Despite a few small missteps in the middle of it's lifecycle, when Sony yanked Incognito from the helm, Twisted Metal established the vehicular combat genre as we know it today. With the help of the newly reformed and renamed Incognito Entertainment (they are no longer Incog Inc.) the series recently worked its way back into prime time with Twisted Metal: Black and TMB: Online for the PS2. Head-On successfully takes the best parts of many of the past titles and the results are rather impressive, especially for a PSP launch title.

For fans of the series, Twisted Metal: Head-On can be best described as a mix between the much beloved Twisted Metal 2 and the darker and more sinister Twisted Metal: Black. This description holds true for pretty much every facet of the game. For those not familiar with the series, the premise is a simple one. You select a driver/vehicle from a lineup of interesting and unique personalities, you get dropped into an environment full of weapons and items, and the last one standing is the champion. You could also describe it as a deathmatch game with cars.

Graphically, Head-On is easily the best looking Twisted Metal game to date. TM: Black on the PlayStation 2 looked nice, but like the titles implies, it's dark and a bit lacking in color. Twisted Metal: Head-On has huge, detailed environments, a few of which are redesigned classics from the first couple of games. They range from real-life locations, like Paris, Tokyo, Rome and the Hollywood inspired "L.A. Wood", to the more generic Big Blue Stadium baseball field and the Rooftops. All the stages have landmarks of some sort, which frequently can be destroyed or used as a weapon in some way. The environments are huge and very solid and you won't see any fade-in or pop-up, even when looking way into the background. What I especially liked was the fact that the locations are much more "alive". Alive, meaning things like traffic on the roads and little characters walking about tending to their jobs, their lives, etc. Of course, you can blow them up and run them down, just like you would expect. The vehicles also look better than ever with great texturing and nice polygon counts. The game engine cranks out some really nice special effects, the particle effects and lighting in particular. It does all of this, even when playing in multiplayer, without a hint of a framerate issue.

Audio is also your typical TM fare. The music is keyed in with the locations for the most part, and it's pretty hard-rocking, high quality and interesting. For example, the stadium features a little rock band playing on stage along with appropriate vocals and tunes, and Paris and Egypt have compositions that would seem native to the region. The music is really meant for the background, as the game is full of destructive sound effects. The crashing of metal into metal, the whistle of a rocket and the crackle of electricity. It all sounds good, just like in the previous titles. The bit of voice acting in the real-time and animated cinema scenes aren't half bad either.

Gameplay is vintage Twisted Metal. Nearly every technique you've learned and used in the past, including the special energy moves, are to be found in Head-On. Even with 2 less shoulder buttons the control scheme on the PSP remains in tact. For the uninitiated, it's pretty straight forward. The digital/analog pad steers, controls gas and brakes, and is used to tap out special techniques. The right and reft shoulder buttons are utilized respectively for machine guns and special weapons. The various face buttons also alternatively control acceleration/brake, special weapon selection, turbo boosts and jumping. All the beloved characters and vehicles have returned and nearly all of them have the same abilities and techniques as were found in previous installment. You still have your fast, high jumping dune-buggy Grasshopper, and everyone's favorite killer ice cream truck driving clown, Sweet Tooth. Overall, the gameplay feels like a healthy mix between TM2 and TM:B, which is a good thing.

Twisted Metal: Head-On has few single player modes to keep you busy, but as usual, the story mode is the real meat and potatoes. The story mode takes your character through a sequence of stages, throws in a few boss fights and neat little real-time cutscenes, and finishes off with a big boss battle and an animated, character-specific ending. It's nothing you haven't seen or played before but Head-On does it as well as any of the other TM titles. Besides that, you can take on the Challenge Mode, which pits you against a hand chosen or random selection of enemies in a particular environment, or the Endurance Mode, which allows you to take on enemy after enemy until your energy runs out.

After you blow through the single player modes with every character, which will take several hours, multiplayer is the way to go. The series lends itself well to multiplayer play and Incognito pulls it together on the PSP wonderfully. Although this may not apply to every PSP owner out there, the WiFi modes, both local and over the internet, are incredibly fun and provide a near endless opportunity for new challenges. Even with the occasional glitches and instability the wireless multiplayer gameplay is surprisingly well done. Kicking the butts of up to 5 other Twisted Metal: Head-On players in the "Head-On" mode, or playing through the Story Mode cooperatively with one other person is definitely enjoyable. The fact that a number of launch titles support the PSP's online WiFi Infrastructure Mode at all is both impressive and unexpected. The multiplayer modes offer quite a full featured set of online options, though for additional information on the subject, take a look at our previous "Going Online with the PSP" article. Overall it's a great start, and as with Twisted Metal: Black Online, it adds a good amount of additional replayability. But this only applies if: 1) you have a number of local friends with a PSP and copy of the game, or 2) You have a wireless router or access point in the vacinity in order to get online. If not, then you're stuck only with the single player modes and probably missing out on what may be the coolest feature of the game. I'm usually online as "Jim Gaming Age", so feel free to blast some missiles my way.

It's still hard to believe how solid and console-quality some of the PSP launch titles are, though I'm sure that was one of Sony's primary goals. Twisted Metal: Head-On is an enjoyable title for the system that will appeal to fans of the series and genre, as well as those looking for an action packed pick-up-and-play title. Gamers also interested in a really good multiplayer game to show off the PSP's WiFi and online abilities should also strongly consider taking it for a spin.