The Grand Theft Auto template is one that has been tremendously successful, so it’s no surprise that other developers have tried to implement something similar in other genres. It’s not always worked that well though, probably because of a general lack of creativity.
But here’s an idea - why not bolt the GTA concept onto a game about robots and spare parts in a high technology society of the future?
Well, Mercurysteam have beaten me to it and have been working on this little baby called Scrapland tirelessly like the robots on a car production line for some time. And the results so far are somewhat promising.
In this game you will control a very humanoid looking robot/android character called D Tritus who arrives alone and pretty witless on a completely computerised (or should that be robotised?) planet called Scrapland. This is a place where humans and indeed other ‘viscous’ creatures (or sweaty organic beings to you and me) are prohibited, due to them wrecking the planet and leaving it in a right state centuries earlier, meaning the mechanoids to rebuild it. I have to say that this seems a little bit odd considering most of the robots appear to have modelled themselves on a humanoid design but never mind!
D Tritus seems pretty simple to control with the mouse and keyboard within a fairly low and tight third person perspective. He moves smoothly enough, perhaps too smoothly and I perhaps would have preferred to control something less humanoid and more machine-like for a change (he even has fibre optic hair swishing about for goodness sake!) In fact the whole look of the game appears to be somewhat wistful and ‘amusingly’ characterised in a slightly childish manner as opposed to anything cool and menacing like robots should be and D Tritus’s character seems to be a bit of a limp fish with an annoying wimpy voice.
But don’t let this put you off, because there is a lot of potential for fun here. First off, because this is a vast, towering city you need to be able to get around quickly, and one of your first ports of call will be to a covert garage where a friend called Rusty can build you a flying vehicle. This is cooler than it sounds because throughout your adventures you can gain new plans for bigger, faster and better armed ships, which he will happily build for you if you have enough money. Even better though, you can actually mix and match chassis, engines and weapon sets to bodge up your own custom ship! Now if that isn’t going to be a blast, I don’t know what is!
Flying your ship is pretty enjoyable too with the mouse and arrow keys, and targeting is quite precise when you get used to it- a good thing because there will be quite a lot of shooting to be done. Things are kept simple with the left mouse button to fire the selected weapon and the right to boost your ship. On my preview code the area I explored was a community of tall towers, tunnels and landing pads on many levels that reminded me a little bit of a more futuristic Jak II on the PS2. There is plenty of traffic and police around to attack you if you commit a crime, along with numerous ammunition stocks to swoop down and collect when you need to restock. Again, in a nod to the GTA games,you get a map with symbols on it, showing you directions to your next mission, the custom garage or other points of interest. The few early missions I played were fairly simple and predictable affairs of ‘shoot down this’ or ‘have a race with so and so’, but I am sure there will be plenty of room for cool complexities due to the second promising feature-
‘The Great Database.’
This is the universal controlling memory bank of Scrapland, and brilliantly, this is what D Tritus will be able to hack into, so that he can assume the appearance and abilities of other robots in Scrapland, providing he has the requisite energy. Naturally, this feature will open up all manner of cool covert intrigues and exploitations, because by merely accessing a network point and clicking on the picture of one of the available robot characters, your avatar changes into the completely different and fully controllable version. Some will be quicker, others more powerful and some will have a required special ability, with which to easier complete a certain mission. Apparently there are fifteen in all which seems a little bit restricted, but hopefully they will have a large bearing on the situations that you use them in.
So, with these two big gaming features there could be a lot of scope within Scrapland for immersion and fun. From what I saw there was a fairly well-populated world going on, especially in the building interiors, where there are plenty of characters to talk to and glean information from, accompanied by some cut scene narrative to help things along. On a technical level it doesn’t look anything special, but the game does have its own personal style which, as you would expect, is sharp edged and metallic with slightly comic design. The background music is suitably electronic too.
Hopefully Scrapland will provide plenty of depth and variety for the single player, because the concept and scope is certainly in place for a quality free-form jolly and apparently, there are well over a hundred missions to tackle. It’s just that, after San Andreas, one has to wonder how other developers can keep up with the sheer detail and world building that has been built up over the last few years and robots can be such a soulless bunch. On the other hand, Scrapland will have some decent multiplayer options too, so hopefully the ability to customise your ships and use them in battle against other people on the net will be present to offer that little bit of extra enjoyment.
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