I've been busy these last few days with playing 2 upcoming PS3 exclusives! Before beginning my impressions, I would like to warn you that these impressions do not reflect the finished product.

Twisted Metal - I'm a huge fan of the Twisted Metal series, and I've played them way back since the first Playstation. I remember going to my friend's house and just playing Twisted Metal splitscreen all day! And from the first to Small Brawl, Twisted Metal just became my favorite PSone game. So it isn't surprising when I do get excited about getting my hands-on the next iteration of the franchise. The very first time you start playing the game, something just doesn't click. It took me a while to solve this issue, but for me I couldn't play the game with the "classic" controls. We're in the 21st century, so it's pretty weird pressing X to accelerate. I was just polarized for the first half an hour I was playing. I just couldn't get any kills, I died really quickly, and it was too chaotic... So I kept on playing with the control options and changed it to the "Racing" controls. And I fell in love with this game! I was just addicted to the gameplay, and I'm very happy that the cars don't feel ultra realistic like most video games these days.

The car combat genre really died ten years ago after Twisted Metal Black, and what a great way to bring the genre back to life. The multiplayer has some matchmaking problems, so unfortunately I couldn't get into a multiplayer match. But if the multiplayer experience is anything like the single player challenge I played, I will be buying this on day one! Be warned that a game like this, you really have to play with all the cars and find one that suits your play style. The one that I really dig is "Meat Wagon"... He has a special that shoots a corpse on a gurney, and this gurney has TNT stuck on it. Its just a really funny, twisted, wity game! The humour is back, the arenas are really crazy, and Its about time we get a multiplayer experience that isn't just another Call of Duty clone.

Starhawk - My very first PS3 game I ever bought was a little game called "Warhawk". It was a multiplayer-only experience, that really defined the word multiplayer on PS3 before the Call of Duty era! So its spiritual successor "Starhawk" has a lot of catching up to do. This game is just plain fun. Funny thing is that I kept on playing this game for a few hours, forgetting it was just a Beta and not a finished game. I remember playing the Uncharted 3 beta for about half an hour before deleting the download. I'm not the biggest multiplayer person here, but I always look for those "new" multiplayer experiences that are not just clones of "COD". Twisted Metal is one of those, and Starhawk is also another. They're just different. Starhawk isn't just "Warhawk in Space". Its more than that. Its crazy deep, and it plays different than its predecessor. I would sum it up by saying, its Warhawk + Tower Defense + An emphasis on verticality...

What you had in Warhawk was two seperate battlefields in one arena. You had the sky and the ground. The planes, or on foot. I always felt there wasn't really good integration between both. What Starhawk does best is that integration. Those on the ground no longer are just fighting the troops, and the planes fighting the other planes. No... As a person playing on the ground, I have to focus on everything! I build turrets to fight those in the air, collect the essential weapons to kill anyone who is in my way. So at times you actually get a Hawk and person with a jetpack fighting each other! So much is happening in the arena, that at times its too much to sink in. You can also use the build mechanics to build on top of your enemies, and so get an instant kill. You can get a jetpack, collect a sniper, and find a high spot, to kill your enemies on ground or on air. It's just a deep experience, that gives the player a lot of freedom to experiment. And the "Build" mechanics just differentiates the game from anything else out there. Also I got to give props to Lightbox and Santa Monica Studios for making such a smooth beta. It's really fast to look for a match, and there is NO LAG whatsoever. A game that has a couple of months left until its release, and it runs this well is a testament of how good this game is.

If these games are any indication of what 2012 will be like for video games, it's going to be a really great year! Twisted Metal in a week people...