Reviewed: February 16, 2005
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Enlight

Developer
MercurySteam

Released: November 4, 2004
Genre: Action-Adventure
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen

8
9
9
8
8.8

System Requirements

Scrapland Features:

• Open-ended gameplay set in a unique and novel science fiction 3D world.
• A compelling, intriguing storyline accurately integrated into an emergent -from start to finish- gameplay.
• Rich and alive Gameworld
• Realistic physics engine
• Immersive 3D environment. Huge outdoor locations and really explorable, highly detailed indoor places.
• Sophisticated AI. Interact with dozens of unforgettable bizarre characters with their own behaviours toward the player and toward the othe NPCs
• Thrilling combats to death with the most powerful combination of devastating weapons in the most exciting and challenging 3D action seen to date.
• Supercompetitive, original and spectacular races with extreme gunships the player can build to his taste
• Intuitive, simple and powerful control system both with gamepad and joystick or mouse+keyboard.
• 140 main missions provide an almost unlimited number of hours of vaired and fast-paced gameplay.
• Turn yourself into fifteen different characters, take on their identity and acquire their special abilities.
• Multiplayer capabilities. Fight alone or join a team, with gunships built and optimized by yourself. Via LAN or Internet.

The first thing you need to do is get a job. Since all the good jobs are already taken you must settle for becoming a journalist for the local news agency. Thankfully you learn there are other more exciting ways to make money in Chimera. Your guided tour continues to a spaceport where you obtain your first ship (a loaner actually) and a tutorial on how to build new ones specific to certain purposes like racing or combat.

Of course, with your sad little starter ship, not many options are open to you so your first order of business is to follow through the initial plot that seamlessly doubles as a tutorial that shows you the basics of flight and gives you the lay of the land, so to speak.

Once you’ve found your bearings, the world of Scrapland is yours for the taking, and what an enormous world it is. Broken up into districts, each area is massive, unique, and exquisitely crafted. The upper scale districts are bustling areas of business, glimmering with countless skyscrapers and the small ships that fill their appointed traffic routes. These zones, the entire city for that matter, is obviously inspired by movies like Blade Runner and Fifth Element.

Other areas are teaming with rouge mercenaries, who hunt in the burnt out rumble of Scrapland’s human heritage. These districts are complex labyrinths of underground tunnels and vast wastelands, where and the only highways cling closely to the walls of Scrapland’s more civilized areas.

The result is a world teaming with life that is both fantastical and believable. Inside the buildings are some of the oddest, most endearing bands of characters this side of sanity. Bloated bishops sell citizens extra lives for a small “donation.” Robotic staplers hop around in their desperate and futile hunt for something to staple in a world devoid of paper. Midget police knock up citizens for cash while nurses – floating clubs – look for errant robots that need some sensibility knocked back into them.

This is the world in which D-Tritus must make a name for himself. How? Well at first, it is simply by carrying out the orders of his Editor-in-Chief. D-Tritus is a reporter and as such, comes equipped with a camera to capture incriminating evidence. Your first real mission is to investigate the murder of Scrapland’s Arch Bishop. Unfortunately, only police are allowed at the scene of the crime.

This is where D-Tritus’ most valuable skill comes into play. Capable of hacking into The Great Database - a repository of stored extra lives - D-Tritus can become anyone at anytime and gain their abilities. In this case, becoming a police-robot will allow you access so long as you avoid the all-seeing eyes of the Beholders, sentries that can see through your facade (their cone of view is reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid).

A prime example of this ability is when D-Tritus must impersonate the mayor to extract information from the chief of police. The hitch is that the mayor and chief are already talking. However, becoming one of the aforementioned eyes allows D-Tritus to finger the mayor as a criminal who will then be chased off by the police. The resulting confusion is D-Tritus’ chance to become a duplicate mayor, extract the information he came for, and slip out undetected.

For those moments not spent on foot – making up perhaps half of the game – D-Tritus is roaming Scrapland’s massive cities in his ship, or one of his many ships as the game progresses. While D-Tritus only has a scrapper of a ship to start off which, exploring buildings reveal new blueprints for ship chassis, weapons, and engines while pitting his skills in racing and consensual combat yields weapon upgrades.

This allows the player to amass a large collection of ships, each hand built using the weapons, engines, and chassis of the player’s choosing. The system works very well with each chassis having a default hit point rating and varying numbers of hard points for engines and weapons to be installed. Over time, this garage of ships provides D-Tritus with a ship to meet any need, whether it be a ship purely for racing, combat, or a jack-of-all-trades ship.

Flying these ships is a pure joy thanks to a wonderful flight model and control system that works with mouse and keyboard or even a gamepad. I was reminded of the flight system used in Freelancer on more than once occasion. And if you want to travel the city and keep your ship parked in the garage, there is a very fast public transportation system available.

You can zoom in and pan the camera around to appreciate the subtle reflections and bump-mapped surfaces of the textures that make up D-Tritus and any of the other cast members. You can see every individual component that makes up these robots and many are independently animated.

The first time you fly out into the city your jaw will (or at least should) hit your keyboard. The city is a virtual buzz of activity with dozens, perhaps hundreds of ships flying around, some in patterns and others interacting with each other, chasing and shooting. The cityscape is also very vertical allowing you to dive down into the misty bowels of the city or fly to the top of the tallest skyscraper.

Everything isn’t a shiny technological wonder though and Chimera has some interesting and diverse locales like the Scapyard, a very organic location full of old wreckage and decommissioned ships. And the first time you visit the home of the Great Database is another jaw-dropping moment.

If you had the pleasure of playing TRON 2.0 then you will certainly recognize and appreciate many of the lighting features used in Scrapland that give the game a very high-tech neon atmosphere. There is even a very impressive water effect with ripples and reflections.

The soundtrack is flawless, creating just the right mood and enhancing the gameplay. There are even location-specific music cues so when you walk into the club you will hear pulsing dance music. Everything about the music and sound mirrors the visuals to create a totally immersive experience.

The single-player game consists of more than 100 missions and can take you upwards of 50-60 hours to finish depending on how thorough a player you are and how lost you get in the environment. No matter how focused you think you are, it is way too easy to get sidetracked and start exploring or racing in Chimera.

There is a modest attempt at multiplayer with Deathmatch and CTF modes and you get to play these matches in arenas that are lifted from the single-player game zones. Scrapland supports LAN and Internet and admittedly, there was some minor fun to be had with these modes, Scrapland was obviously meant to be played solo.

Scrapland is the material that makes for great movies, and while the upcoming animated feature, Robots and subsequent video game might look like a knockoff of Scrapland, there is no way that title can match Scrapland’s unique visionary style of a robotic society. In a year with so many unoriginal games, sequels, and genre-cloning spin-offs, Scrapland is a breath of fresh air.