For the last thirty years, car combat games have gone from being a massive part of the industry to being an almost-forgotten part of its history. Personally, the genre was one that made my mind wander from the first moment I saw Twisted Metal screenshots in magazines and it felt like an RC car-style action game with a realistic setting that wisely blended third-person and first-person perspectives during a time when that simply wasn’t done. The original Twisted Metal was a sign of things to come for how the industry would embrace action and in thirteen years since the last entry, the car combat genre has gone into hibernation.
Dash and Bash
During the PS1 era, the genre saw its peak in terms of sheer variety with Vigilante 8 from Luxoflux and Twisted Metal’s former devs handling Rogue Trip while Twisted Metal was the marketplace leader and the PS2 era saw car combat gain technology to enhance the scope of the game with transforming worlds in Twisted Metal: Black, while Head-On brought about a greater level of destruction than had been seen before and basically acted as a retooling of what is viewed by many as the genre’s greatest entry in Twisted Metal 2.
Member Twisted Metal 2?
Vehicular Mayhem
We have seen almost nothing try to fill the void left by Twisted Metal even as the Peacock series brings a new generation of people aware of the IP and FUMES aims to blend a bit of its combat with a more modern control scheme like the final entry struggled with and some of what the first game provided with a blend of first and third-person viewpoint. FUMES offers car combat in a post-apocalyptic world that evokes a bit of Mad Max, as games like Outlander have done in decades past.FUMESbrings about a unique blend of controls because you have LT used to accelerate and LB reverses, which feels little backwards, but makes sense with RT being your machine gun and RB being your secondary weapon.
Outback Blast
The controls feel natural and aiming with the right stick works nicely, which is a more pleasant-feeling control setup than any of the half-dozen Twisted Metal on the PS3 offered up that never felt right in the hand. That’s despite controllers getting better, the series itself having seveteen years to iterate and yet the final entry wound up controlling worse than any entry before it in a strange twist of fate. FUMES offers up a lot of vehicular action and feels like a return to form for the genre.
you may pick up FUMES now viaSteamfor a discounted price taking it down 10% to $13.49 until August 11. It’s well-worth that price if you’re a fan of the genre and enjoy the free demo a lot. It’s nice to see a demo available for a game like this since it can very much be a game that sinks or swims based on its execution and it’s got a lot of action for not a lot of cash.
