Enlight and Mercury Steam's Scrapland is a surprisingly vibrant and open ended gaming experience that offers a variety of different activities in a world populated entirely by robots. There's an obvious reason why American McGee (Best known as the creator of American McGee's Alice and for his work on Quake, Quake 2, Doom and Doom 2 - and currently working on a game version of the popular Oz story) would want to attach himself as Executive Producer to this project being created by a hodge podge team made up of former Blade PC and Xbox developers - this game has that special something. Perhaps it is the total sum of its parts, or the quirky characters, or the various activities or the setting - but what ever it is - we like it and we think you'll like it too.

In Scrapland players take on the role of a robot who has made his way into the floating colony of Chimera. After being decontaminated, D-Tritus is freshly assigned the job of a reporter right before a series of murders take place in the sprawling metropolis created by - and for - robots. The world, once inhabited by humans, was long since abandoned by that filthy race, and rebuilt by its leftover citizens. As D-Tritus first familiarizes himself with this strange and wonderful new world he meets a series of quirky characters around Chimera and finds himself in the middle of a series complicated and amusing situations. Luckily for him, and for the player, there's a lot to do in Scrapland and no time limit to do it all in.

In about the first hour of play it becomes blatantly obvious that there are a lot of activities to partake in. One of Scrapland's greatest strengths is the open ended nature of the gameplay and the myriad of activities players can partake in. Players can build their own ships by collecting and buying (or borrowing) parts; transform themselves into 15 of the game's chracters to gain special abilities and access to areas they wouldn't normally have access to, race against other robots for fun, attack other drivers and battle it out with the police, or players can simply go around town engaging in a myriad of illegal activities or exploring the world to their hearts' content.

There is a main story arch to follow but the game implements it in a way that isn't too pushy - you do what you want and if there's something important you can take the "i'll get to it later" mentality if you wish (though the characters involved in motivating you to go somewhere for something tend to do so with frequency. The other striking thing about the game is its cast of characters. Players can talk to just about every character in the game, and most have multiple conversation trees keeping the adventure portion of the game pretty entertaining. Many of the characters serve some sort of function and dying is a relatively painless affair save the tithe you'll have to pay.

There have been a lot of comparisons to Grand Theft Auto from many in the media, but Scrapland isn't simply a stolen game concept. The game has its own unique flavor and only shares a few similarities with Rockstar's popular action series. Perhaps the comparison is because of the game's combat and racing aspects and it's open ended game world, but don't be fooled by the comparison - Scrapland truly is a unique and new experience.

In the early parts of the game players will find themselves conversing with all the major and minor characters in the game, learning how the game functions (i.e. using the myriad of devices to do things like travel), navigating through the sprawling metropolis, building a speedy racer complete with hardcore armaments and earning the ability to transform into the different specialty characters to gain their abilities. This ability, along with the racing and combat aspects (the game uses a basic WASD configuration on the PC for control), are probably the most enjoyable parts of the game, though gamers will find the adventure portion of the game and the story very entertaining as well.

Scrapland's real hook, from a presentation stand-point, is that it combines light and dark humor, Tim Burton-esque character design, and a bright and colorful world filled with all kinds of on-going activity. The characters in the game are amusing and the game does a nice job of giving each a personality that isn't too far over the top. Scrapland is a decent looking game, and though it still needs to be polished in a few areas before it is released to the masses in November, the game offers a pretty decent looking world, fully animated characters and special effects that make the experience complete. If I could complain about anything in the game at this point, I would have to point to a small bit of the game's dialogue and voice acting which needs a bit more polish before it hits retail. Other than that one minor caveat, Scrapland in its current form has a high production value and is very playable.

Scrapland is poised to surprise a lot of people that own a PC or an Xbox this November. With its open-ended world and gameplay, cool character design, bright and colorful graphics and twitch-based single-player and multiplayer action (for both PC and on Xbox Live), Scrapland has the potential to please a lot of gamers looking for a game – contrary to what you've already read about it elsewhere - that brings something entirely new to the table.

You can learn more about this promising game at www.scrapland.com . A playable demo is also available.