Game Discussion of the Week: Scrapland

This one isn't as memorable as Alice, but it was fun. It's like a PG-rated mix of GTA, the Jetsons and that Robots movie that came out in 2005. It's one third, on foot, and two thirds racing and flying. Music is low intensity techno, all the characters are bright, unique in character and form.

You're a robot named D-Tritus, who supposedly built himself out of spare parts above the atmosphere, who goes down onto Scrapland and gets a job as a journalist. It's not long before he's sent on a mission to uncover the truth behind a series of murders perpetrated by some "viscous being", whose victims are also mysteriously erased from the Great Database, preventing reincarnation.

In the buildings, you'll see little stapler-bot on the endless search for paper, there are messenger bots who steal others' messages for money, clerks can slow down time, bankers can steal money. The main NPCs have their own forms, but all the others seem to be carbon copies of each other.


That's one hell of a waistline

As for vehicles, you get more parts to customise your own pod-racer as you go along and each of the main characters seem to have their own style which you can borrow for yourself. You can also hire mercenaries to go with you on mission, at the cost of lives. Yeah, this game has a lives system. You purchase them from Bishops. There's shooting and racing involved, while combat on foot isn't all that grand.

The path is linear. There didn't seem to be any multiple solutions to objectives. But, you can go off track, go in races or morph into other robots and cause havoc, so there's that Sandbox element about it, at least. Side quests are from the Crazy Gambler who, incidentally, is not on the Database...hmmm...



McDonald's will make you gay and fat