Starting off the new year with a genre I grew up loving and seems to be making a subtle comeback. The beat’em up genre had plentiful games released in 2022, particularly the amazing “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge.” Now at the beginning of this new year I am surprised with a new title called “Scrap Riders.” Developed by Games for Tutti and released on the Nintendo Switch as well as PC (Steam), this little action game is done in great pixel art fashion, like many in the genre. The developers are no strangers to doing pixel art, their previous game, “Vaccine War” was also a pixelated tale, perhaps even simpler in design. What makes “Scrap Riders” stand out the most though is that it’s also a point-and-click adventure. Two genres I expected to not work well together, but in this game are done in a very entertaining and organic way.
Set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future, which seemingly looks heavily influenced by both Mad Max and even Blade Runner. You play as Rast who is part of a biker gang called the Scrap Riders. Doing odd jobs where you can, primarily as a smuggler, you and your gang seem to do whatever they can to survive in these wastelands. All of which is thrown into a very light, if not crude tone. The game does it’s very best to be funny and occasionally there will be a joke that lands, but this humor could have used a few more people critiquing the script to really strengthen the overall silly vibe set in this world. Having other people look at the script would also benefit the game in another way, seeing as how I noticed several grammatical errors in the dialogue while playing.
Story and writing aside, the gameplay itself is what really drew me in. I found it really cool being able to walk around levels in a point-and-click style adventure, furthering the story with puzzles. Albeit many of the puzzles are fairly simple and straightforward, mainly consisting of finding and combining items. Though the pixel design and the silly story kept me intrigued, what really had my attention is how well they spaced out the beat’em up elements throughout the story to mix things up and to keep my attention. Brawling enemies is quite fun, especially with a rage meter that, when full, really helps you unleash a lot of damage. I couldn’t help but be brought back to older titles of the genre like Battle Toads and Double Dragon, though the gameplay is mostly on the simple side, it’s all pure mayhem and fun. The industrial synth pixel musical score is also pretty dang great and works really well in this cyberpunk world.
“Scrap Riders” is far from perfect, there are a lot of glaring omissions, such as a lack of any sort of multiplayer, which for a game like this should be obvious to do. It’s a very unfortunate and huge missed opportunity that hopefully the developers will learn from in their future games (assuming they’re doing another game similar to this). I also wish there was some voice acting in here instead of just word boxes. Aside from the issues I mentioned, “Scrap Riders” is a tight little package that is certainly worth checking out.
7/10
For more information, visit: http://www.microids.com
Related: Nick Navarro Reviews
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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