American McGee Presents Scrapland (Xbox)

In American McGee Presents Scrapland, the action takes place on a planet of robots and it doesn’t just use this premise for set dressing. Because all the citizens are machines, they can have their minds backed up in a shared database so death is trivial, and even if you can’t afford the reconstruction costs they’ll still rebuild you and put you in jail until you negotiate a term for your release. Because everyone’s connected to this Great Database as well, certain people can reconstruct themselves as others, the player able to become almost every character they encounter and use their skills and social standings to their advantage.

 

This well-realized planet of mechanical men is Scrapland’s biggest appeal. As you walk around the interior spaces of the city of Chimera you’ll see other robots busy living life or doing work, their interactions happening free of your influence. You might witness a police robot shake down a banker for a bribe only for that same banker bot to pilfer the cash back when the cop’s back is turned. You find machines in sleep mode after they listened to the mayor blather on and then see a nurse bot turn up to reboot them. As you fly through the skies on a car of your own creation, you might witness mercenaries taking down transporters or getting pursued by law enforcement. Scrapland is an enticing setting on the surface and one that makes good use of its premise like a gambler who arranges legal death tournaments since death is a triviality, the game able to have a good deal of fun by introducing some kooky characters that make Scrapland a bit of an amoral indulgent playground.

 

However, a disruption to this consequence-free life arises shortly after D-Tritus arrives. A robot from outside this society, he manages to get a reporter job right before the biggest possible story arises: the Archbishop has been murdered, and this time a death has stuck. Even more troubling is that the deed was seemingly done by an organic creature, Scrapland’s distaste for humans quickly established in the opening when you are screened carefully to make sure your humanoid machine isn’t some biological lifeform in disguise. D-Tritus’s investigations send him all across the city, interacting with different social circles and needing to use his unique gift of being able to impersonate most anyone to get closer to the truth as well as just climbing into his vehicle sometimes to blast people apart when things get too hot. The unusual characters you come across like the flagrantly corrupt police chief, the flamboyant Berto, and the dim-witted mercenaries give this process some more character, although the vocal performances do range in quality with many cases of the voice actors speeding through lines so they can’t have proper emotion behind what they’re saying. These are mechanical characters but that excuse doesn’t seem to hold much water because it’s inconsistent across different things said by the same character, but the voice acting still does do a good deal in adding extra personality to people like the Crazy Gambler who lives up to his name.

There are two main types of play in this action game, the weaker being when you’re on foot as D-Tritus and walking through places like the police station, press offices, or bank. These segments allow you to interact with other robots more and witness their lives unfolding in the background of your adventure, but your actual activities while on foot can feel a bit lacking. D-Tritus has one skill, a shoulder charge that can disintegrate other robots if aimed properly, and it’s not like he’ll be asked to do it much, instead the player often needing to walk to and fro in areas to speak to the right characters with no way to really speed up your movement. This is the portion though where you can swap into other robot identities, each one having their own special skill. You can become the banker who drains cash from unsuspecting passersby or turn into the giant police officer with tank treads if you feel you need something to defend yourself, and even a few machines like the Beholders and Messengers let you fly above the heads of the other machines. If you do get in a fight on foot though it will likely be with police officers who will always be able to eventually outnumber you unless you run and hide to lose the alert status, so the many robot identities that just give you a different attack don’t really have much room for interesting use since standing and fighting is rarely rewarded. Sometimes these sections can at least introduce some interesting infiltration puzzles like needing to trick someone by impersonating the mayor but also needing to use some other robot to first get the actual mayor to leave the area. Unfortunately, more often than not, you head to the device that lets you swap identities, turn into one needed for infiltration, and then that’s the extent of getting into that area. You do need to at least shake curious Beholder bots who can eventually see through your disguise, but the best counter to them is just not standing still, so when you head somewhere you more often than not can expect slow traversal and simple activities instead of anything too compelling.

 

Scrapland does have a more energetic action experience though in the form of its flying vehicle combat. As you progress the story or participate in optional activities you can start to earn cash and blueprints to help you build your own vehicles, the customization having a good deal of meaningful options. Different chassis can bear more weapons or engines but your weight will start to impact your speed, and since there are a good deal of races to participate in, you’ll likely want to make vehicles for both racing and battle purposes. Cost might be prohibitive at first before the story doles out some cash and if your vehicle is destroyed in action there’s actually a rebuilding cost, and while buying actual lives for D-Tritus can seem like it would be important to avoid constant jail trips, a generous save system both in terms of autosaves and letting you save whenever you like can ensure your funds aren’t being drained just trying to offset the high likelihood of death. Gradually earning better vehicle parts and tinkering to make a vehicle that suits your play style does have its moments, but some of the appeal unfortunately clashes with the reality of vehicle combat in Scrapland.

Scrapland allows you to move your vehicle freely in all directions and it’s remarkably smooth to do so, this allowing for battles with more freedom of movement especially when you consider the entire section of the city you find yourself in is often allowed to be the battleground. However, this can make targeting foes a bit more difficult, and even with some help from auto-aim, there are some weapons that don’t have a good chance of hitting targets. Scrapland ends up funneling you to a few weapons that actually have a hope of hitting consistently and more importantly, only a few can dish out damage at a good speed which is important since that freedom to fight across a whole section of the city also means enemies constantly run off to grab ammo and health. You can do this as well and it’s practically required for battles with stronger or more numerous foes, but this does start to thin the potential of battles down to locking onto an enemy, using one or maybe two weapons, and hoping the damage race goes in your favor before the enemy tries to flee or you need to flee yourself. These fights can have their moments, especially when the mission design encourages it. One such case involves you and another robot are competing to blast traffic out of they sky, but you need to carefully balance how well you’re doing since it’s actually a distraction so you need to both avoid police attention and balance your point scoring so it’s not over too quickly.

 

Perhaps one reason the on foot and aerial combat sections both get a bit boring over time is the unambitious mission design. Oftentimes in the story you’ll need to get some information from someone only for them to demand multiple errands of you to earn their trust. Many of these will boil down to simple things like killing a certain amount of robots on foot or blasting a bunch of baddies while riding your vehicle, but there are also races in Scrapland and these actually take on a few interesting formats. The most interesting and effective is the buoy race type which at first looks like a typical checkpoint race. However, you’re not competing to clear a track fastest, instead you’re racing through part of the city and only one buoy at a time is eligible, the first player to reach it earning a point. Earn enough points and you win the race, and while the buoys do form a circuit, the open city design allows you to potentially make some interesting comebacks. You can try to race ahead with some shortcuts so you grab future buoys if you know you can’t grab the ones others are already near, or you can even stop and wait for enough buoys to be grabbed that you’ll end up the closest to one and then essentially try to start the race from there. These are more comeback strategies rather than tactics for guaranteed success but they do take advantage of the areas they take place in and format for a unique twist on races that even carries over into the multiplayer modes. However, the race variant where you need to grab a flag to claim buoys is a bit too chaotic since everyone will fire at the flag holder at once and even the toughest vehicles can’t survive such aggression, making it hard for anyone to really win by skill rather than fortunate circumstance since dodging and aiming weapons isn’t too relevant to battle success.

 

Scrapland does seem like it wants you to do a lot outside of its story missions, there being money-making opportunities almost everywhere. You can challenge other characters to races and combat, you can participate in Crazy Bets where you need to perform certain interactions around town that often include doing the same interaction as a certain type of robot over and over, and unfortunately here again we hit the point where there’s a lot to do but it’s all fairly similar and shallow. It seems to want you to make some of your own fun at parts, but handling police officers outside of the vehicle is often as simple as running, handling them in vehicle just puts you in the usual shoot and grab refueling pick-up loops, and outside certain situations the rewards for causing a little mayhem aren’t going to be substantial enough a reward to motivate such action.

THE VERDICT: American McGee Presents Scrapland is an amusing living world of robots, but despite the thought and artistry put into realizing the setting conceptually and visually, the missions and activities feel aimless and repetitive. There are some interesting ideas like the buoy race system and sometimes you’ll hit a sweet spot of aerial combat, but oftentimes your missions boil down to vehicle fights that get trapped in a loop of locking on and grabbing pick-ups as necessary while on-foot activities tend to involve walking around and turning into characters mostly just to enter more places to walk around in. Unique and compelling goals do crop up on occasion and some early work customizing your ride does lead to some satisfying pay-offs, but the bulk of the errands you are sent on across Scrapland feel incredibly samey because your abilities are most often tested in fairly basic or bland ways.

 

And so, I give American McGee Presents Scrapland for Xbox…

A BAD rating. Scrapland’s world feels like a wonderful host for the kind of game it wants to be, but the approach to mission and action design ends up letting down the setting. Being able to turn into almost everyone you meet opens up a lot of room for fun interactions but the game has very little imagination on implementing that, often using identities more like keys to enter certain areas and sometimes making the more involved ones like imitating Messengers to send fake messages annoying with how much you’re under constant assault with no recourse but running during that segment. When you’re out flying your custom vehicle though there are at least more moments where the game can put together successful racing missions or some combat with decent balance so it’s not just your usual shoot-and-grab-pick-ups affair. More often than not though you’ll be sent on some trust-earning mission by a new character that rolls out more basic battles and the crazy bets are often checklist-type goals with similar ideas like killing a certain amount of robots around town. Even when it does try to whip up something more creative though it sometimes fumbles with ideas like trying to stay close to a vehicle to scan it but the distance required is so close and everyone can move in all directions so it drags until things finally happen to work out, and one escort mission near the game’s end has a character so dumb they’ll get lost even while you’re a few meters away and in seeing distance. A final boss fight that also serves to remind you how bad most weapon types are against a competent foe just rubs in that some areas like the vehicle customization are stymied by the realities of the battle system in place, but at least having some considerations like balancing costs and the purpose of the craft give it some life so it’s not just piling all the best stuff onto one machine.

 

Scrapland needed to expand its mission variety to thrive, the setting in a sound spot for hosting an interesting action experience that brings some conceptual creativity even if the imagination didn’t always bleed into the mission design. Developer MercurySteam got their start with this game so some rough edges might be expected but executive producer American McGee had many major games behind him like Doom, Quake, and American McGee’s Alice by this point. Notably though, all of those games were ones with direct involvement from him while he characterizes his involvement here more as a name attached to draw eyes to the product. Some more guidance from his expertise might have helped hone this scrappy experience into something polished and refined, but its failings are at least more in regards to mission monotony and shallow ability variation, the world still rich enough it could have been a solid platform for a unique action adventure.