American McGee's Scrapland Hands-On preview

[CrazyHarij]

ActionTrip recently posted a preview on the game Scrapland, a promising humoristic game by Mercury Steam Entertainment.

Scrapland is a 3D sci-fi action adventure set on the world of Chimera - a refuge for robots of all shapes and sizes where no humans are allowed. You arrive at the planet as an outsider by the name of D-Tritus, looking for work and a warm cup of mercury (it's what robots drink on Chimera). Soon enough, you land a job working as a reporter assigned to investigate a series of murders. One thing leads to another and the next thing you know, you are caught in a web of lies and intrigue, trying to untangle a dynamic and non-linear plot.

The game is using a heavily modified version of the Quake 3 (!) engine,
but it looks very good and uses pixel shaders and other eyecandy such as motion blur, heat haze and bloom effects.

Check out the official site at http://www.scrapland.com/

What do you think of it? It seems to be very non-linear and cool in my opinion, I've always had a thing for science fiction adventure games.

 

[theGreenBunny]

Hmm, looking quite nice. I'll be sure to keep an eye on it.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Sounds good, looks nice too, but I prefered his Alice style, that was just great work.

 

[Dux]

His name is enough to ensure good sales.

 

[The Dark Elf]

His name is enough to ensure good sales.

yeah.. wasn't he doing a Wizard of Oz game though, Alice style?

 

[Adabiviak]

I'm about a day into Scrapland and it's a very fun game. To be sure, there are things to complain about as well as rave about, but overall I find it very enjoyable. Do you remember how ChexQuest was a "clean" Doom mod made so Chex cereal could use it to market to kids? Scrapland is like a "clean" GTA (in 3D). Nobody dies in ChexQuest - bad guys are teleported back to their own dimention. Nobody dies in Scrapland (with a couple of exceptions that are part of the plot) - victims are brought back to live in the Great Database. Crooked cops. Non linear game play. (Let me qualify that a little. Any game with a story is by definition linear - some games have more flexibility as to how you follow the line, some offer a couple of different lines, but these must all be followed to progress).

I do not like racing games at all, but the racing parts of this game are fun. You have a laser "whip" that attaches to nearby objects and, when connected, accelerates you to the anchor point. If you don't let go at the right time, you'll slow down, stop, and get sucked back to the anchor point. If you time it right, you can "crack the whip" around corners and do some very impressive driving. If you get behind, you can "lasso" the guy in front of you and slingshot past him With a properly timed boost, you can effectively compete with opponents that have faster vehicles.

I'm also impressed by the game engine. The environment is absolutely gorgeous and there can be a lot of other characters running / flying around at the same time without lagging the game at high graphic settings. My rig is pretty good, though, but the engine is still noteworthy for what it does. If you liked the demo, you'll probably like the game. There are way more worlds in the game than the one world in the demo, too.

 

[MarcoPollo]

Alice was one of my favorite games ever.

 

[B-MAn]

Yeh they;ve done a great job with the engine