Scrap Metal released last week as the second title of the Xbox Live Arcade Block Party. Scrap Metal is a combat racing game with a top down camera angle. You start off with a single, pretty junky car and as you progress through the levels you unlock up to 20 cars that can be customized, upgraded, and modified. At any given time you can have four of the unlocked cars in your garage. This adds the only element of strategy to the game as you try to keep four distinct vehicles upgraded and ready for any type of race. The rest of the game is all about the destruction you cause while racing. Graphically the game has a cartoonish style that works really well since the game does not take itself too seriously.
There are two control schemes and neither of them is perfect. The simple scheme uses the left thumb stick to control your driving direction and acceleration. It works pretty well until you want to go in reverse and you have to use the left trigger. The more advanced control scheme uses the left stick to steer while the right trigger is your gas. This is the general control scheme most racing games use but it takes some getting use to because of the overhead camera.
The 20 vehicles in the game all are fitted with a specific weapon which range from various guns to a flame thrower, chainsaw, and rockets. Each car starts out pretty trashed but you can upgrade their speed, handling, firepower, armor, and nitro. Each car has a unique maximum spec you can upgrade it to and since you can only have 4 cars in your garage it is important not to swap them out too frequently. Otherwise you’ll not have enough cash to keep them all upgraded, and without the upgrades you’re not going to be winning any races.
The races break down into a few categories. There are the standard races both with and without weapons, demolition derbies where laps do not matter, survival modes, king of the hill, and elimination races. Because of the various race modes it is important to keep a few specialized cars in your garage. One with a lot of armor and firepower for demolition and survival modes, and one that is very fast for the races.
Scrap Metal is a fun game to play with some friends, but unless you’re really into combat racing games it is hard to say that it is worth the $15 price tag. The race modes get repetitive and the controls take a lot of time to get really comfortable with. Yet, if you’ve got a group of friends who like this genre of game then it will scratch that itch nicely.
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A copy of Scrap Metal for the Xbox 360 was provided to us for this review from Microsoft Game Studios.
