American McGee’s Scrapland review

You can normally split games into two categories when you begin playing. The first would be the type where you can see the potential in the game,and fully expect it to develop into something much better once you have been introduced to the controls and features properly.

The second involves you not really knowing where the game is going and not being able to see much potential for expansion on even the initial gameplay. Scrapland interestingly falls in-between.

Once the main portion of the game begins, after a simple case of following waypoints to take you through some background information on the world in some nice looking cutscenes, it becomes clear that it's an open ended GTA style gameplay model. Once I realised this, I was looking forward to a varied game. Unfortunately Scrapland never quite delivered what I was expecting.

A scrappy land?

When introduced to the game, you are given a little back story for the world. Scrapland is a land made of (wait for it) - scrap. It is inhabited purely by robots and on entering, you are scanned and disinfected to ensure no organic beings (especially those horrible human things) gain entry to the city.

Dying in Scrapland seems of no consequence as whenever you enter, your body is scanned into the Great Database which contains a record of all robots in the city. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to die, you can pay a small fee to the Archbishop, and be revived in the form of an extra life.

The story begins with the murder of an influential character, and the theft of his records from the Great Database, leaving him permanently dead. You play D-Tritus (following on nicely with the whole scrap theme, but pronounced differently) who has just arrived, and seems to be caught up in all manner of illegal acts before he has even found the toilet at his new workplace, as a journalist. Plot wise, a few twists and turns line the story thread and keep you motivated enough to continue, despite a few problems.

The game consists of…?

Each mission gives you a different task, from photographing or stealing plans, to destroying a number of enemy vehicles. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much more than those two simple tasks, sometimes worded slightly differently and made slightly harder by the level of defence surrounding each task.

To destroy vehicles, you will need a vehicle of your own, a nice floating car that is basically given to you right at the start, though it can be upgraded, swapped around and tinkered with (in accordance with construction plans you may win or steal). Vehicular combat is rather simple, taking place in the beautifully and large cityscape, each of you using your best weapons against the other until one croaks.

You may be pitted against multiple opponents and more often than not, each one has multiple lives to deplete, extending the length of the mission and causing some repetition. Littered around the world are power-ups giving you such things as extra ammo, a speed boost and a shield repair. But unfortunately your enemies can also pick them up, leading to a very frustrating style of fight.

It's annoying to deplete the shields of an enemy to then have them suddenly pull away and head towards the closest shield repair. Unless you quickly chase and finish him off, you’re back to square one. Fortunately, the intuitive vehicle controls are also used for a series of races that are rather enjoyable, but other than that, getting from A to B is all you’ll be doing with your new pimp-mobile.

Planes, Trains and Robotic Feet

On foot for missions, the game changes style into a case of following the waypoints to find your objective, doing whatever you must do to it (stealing, destroying, or photographing) and doing it all again. This becomes more interesting with the variation of each robot.

There are a number of different robots within the game, and each has a different power. Bankers frustratingly seem to suck money out of you when they are nearby, while Bishops have a laser beam that can destroy other robots. Each type looks unique, and has its own character voice, which all sound appropriate and cartoony enough to fit in with the world.

D-Tritus has the good fortune to be able to hack into the Great Database and change his appearance (and special skill) to that of any other robot. Sometimes, in order to sneak into certain places, you’ll need the appearance of a specific robot, and while it all sounds rather simple, it is an illegal act, and can cause the police to come down on you like a tonne of nuts and bolts.

Pointlessly difficult sometimes and easy other times to evade, the law system never seems to work in my opinion, but it does add an extra challenge to the simplistic missions. Unfortunately, that’s all they are; simplistic and repetitive missions that retain the same goals throughout, and if it weren’t for the whodunit aspect of the plot, you may quit early.

This place has style

Graphically, the world is very well designed, and strangely visually varied (considering the missions are so similar). It won’t push your graphical expectations to a whole new level, but respectably covers what you’re expecting from current games.

The robots all have their own character, portrayed visually through some nice animation, and aurally through their own voices, which remain the same throughout each class of character. The voices, while performed admirably seem to lack cohesion sometimes, with different characters pronouncing things differently, sometimes in the same conversation; frustrating if it’s something as simple as someone’s name.

Other aspects of the sound are excellent however, with some atmospheric and stylistic music that never seems to overcome the scene, instead serving as a beautiful backing to the events taking place. Sound effects are appropriate for the spectrum of actions that can take place, absorbing you into the world like well advertised kitchen roll.

Anything else to this game?

A multiplayer mode, allowing you to try deathmatch or flag hunting against people online, or on a LAN is present, although I haven’t found any public servers at all, and finding other people with the game seems difficult at the moment. Other than that, there’s little else to shout about.

While being a well designed game, something is lacking in terms of keeping a gamer playing. The lack of variation with the missions, and with very few things we haven’t seen before, Scrapland tries admirably, but fails just short of the mark of being fully recommendable.

There’s nothing horrifically wrong with the game, but not enough for me to warrant suggesting a full price purchase. If you see this baby in a bargain bucket, then it might be worth a try, but don’t expect a complicated and in depth gameplay experience.