You are a contestant on the game show Twisted, with your host Twink Fizzdale. You must answer trivia questions, take a spin on the Wheel of Torture, solve a collection of puzzles, and make your way to the top of "The Helix". Success is rewarded by an all expenses paid trip out of TV Wasteland and into REALITY.
Let me start by saying, that I am a Monty Python fan, not a fanatic, but I enjoy their style of humor. I enjoy "intellectual" humor, but there are times when I just want to see someone get hit on the head with a large fish. You either know what I mean, or you don't.
That said, Twisted is a hilarious game. It is safe to say that this game is not for everyone however. For starters, it must be played by at least two people. While you certainly could play both players yourself (turns alternate), it would be analogous to playing Trivial Pursuit alone.
Twisted is essentially a board game with some serious multimedia overload thrown in for good measure. Each player chooses an electronic contestant or "partner". The board is a giant helix of steps/tiles/spaces on which the contestants stand. There are approximately 90 spaces you must cross to get to the top of the helix and win the game.
There are four types of spaces on the helix which have the following behavior:
Bozo square (red)- player loses a turn
Bonus square (green) - roll again
Wheel of Torture (purple) - Your contestant is placed on "The Wheel", and you must press the button at the right time to get them down. If you fail, play progresses to the next player.
Challenge square (yellow) - You are taken to The Matrix where a challenge is selected (see below). 2/3 to 3/4 of the spaces are of this type.
Each player rolls the "Cyber-Die" to determine the number of squares to advance, but landing on the same square as another player allows the current contestant to roll again.
When a player lands on a challenge square, they are taken to The Matrix. The Matrix is a three by three grid containing a mix of challenges. Another player is randomly selected to secretly choose a row from The Matrix, and then the current player gets to choose the column. This allows the competing players a certain amount of control over which challenges you can get. Cool alternative to randomly selecting one. The following items can appear in The Matrix (don't worry, these are all in the manual, so I'm not giving anything away :-)):
Bomb - player's turn ends with appropriate "fanfare" :-)
Switch places - current player swaps places with the next player
Roll again - ('nuff said)
Trivia - There are six trivia categories and each has its own icon in The Matrix. Categories include Science and Technology, History, Sports and Recreation, Arts and Entertainment, Geography and Travel, and Pop Culture. Questions are multiple choice, and the difficulty of the questions can be set on a player by player basis from four different settings. I am embarrassed to say that my wife and I found the "adult" setting a bit too difficult at times, but the "child" setting was right up our ally :-) (there is also, a harder "expert" setting and an even easier "none" setting). Each time to successfully beat this challenge, the number of questions you have to answer is increased by one.
Supermarket Highrise - This is a memory puzzle in which you are shown the contents of a refrigerator (12 items) and are then asked to indicated which of three items shown to you was in the fridge. The amount of time you are shown the items seems to decrease each time you take this challenge and guess correctly. We were surprised at how difficult this could be.
Departure Lounge - This puzzle involves a picture being divided into nine parts each part is then mapped onto a three sided object which rotates into the screen (hard to describe). You must rotate each section to form the original picture. They sometime play dirty trick on this one by placing an entire other picture on the other sides of the rotating objects. At least once, I created a perfect picture, but it wasn't the same picture I was shown at the start. This one doesn't appear to get much more difficult when you succeed.
Sound Bites - This puzzle is fun to play, but it's a bit too easy most of the time. You are presented with a grid of US presidents each of which opens their mouth and makes a bizarre sound when you select them. You must match pairs of presidents that make the same sound. This seems to get more difficult by making the sounds more similar to each other.
Twin Peeks - This is just like "Sound Bites" but with pictures. I usually found this one pretty easy, but occasionally we would get caught.
Mystery Matinee - Cool puzzle in which you must reassemble a moving video clip. The clips start divided into twelve sections, and get progressively more finely divided as you successfully meet the challenge. This one's not too hard until they start dividing it into more than twelve pieces, then things get nasty.
Zapper - This challenge involves a grid of twelve television sets all playing the same black and white horror movie. On of the sets will start playing a color commercial, and you must "zap" the commercial. You must keep commercials from getting a total of five seconds of air time (measured by the fuse at the top of the screen) over a thirty second period. I can't tell if this one gets more difficult when you win, but we have about a %50 success rate.
Face Lift Salon - This puzzle involves sliding three rows of "face parts" to assemble three correct faces. The faces are truly strange, and it is set up such that it is possible to complete one face, and not the others. This one is much more difficult than it seems. I think we've only beaten it a couple of times.
While I mentioned that each of the challenges becomes more difficult each time you beat it, it should also be noted that the reverse is also true. Each challenge becomes easier each time you fail. Also, if one player gets too far ahead of another, that player will suddenly be given more "swap" spaces when he/she goes to The Matrix. Little things like these help keep the game interesting for everyone regardless of skill differentials.
The game can be played with one controller as turns alternate, but you will need to pass around the controller when a player goes to The Matrix (one player chooses the row, and the current player chooses the column). The game does support multiple controllers however, but it treats them as if they were the same controller. The only problem this could possibly cause is that someone could cheat by pressing buttons at the matrix screen.
I feel that the gameplay is at least on par with other board games such as Trivial Pursuit. I personally get tired of board games sooner than most people, but so far the humor and the variety of the audio and video is keeping me interested and entertained.
Twisted is a perfect example of how effective the hardware anti-aliasing can be. The background graphics in particular are very nicely rendered. The entire helix game board appears to be modelled in 3D space, as you can see different parts of the studio reflected in the walls around you depending on your location on the helix. The graphics are certainly not generated on the fly, but it shows how the tools included with the 3DO development environment can be put to good use in a different situation.
Twisted is LOADED with full motion video(FMV). Throughout the entire game, it really feels as if you are watching a strange television show. There are a wide variety of audience shots used when something goes right (or wrong, fickle audience :-)), and there are a slew of different commercials that show up at various points during the game. Frame rates are extremely high, and any artifacting is minor.
The character animation in the game is done in the same manner as the limited John Madden shots in John Madden Football, and the people on the new Panasonic teaser disc in that the moving player graphics are overlaid on top of still backgrounds, resulting in very smooth, animation. The frame rate and color depth is much higher than in either of those examples however, and where appropriate, the characters even have the correct reflections in the floor. There are an extremely large number of character animations, with appropriate animations for landing on different types of squares (bozo, bonus, etc.). We've seen at least a half dozen "bozo" square animations for each character without repeat.
The graphics in each challenge round are very professional and well rendered. The images used in the Departure Lounge are quite nice, and while I have seen a repeat or two, we've seen at least 15-20 different pictures so far. The trivia challenges even have goofy animations of Hanna (Twink's assistant) in assorted, appropriate garb on top overlaid onto the screen. Very nice.
You won't be disappointed in the overall graphics style and quality of this title. If you play over and over again, I'm sure you will start to see repeated images (particularly in the Mystery Matinee where we have only seen five or six different video clips), but there is certainly more variety than any conventional board game.
Perfect. The audio in Twisted really couldn't be better. All of the samples are crystal clear, and there is no popping or hissing present anywhere. The audio is almost entirely in surround sound (great for when the audience applauds), and sometime the stereo effect is quite distinct. For instance, when you are choosing your contestant, they are all jumping up and down saying "pick me" (in their own special way :-)), and when you select a particular individual, their yell becomes louder than the rest, and is quite obviously coming from the appropriate speakers.
Nearly every joypad and button press results in an appropriately goofy sound, and both the contestants and Twink are constantly talking to you.
It is difficult to convey the overall humor of Twisted in this review, but suffice it to say that parts of Twisted will catch you off guard and leave you smiling for quite sometime afterward. I particularly like the way that the commercials are much louder than the rest of the game. Perfect touch :-)
There is so much video and audio data being thrown at you during a game of Twisted, that it is hard to believe that it's just game. This effect is enhanced by the fact that there are almost no perceptible pauses for loading.
The acting by the contestants is, on the whole, pretty bad. On the other hand, that fits perfectly with the game. You are *supposed* to laugh at these characters, and you will, trust me. Our favorite character animations continue to be the clips you get after you get your contestant down off of the Wheel of Torture. Priceless.
Twink starts to get repetitive, particularly when he tells each player that it is still their turn. Although he has several comments for each player, he does start to get old. Don't get me wrong, Twink is one of the better characters in the game (Hanna is the best, although I like Wormington the car salesman), but real life game show hosts annoy me too.
A couple of the challenges are pretty easy. Sound Bites in particular doesn't cause me any trouble, and might as well be a "roll again" square. Such puzzles do mean however that younger players will find some puzzles that they can solve as well.
The box claims that there are "1000's of trivia challenges". While I'm not a big trivia fan, I wish there was more of an emphasis on this area. This is the section that is least likely to become repetitive, and yet we didn't find ourselves answering that many questions.
I also wish the difficulty level applied to challenges other than trivia. It appears that the only way to increase the difficulty of a particular type of challenge is to keep beating it. This means that you may have to play a couple of really easy Mystery Matinee rounds before it starts to challenge you.
I am still afraid that it may become repetitive (like any board-type game), but I really enjoy playing it. Just when I thought things were starting to get repetitive last night, everything I saw and heard was new.
If you need a game that everyone can play, this game could be for you. You don't need any video game skill to do well at this game, and the adjustable difficulty levels make it easy for people of various ages and skills to play on a level playing field.
The sheer volume of multimedia content that is crammed into this game is impressive. Show this to your friends to demonstrate at least one thing that couldn't be done at all without the capacity of a CDROM.
If you have a slightly (or more than slightly) warped sense of humor, buy this game. It's certainly way too silly. Just wait until you roll a zero on the Cyber-Die a couple of times :-).
This review is Copyright (C) 1994 by Matt Brown for Game Bytes Magazine. All rights reserved.