<\/td><\/tr>Top: D-Tritus, your main character from Scrapland. Tommy Vercetti he aint.
BOTTOM: Rodney, the protagonist in the movie Robots<\/a>.<\/td><\/tr><\/table>I mentioned that I picked up American McGee’s Scrapland<\/a>. Laying aside whatever way this software violated my computer in the name of keeping me safe from pirating it, I’m finding the game itself to be instantly tiresome and hopelessly dull.<\/p>\n
The game styles itself as a freeform exploration and mission-based game. To wit: Sci-fi Grand Theft Auto. If this is where they were aiming, they fell pretty sort of the mark. The city is indeed large and quite pretty, but it is compartmentalized so that you can’t just freely fly from one section to another. You have to go on foot to jump from one playpen to the next. Taken together, the areas don’t add up to much. I’m looking at the map and at two hours into the game I’ve seen nearly all of it. It’s not very big. Worse, the areas are maze-like and constantly blocked by walls. You never get that feeling of flying over a huge city. You never see the horizon (not even a fake backdrop one) and so that whole game feels like it is taking place indoors. <\/p>\n
The character designs make this seem like a Gamecube title aimed at young teens, but the game itself (missions involving robbing and killing) and the dialog (bleeped out swear words and a little robotic sexual innuendo) make the game seem more adult. The protagonist seems like a clueless imbecile. He has an earnest, cheerful, “golly-gee” delivery that doesn’t suit his actions or abilities at all. <\/p>\n
It has very mild RPG-ish character development, where you become stronger by getting more and better parts for your ride. As the game goes on your vehicle gets more hit points, stronger engines, and more powerful weapons. This sounded pretty great, but they made an all-too-familiar mistake: You can only get better parts by completing missions, so if a mission is giving you trouble you can’t go earn better parts to help you though it. This is another sad example of a game which was self-balancing until the makers thwarted it by inserting arbitrary roadblocks to progress<\/a>. Lots of games make this error, and it’s always depressing to see it happen.<\/p>\n