. Black humor can be related to the grotesque genre; the term black humor was coined by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while interpreting the writings of Jonathan Swift. Breton's preference was to identify some of Swift's writings as a subgenre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism relying on topics such as death. Breton coined the term for his book Anthology of Black Humor, in which he credited Jonathan Swift as the originator of black humor and gallows humor. In his book, Breton included excerpts from 45 other writers, including both examples in which the wit arises from a victim with which the audience empathizes, as is more typical in the tradition of gallows humor, examples in which the comedy is used to mock the victim.
In the last cases, the victim's suffering is trivialized, which leads to sympathizing with the victimizer, as analogously found in the social commentary and social criticism of the writings of Sade. Among the first American writers who employed black comedy in their works were Nathanael West and Vladimir Nabokov, although at the time the genre was not known in the US; the concept of black humor first came to nationwide attention after the publication of a 1965 mass-market paperback titled Black Humor, of which the editor was Bruce Jay Friedman. The paperback was one of the first American anthologies devoted to the concept of black humor as a literary genre. With the paperback, Friedman labeled as "black humorists" a variety of authors, such as J. P. Donleavy, Edward Albee, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Vladimir Nabokov, Bruce Jay Friedman himself, Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Among the writers labeled as black humorists by journalists and literary critics are today Roald Dahl, Kurt Vonnegut, Warren Zevon, Christopher Durang, Philip Roth.
The motive for applying the label black humorist to all the writers cited above is that they have written novels, stories and songs in which profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. Comedians, like Lenny Bruce, that since the late 1950s have been labeled for using "sick comedy" by mainstream journalists, have been labeled with "black comedy". Sigmund Freud in his 1927 essay Humour puts forth the following theory of black comedy: "The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer, it insists. Some other sociologists elaborated this concept further. At the same time, Paul Lewis warns that this "relieving" aspect of gallows jokes depends on the context of the joke: whether the joke is being told by the threatened person themselves or by someone else. Black comedy has the social effect of strengthening the morale of the oppressed and undermines the morale of the oppressors. According to Wylie Sypher, "to be able to laugh at evil and error means we have surmounted them."Black comedy is a natural human instinct and examples of it can be found in stories from antiquity.
Its use was widespread from where it was imported to the United States. It is rendered with the German expression Galgenhumor; the concept of gallows humor is comparable to the French expression rire jaune, which has a Germanic equivalent in the Belgian Dutch expression groen lachen. Italian comedian Daniele Luttazzi discussed gallows humour focusing on the particular type of laughter that it arouses, said that grotesque satire, as opposed to ironic satire, is the one that most
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC is a multinational video game and digital entertainment company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the central hub for the American businesses under the Japanese conglomerate Sony Corporation. The company was founded in Tokyo and established on November 16, 1993, as Sony Computer Entertainment, to handle Sony's venture into video game development through its PlayStation brand. Since the successful launch of the original PlayStation console in 1994, the company has been developing the PlayStation lineup of home video game consoles and accessories. Expanding into North America and other countries, the company became Sony's main resource for research and development in video games and interactive entertainment. In April 2016, SCE and Sony Network Entertainment International was restructured and reorganized into Sony Interactive Entertainment, carrying over the operations and primary objectives from both companies; the same year, SIE moved its headquarters from Tokyo to California.
Sony Interactive Entertainment handles the research and development and sales of both hardware and software for the PlayStation video game systems. SIE is a developer and publisher of video game titles, operates several subsidiaries in Sony's largest markets: North America and Asia. By August 2018, the company had sold more than 525 million PlayStation consoles worldwide. Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. was jointly established by Sony and its subsidiary Sony Music Entertainment Japan in 1993 to handle the company's ventures into the video game industry. The original PlayStation console was released on December 1994, in Japan; the company's North American operations, Sony Computer Entertainment of America, were established in May 1995 as a division of Sony Electronic Publishing. Located in Foster City, the North American office was headed by Steve Race. In the months prior to the release of the PlayStation in Western markets, the operations were restructured: All video game marketing from Sony Imagesoft was folded into SCEA in July 1995, with most affected employees transferred from Santa Monica to Foster City.
On August 7, 1995, Race unexpectedly resigned and was named CEO of Spectrum HoloByte three days later. He was replaced by Sony Electronics veteran Martin Homlish; this proved to be the beginning of a run of exceptional managerial turnover, with SCEA going through four presidents in a single year. The PS console was released in the United States on September 9, 1995; as part of a worldwide restructuring at the beginning of 1997, SCEA and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe were both re-established as wholly owned subsidiaries of SCEI. The launch of the second PS console, the PlayStation 2 was released in Japan on March 4, 2000, the U. S. on October 26, 2000. On July 1, 2002, chairman of SCEI, Shigeo Maruyama, was replaced by Tamotsu Iba as chairman. Jack Tretton and Phil Harrison were promoted to senior vice presidents of SCE; the PlayStation Portable was SCEI's first foray into the small handheld console market. Its development was first announced during SCE's E3 conference in 2003, it was unveiled during their E3 conference on May 11, 2004.
The system was released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, in Europe and Australia on September 1, 2005. On September 14, 2005, SCEI formed Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, a single internal entity to oversee all wholly owned development studios within SCEI, it became responsible for the creative and strategic direction of development and production of all computer entertainment software by all SCEI-owned studios—all software is produced for the PS family of consoles. Shuhei Yoshida was named as President of SCE WWS on May 16, 2008, replacing Kazuo Hirai, serving interim after Harrison left the company in early 2008. On December 8, 2005, video game developer Guerrilla Games, developers of the Killzone series, was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment as part of its SCE WWS. On January 24, 2006, video game developer Zipper Interactive, developers of the Socom series, was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment as part of its SCE WWS. In March 2006, Sony announced the online network for its forthcoming PlayStation 3 system at the 2006 PlayStation Business Briefing meeting in Tokyo, tentatively named "PlayStation Network Platform" and called just PlayStation Network.
Sony stated that the service would always be connected and include multiplayer support. The launch date for the PS3 was announced by Hirai at the pre-Electronic Entertainment Expo conference held at the Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles, California, on May 8, 2006; the PS3 was released in Japan on November 11, 2006, the U. S. date was November 17, 2006. The PSN was launched in November 2006. On November 30, 2006, president of SCEI, Ken Kutaragi, was appointed as chairman of SCEI, while Hirai president of SCEA, was promoted to president of SCEI. On April 26, 2007, Ken Kutaragi resigned from his position as chairman of SCEI and group CEO, passing on his duties to the appointed president of SCE, Hirai. On September 20, 2007, video game developers Evolution Studios and Bigbig Studios, creators of the MotorStorm series, were acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment as part of its SCE WWS. On April 15, 2009, David Reeves, president and CEO of SCE Europe, announced his forthcoming resignation from his post.
He had joined the company in 1995 and was appointed as chairman of SCEE in 2003, president in 2005. His role of president and CEO of SCEE would be taken over by Andrew House, who joined Sony Corporation in 1990; the PSP Go was released on October 1
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a group of several graphical operating system families, all of which are developed and sold by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. Active Windows families include Windows Embedded. Defunct Windows families include Windows Mobile and Windows Phone. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces. Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an unfair encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa and Macintosh. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system. However, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones.
In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25 %. This comparison however may not be relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. Still, numbers for server use of Windows show one third market share, similar to that for end user use; as of October 2018, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets and embedded devices is Windows 10. The most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2019. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One video game console. Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks, each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry; as of 2014, the following Windows families are being developed: Windows NT: Started as a family of operating systems with Windows NT 3.1, an operating system for server computers and workstations. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released at the same time and share the same kernel: Windows: The operating system for mainstream personal computers and smartphones.
The latest version is Windows 10. The main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server: The operating system for server computers; the latest version is Windows Server 2019. Unlike its client sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme; the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE: A lightweight version of its Windows sibling, meant to operate as a live operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers, recovery or troubleshooting purposes; the latest version is Windows PE 10. Windows IoT: Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device, too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. However, Windows CE was renamed Windows Embedded Compact and was folded under Windows Compact trademark which consists of Windows Embedded Industry, Windows Embedded Professional, Windows Embedded Standard, Windows Embedded Handheld and Windows Embedded Automotive.
The following Windows families are no longer being developed: Windows 9x: An operating system that targeted consumers market. Discontinued because of suboptimal performance. Microsoft now caters to the consumer market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile: The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile phone operating system; the first version was called Pocket PC 2000. The last version is Windows Mobile 6.5. Windows Phone: An operating system sold only to manufacturers of smartphones; the first version was Windows Phone 7, followed by Windows Phone 8, the last version Windows Phone 8.1. It was succeeded by Windows 10 Mobile; the term Windows collectively describes any or all of several generations of Microsoft operating system products. These products are categorized as follows: The history of Windows dates back to 1981, when Microsoft started work on a program called "Interface Manager", it was announced in November 1983 under the name "Windows", but Windows 1.0 was not released until November 1985.
Windows 1.0 was to achieved little popularity. Windows 1.0 is not a complete operating system. The shell of Windows 1.0 is a program known as the MS-DOS Executive. Components included Calculator, Cardfile, Clipboard viewer, Control Panel, Paint, Reversi and Write. Windows 1.0 does not allow overlapping windows. Instead all windows are tiled. Only modal dialog boxes may appear over other windows. Microsoft sold as included Windows Development libraries with the C development environment, which included numerous windows samples. Windows 2.0 was released in December 1987, was more popular than its predecessor. It features several improvements to the user memory management. Windows 2.03 changed the OS from tiled windows to overlapping windows. The result of this change led to Apple Computer filing a suit against Microsoft alleging infringement on Apple's copyrights. Windows 2.0
Twisted Metal III
Twisted Metal III is a vehicular combat video game developed and published by 989 Studios for the PlayStation. The game was released in North America on October 31, 1998 and was re-released for the Sony Greatest Hits line-up in 1999, it is the first installment, not released in the PAL regions. Twisted Metal III is the third installment in the Twisted Metal series and the first installment to be developed by 989 Studios; the game's plot is centered on the titular competition in which various drivers in modified vehicles must destroy the other vehicles in an attempt to be the last one alive. The winner meets the organizer of the competition, a mysterious man named Calypso, who will grant the winner a single wish, regardless of price, size or reality. Twisted Metal III received mixed reviews from critics, who criticized the game's level design and physics engine but commented positively on the multiplayer gameplay and soundtrack by Rob Zombie and Pitchshifter. However, the game was commercially successful, selling 1.14 million copies in the United States alone.
Twisted Metal III is a vehicular combat game in which the player takes control of one of twelve unique vehicles. While in control of a vehicle, the player can accelerate, brake, activate the turbo, turn toggle between and activate weapons using the game controller's d-pad, analog sticks and buttons; the game can be played in either the one-player "Tournament" mode or the multi-player "Deathmatch" mode. The Tournament mode consists of an eight-level game; the goal of each level is to destroy all of the opponent vehicles. The enemy vehicles are automatically chosen and their skill increases with each level, passed; the Tournament continues until all of the player's lives have expired or all levels have been completed. The player has the option to play with a computer-assisted ally to aid in destroying their opponents. However, the ending cinematics will not be viewable. If a computer-controlled ally is used, the player has the option to share their total number of lives with the ally; when either player loses a life, the collective number of lives decreases.
The Deathmatch mode is a one-to-four-player game in which the player fights head-to-head with other players, though computer-controlled enemy cars can be incorporated. The Deathmatch ends when one player destroys all other player vehicles, after which the match resets for another battle. Depending on the level selected, the player may select up to seven enemy cars to compete in the match; the player begins the Tournament mode of the game with three lives. The total number of lives remaining is indicated in the lower left-hand display with the player's health bar and turbo; the health bar indicates. The length of each of the player's lives is tied to their health bar, which decreases whenever the player's vehicle is damaged by enemy attacks; when the health meter depletes, the player loses a life. The player can gain additional health by picking up health icons scattered throughout the environment. If the last life is lost, the game ends prematurely. Weapons play a key role in winning the game. All vehicles come with a pair of mounted machine guns.
They have unlimited ammunition. Additional weapons scattered throughout the environments can be picked up and utilized if the player drives through them; these weapons include a variety of missiles, bombs and mortars. Each vehicle can execute three categories of attacks: "Special Weapon Attacks", "Advanced Attacks" and "Combo Attacks". Special Weapon Attacks are unique to each vehicle and are unlimited in stock, but need time to recharge if used repeatedly. Advanced Attacks allow the player to attack enemies when the player is out of weapons, but they can only be used if the Advanced Attack Energy Bar on the lower-right corner of the screen is charged. Most Advanced Attacks require four buttons sequences to initiate. Combo Attacks combine Advanced maneuvers with weapon pick-ups. Combo Attacks can be performed with a vehicle's special weapon. Due to the open-environment nature of Twisted Metal III, there are numerous possible combos and strategies to invent and discover. Twisted Metal 3 takes place in the year 2008, two years after Twisted Metal 2.
The interactive environments of Twisted Metal III allow the player to roam the battlefields with few restrictions. The first level takes place in Hollywood, devastated by the "Great Earthquake of 2007"; the second level, along with the Darkside boss fight, takes place in Washington, D. C. in front of the United States Capitol. The third level takes place in Area 51's Hangar 18, which houses a large spacecraft that can be accessed; the fourth level takes place in the North Pole near Santa Claus' workshop. The fifth level, along with the Minion boss fight, takes place in London, in which the clock tower that houses Big Ben can be destroyed; the sixth level takes place on the rooftops of Tōkyō Metropolis, while the seventh level takes place in Egypt near the Great Sphinx of Giza. The eighth and final level, along with the Primeval boss fight, takes place in Calypso's personal blimp, in which defeated opponents continuously regenerate until the player destroys a regenerating device hidden in the level.
Twisted Metal III received mixed reviews from critics, with an aggregate score of 48.97% on GameRankings. Kevin Dick of Game Revolution criticized the "uninspired" level design, "confusing" physics engine and "grainy" graphics, but commented positively on the various multiplayer options and soundtrack by Rob Zombie. Joe Fielder of GameSpot, while admitting the soundtrack by Rob Zombie and Pitchshifter was "fitting" criti
Twisted Metal: Head-On
Twisted Metal: Head-On is a vehicular combat video game developed by Incognito Entertainment and released by Sony Computer Entertainment on March 24, 2005 for the PlayStation Portable and February 5, 2008 for the PlayStation 2. Head-On was the sixth game released in the Twisted Metal series, the first game in the series to ship online-enabled. Head-On is a direct sequel to Twisted Metal 2, ignoring the events of Twisted Metal III and Twisted Metal 4. Akin to other games in the series, Head-On revolves around the same theme of a man named Calypso holding a vehicular combat tournament called "Twisted Metal" with the promise of granting the winner whatever they ask for. In 2006, Twisted Metal: Head-On was one of the first games in the PSP Greatest Hits line in the U. S. In 2007, it was announced by David Jaffe that Twisted Metal: Head-On was to be ported to PlayStation 2 and was released on February 5, 2008; the game was developed by Jaffe's newly formed studio Eat Sleep Play and was retitled Twisted Metal Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition.
It was never released outside of North America, only in NTSC format. It contains extra features and bonuses such as the live action end movies from Twisted Metal, a behind the scenes documentary, a concept art book. There is a code to download a Twisted Metal soundtrack; the game contained an answer to a question. After fans deciphered a message in the Dark Past documentary as reading "Twisted Metal is coming on psthree", Jaffe confirmed it himself; the PlayStation 2 port did not have online play. The full game is ported over from the PSP to PS2 with all the same modes from the PSP version. Story Mode Drivers choose their progress through a series of arenas. 2-player split-screen Challenge Mode Drivers choose their vehicle, arena, AI controlled enemies go off to battle. Endurance Mode Drivers take on an endless onslaught of AI controlled opponents until the driver's death. Has an exclusive level, Transylvania Castle. Combat takes place in a interactive and complex Romanian castle and its surroundings, with multiple features that could cause instant death.
Rather than compose two new songs for the added stage, Transylvania features themed remixes of the Dark Tooth/Tower Tooth music from the PSP version. To compensate, one basic, new track was created for the PS2 final battles: A moderately upbeat and generic tune that noticeably lacks the dramatic nature of the original tunes. Players can run around as Needles Kane and explore a new level on foot and learn factoids about the Twisted Metal franchise straight from the developers; this is a bonus feature and not to be confused as a real game. Sweet Tour was going to be a new adventure mode to be included into Twisted Metal: Black 2 before that game was canceled, it was going to feature Preacher as another character that could be played with. The player would accept missions from different characters, it contains two levels: Impound Lot. The asylum is where Sweet Tooth has been locked up in a cage. However, he escapes; the second level, the impound lot, is the place where it has many traps. The traps were not finished at the time and players could walk through them without getting hurt.
Head-On includes minigames that players can access via teleporters, which range in location from the Eiffel Tower to the Great Pyramids. These are small games where players must collect power ups while circumventing obstacles that require a variety of tactics, including jumping over chasms, destroying helicopters using napalm bombs; the catch is that the games are timed, forcing the player to think on their feet, as it were, while maintaining a balance of caution and risk. Players reaching the end of the mini-game prior to the timer's ending keep all their powerups. Several characters can only be unlocked by completing the minigames on certain levels; the game was met with positive to average reviews upon release. GameRankings and Metacritic gave it a score of 78.84% and 79 out of 100 for the PSP version, 73.16% and 73 out of 100 for the PlayStation 2 version. Twisted Metal: Head-On at MobyGames Twisted Metal: Head-On - Extra Twisted Edition at MobyGames Official website Twisted Metal: Head-On at playstation.com
