Gaming’s favorite homicidal, ice cream truck-driving clown will finally make his long-awaited return on Valentine’s Day. A few weeks shy of its launch, a demo of the 2012 Twisted Metal reboot has graced PlayStation 3s with its presence, giving players a taste of the vehicular destruction that awaits them. It’s a particularly meaty demo aimed at getting gamers reacquainted with the series in training and challenge mode before tackling others online.

One of the biggest changes is that rather than having a unique character tied to each car, there are four gangs to chose from based on Sweet Tooth, Mr. Grimm, Dollface, and Preacher. They can drive any vehicle they want, so there’s nothing stopping Sweet Tooth from tooling around in Mr. Grimm’s motorcycle or vice versa. The demo features eight cars with returning favorites such as Outlaw, Crimson Fury, Darkside, though Sweet Tooth’s signature ice cream truck was sadly MIA.

All of them have varying levels of armor and speed. Lithe vehicles such as sports cars and the motorcycle can’t take much damage, but really burn rubber while bigger cars like Outlaw and Darkside can taking heavy damage although they don’t have much speed. Each one also has its own unique special attack like the now famous flaming chainsaw, a flamethrower, and Darkside’s ramming attack.

Mechanically it’s still classic Twisted Metal, the main idea being to destroy everybody else in a free-for-all, set against destructible environments with rockets whizzing through the air and miniguns rattling off ammunition into the backside of the nearest enemy car. There are quite a few weapons at disposal: heat-seeking rockets, napalm, shotguns, special attacks, satellite bombs, and plenty more. In fact, there are so many of them it’s hard to keep track in the heat of battle.

Although the demo has two multiplayer modes available–free-for-all Deathmatch and Nuke–I was unable to play either one online. Any time I tried to join a game I received a matchmaking error, so being unable to test my mettle against other human opponents, I instead had to settle for AI ones. Luckily, the demo has a single-player challenge mode where the player can take on five AI bots in classic Deathmatch tradition.

In keeping with the tradition rep of the franchise, the AI is merciless and has a tendency to gang up on the only human opponent. Time after time I found myself trying to outrun a group of enemies trying their damnedest to kill me. Health is in short supply, but at least it’s somewhat easier to get to than in past installments since all health packs are highlighted and show through all the visual clutter.

An even bigger hurdle is trying to cope with the control scheme. There are three available–classic, dual stick, and racing–but none of them feel any more intuitive and in 2012 it feels odd not to be able to customize the controls however you see fit. Having to constantly hold down the right analog stick or another button for gas feels cumbersome, and although the shield, mine, and freeze features have all been mapped to the directional pad for easy access, I miss being able to use it for driving.

Overall, I can’t say I had much fun with the Twisted Metal demo. The controls feel over-bloated with so many features crammed into them that you can hardly drive properly let alone fight anyone, and being unable to go online didn’t make a good impression either. What should’ve sold me on the game has left me more cautious and actually less excited than I was originally, although I’m hoping these are just a few kinks that are going to be ironed out before it’s time for launch.