There’s only so much that can be done with the cars with various destructive weapons theme, but Scrap Metal explores some possibilities and is a solid choice to pull out when your casual gaming friends come over. It supports up to four players both local and online. Unfortunately there’s no way for more than one local player to go online, even if the other players also have an Xbox Live account so if there’s only two of you playing locally, you’re stuck with the computer players.

On the upside, you don’t have to unlock any of the tracks or vehicles in single player mode before you can have access to them in multiplayer mode: all tracks and any vehicles specific to them are unlocked so you have a nice variety of landscapes to explore and use to your benefit as you destroy others. The usual choices of gameplay are race and derby, or some variation of both. Some tracks have unique gameplay options available, such as the gasoline war mode only available to the coal harbor racetrack and airboat races only available in the wetlands track. Vehicles range from the aforementioned gasoline trucks that shoot out fire from its tail to bulldozers with rotating spikes that entrap vehicles until they are junk.

One gripe I have is with the design of some of the levels: screen space is not always utilized in the best way and this becomes even more apparent and bothersome in local co-opt mode when you have to share the screen with your friends. One of the racetracks has a giant blimp that takes up most of the screen depending on where you stand, which you can’t avoid from the set overhead viewpoint, and others occasionally have bulky buildings that take up the screen and hide your vehicle. I have to assume the developers did this on purpose to make the game more challenging since I can’t imagine that they would have failed to notice this, however it just gets really annoying when four people are sharing a screen and you can’t see where your vehicle is half the time.

The controls are not particularly intuitive and can get frustrating to use, especially if you’re stuck with a vehicle with bad handling—which is the case with most of the vehicles. Racing mode on the harder tracks quickly loses its appeal with casual gamers and you may find your friends resorting to just shooting at each for fun while completely ignoring what lap they’re supposed to be on.

The derby mode however, doesn’t require much skill to have a good time. It’s not particularly hard to crash your vehicle into others, and gets pretty satisfying after you wreck a few of your friends’ vehicles in a row.

Scrap Metal’s single player mode is not particularly interesting beyond the aspect of collecting the cars of opponents you’ve destroyed and customizing them with various paintjobs (or giant donuts) and upgrades. You begin with only the garage track unlocked and must complete fairly ho-hum missions that alternate repetitively between races and derbies. Each mission you complete earns you upgrade points that you can spend on the vehicles in your junkyard.

As much as I love spending time in games customizing my gear, Scrap Metal’s system of upgrading is frustrating. Most vehicles can only be upgraded about one or two times in each area like speed, grip, armor, and firepower before its capabilities are maxed out and it is more productive to just replace it with a newly won vehicle. I hate spending my upgrade points on a vehicle I know is only good for one or two missions. That and there’s only room for four vehicles at a time: the game really encourages to you spend all your upgrade points as you get them on each succession of better cars.

Despite some of its flaws, Scrap Metal is a good game to have around for when your friends come over: it is entertaining enough to hold the interest of more hardcore gamers, and very approachable for casual ones.