Great online, not so good offline

Author's Rating:

Pros: online play, good graphix, fun blowing stuff up!

Cons: controls take some time, d-pad combos can get complicated, short singleplayer, no voice chat

The Bottom Line: 
Twisted Metal: Head On provides a great experience for any gamer, but the multiplayer/online play is really were its at.

Author's Review
Twisted Metal Head On brings back the classics of the original Twisted Metal games, which is a good thing.

Presentation (graphics, sound, etc.)
First of all the graphics in this game are some of the best of the PSP's launch. The detail isnt great but the explosions are amazing especially with the sound added to it. The music can get repetative but it does its job. But for people who are not fans of rock music, they may not like the music in TM:HO.

Gameplay
The controls are decent but its hard to use the analog stick. There are multiple contorl schemes but the defult is good (you can change the gas from the square button to the X button though). The combos (such as freeze and shield) are somewhat hard to pull off while driving and there are many more that are difficult to memorize.

The story is thin with a different ending depending on who you play as. There are also unlockable characters and arenas. The variety in TM:HO weapon is good but there could be more.

The single player game is mediocre. You go through around 7 stages (im not sure on the exact number) and you are treated with a cut scene of your "prize". Through the game you basically blow up other cars. Every car has their own special attack along with machine guns and d-pad combo attacks. Theres also weapons you must collect. In every stage there is a bonus level where you can unlock another car/character. There is also a boss every once in a while, but the cheapest boss is the last one, Tower tooth. Anyways, like i said before, there is a different ending for each character but it only takes around an hour to complete the single player game. This is acceptable though because it is a portable game where you only need to play in small periods. There are other modes such as endurance where you see how long you can last.

Multiplayer
The game really starts to get addicting when you play online through wi-fi. It plays like the single player game, a bunch of cars blow each other up, but with real people! There are not to much problems and it does not lag to much. This is the perfect game for online and im glad that SONY put it online. There are many options you can choose from. There deathmatch, last man standing (lives), fox hunt, collector (where you collect a coin after you kill someone) and all these modes can be done in teams also. The game supports up to 6 players unless you play the other online mode, CO-OP!!!! Thats right you can play the whole single player game online with a buddy. Which bring me to my only complaint with online: no voice chat. Well yes this would be hard to do on the PSP, but the "keyboard" doesnt make it any easier.

This is a good game and i recommend it if your a fan of the series, but if your looking for an in-depth single player game then this is prolly not for you.