If you're like me, and I know I am, you like Twisted Metal 2 more than any other game bearing the "Twisted Metal" title. Here's how I break it down:
Twisted Metal - An interesting concept, but poorly carried off. They had a lot of ideas, but just didn't refine them.
Twisted Metal 2 - A refined version of the previous game. Cars are fun, levels are well-lit so you can see what's going on, and there's comic-book-esque story sequences that give the game a unique feel.
Twisted Metal 3 - I hope everyone who has ever worked at 989 Studios dies. They CG'ed the characters... HORRIBLY. They tried to make things "cooler" by making items 3D and having Rob Zombie music, but there's a huge negligence for gameplay. The levels are dumb and feel smaller. The weapons seem impressive, except their killing power seems to be missing. So you have a lot of explosions but not much actually going on.
Twisted Metal 4 - Never played this one. For reasons, see above.
Twisted Metal Black - I had high hopes for this title, but apparently the designers got too infatuated with their "black" ideas that they forgot what made Twisted Metal 2 so much fun. They got too hung up on this idea of "skill" weapons, which totally ruin the run-and-gun feel of the game. Pretty much everything reminiscent of Twisted Metal 1 and 2 in the game are just homages. They didn't think, "how can we make this play like Twisted Metal 2, only better?"
In Twisted Metal 2, getting hit was a big problem, so the strategy was to keep moving so you don't get hit so often. Meanwhile, you put out as much firepower as you could to increase the chances of you hitting someone else. Even if you don't hit something, the fact that they're forced to dodge your fire detracts from their ability to fire back.
My favorite trick is most commonly used in Hong Kong. I developed this when my friend kept hiding at intersections, waiting for me to pass so he shoot at me or get behind me. There's a "turnaround" move you can do by pressing left or right and down. Each car reacts differently to this move; Sweet Tooth can spin around up to three time. So, playing as Sweet Tooth, I developed my timing so that I could be driving up to the intersection where my friend was waiting, go into the spin, fire a missle right when I was facing him, then continue the spin and keep going in the original direction I was driving.
