Mad Metal is a Vehicle combat shooter similar to the long running Twisted Metal Franchise that hasn’t released a game since the 2012 reboot. Mad Metal is trying to be a spiritual successor to the franchise but did it succeed or will this game end up on the scrap pile and be forgotten?
A Confusing Campaign
Mad Metal features a short campaign which last about 4 hours. You play as Jack, a broken cop who is looking for his daughter Emma and his wife Claire after they have been kidnapped by a mysterious organization. The story is awful as characters are poorly written and some of the characters motivations make no sense. For instance, One of the characters talks about your daughter being “Sacrificed” when he actually meant he kept her safe from the true villains. The dialogue is terrible and wouldn’t be out of place in the old resident evil games. The cutscences are hilariously bad as the characters have no facial animations and look like dolls. They also look extremely janky but are so bad they can be very funny. The voice acting is not great either but isn’t House of the Dead 2 levels of bad, it’s just ok. So if you are playing the game for it’s campaign expect possibly one the worst stories in gaming.
The boss fights are very strange as well. The second boss fight in the game for example has a car that can hover in the air. This is never explained by anyone in the story. At some parts of the campaign, it’s also not explained to the player what to do next. For example, I was stuck on chapter 4 trying to get onto the Eden’s Gate ferry. Eventually, After searching the internet i saw someone shoot the yellow pipes which fell off to let the player onto the ferry. I tried to do the same but it didn’t work until i switched weapons to a shotgun. After spamming the weapon i was finally able to shoot the locks off and progress.
You can only drive the police car in the campaign but you can customize it with better bodywork, weapons, engine and spoilers. They do improve the car a lot but you can still die easily, especially in the final level of the campaign which forces you to replay it over again if you die.
The Graphics while not the worst i have ever seen are not great. The models and textures look like a PS3/Xbox 360 era game and for 2026 that is not acceptable. The game does at times look ok, especially at the Clovis Scrapyard level but it could have done a lot better as it’s built on the unity engine that made great looking games like Subnautica and Cuphead. The Mad Max video game and the last Twisted Metal game both had superior graphics aswell although I do understand that this game was only made by one person which is perhpas the reason why the graphics are not the best.
I think the game didn’t need a campaign anyway and would probably be a lot better off if it didn’t have one and instead focused more on the multiplayer and free run modes.
A Buggy Mess
There are a lot of bugs inside this game. Firstly, I have had many framerate issues when loading this game. I have also had a bug happen during the campaign where the game wouldn’t let me progress after defeating the boss and i had to retry the entire level again. I have had my vehicle get stuck on several surfaces and have had to retry the level because of this. When in free run mode, i had to quit to the main menu after loading into a level too quickly. There are a lot of issues which the developers need to patch in this game.
Mayhem and Destruction
However, the game can be very fun and enjoyable despite it’s flaws. Free run mode, which lets you play deathmatches or an open world mode with multiple objectives is very fun. You can choose which vehicle you want to take into these missions and customize them heavily. The customization in this game is very in depth and lets you upgrade your weapons, bodywork and wheels for more speed, better defenses or better offences. It’s also very fun to ram into other cars at full speed and shoot them for lots of damage. With the first boss during the campaign, i was able to blow off his giant tyre which left him vulnerable.
The Free run mode has lots of maps from the campaign and some of it’s own to choose from making each mission fun and varied.
Vehicles have three passives: Repair, Overtake and Hyperboost. Repair heals your car after taking damage, Overtake blows up cars pass from behind and hyperboost gives you 50% extra boost. The Overtake passive on the interceptor cars is very powerful but i think the repair mechanic is most useful as you can get away from some fights and heal after taking damage.
Vehicles and Customization
New vehicles are unlocked by levelling up or completing objectives such as finishing parts of the story or completing a free run mission. These new vehicles are some of the most powerful in the game and are definitely worth getting. In particular, the Sour diesel vehicle with multiple guns attached to it is very powerful and fun to drive.
There is the option of making your own custom vehicles as well, with the game prompting you to choose between the SUV chassis and the buggy chassis. You can then change the look of your vehicle and add your own engine, weapons etc… to your car. The custom cars are not as powerful as the pre set cars however so you’ll quickly change to one of the better cars and customize those instead when you unlock them.
The enemy ai is competent and will be able to kill you very easily even if you have a high amount defense so you will need to keep moving and look for green repair pickups when running low on health. Other pickups in the game include the double tap pickup which makes your weapons shoot twice as fast and burnout half as much. These effects can also stack which can make your weapons very overpowered.
Summary
Overall, Mad Metal is a fun game that has a good customization mechanic and destruction mechanics. But it’s campaign, Graphics and Bugs heavily let it down and it doesn’t live up to the standards of the Twisted Metal franchise. There is a lot of potential with this game however, and if mad mechs decide to make a sequel I hope they learn from the first game and make a game that is a worthy successor to the Twisted Metal games.
