Wait, what year is it?
The developers of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game are obviously massive fans of retro beat-em-up’s and have created a extremely faithful clone of River City Ransom right down to the early 90’s cliches. As first impressions go Scott Pilgrim is fascinating due to it’s commitment to bringing an old school game to a new era, but Scott Pilgrim may adhere slightly too much to the retro game feel, ironically including many of the flaws that those Video Games it’s inspired by had.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is based on the comic series of the same name, but the story stays very much in the background compared to the action. The goal of the game is to kick, punch, throw, pummel and explode anyone who stands in your way; which is no doubt very appealing to Beat em’ up fans.
As the title suggests you play as Scott, who’s given his 8-bit heart to Ramona Flowers. He then discovers that the only way he can be with Ramona is to defeat her seven evil exes (It is never explained why, but hey retro Video Games!!).There aren’t any overdrawn cutscenes explaining the story, instead the game concentrates solely on the action. If you know the Comics well there are small references scattered everywhere, so It does a good job of keeping fans of the comics satisfied whilst not taking away from the action, as most references are unobtrusive and in the background of levels. Although the story isn’t gripping, there are multiple endings to strive for, which give you a tangible reason to play through it a few times.
Scott Pilgrim has a total of Seven levels that have you traveling down a set path, kicking, punching your way to victory through multiple enemies in high octane non-stop action.
The game does a good job emphasising progression in your characters fighting ability, you begin using only basic attacking moves. But as you progress through the game your character gains more moves that you can chain together. It feels satisfying to string insane combo’s in one attack, with multiple enemies feeling the wrath of your mega combo’s, especially in the later levels of the game.
Even with this possibility of vast amounts of combinations the pace of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World does seem slow at points, particularly at the start of the game, and it could’ve benefited from more speed in certain areas.
The game doesn’t hide it’s old school affection either, featuring all the same game mechanics that made those games great, but with light modern updates such as blur effects to make your punches seem more powerful.
As enjoyable as it is to mindlessly bash through wave after wave of enemies, you’re going to have to grind to get through later stages; especially if you’re playing on your own. Hitting the controller as hard as possible will only get you so far, as the enemies become increasingly difficult in numbers. If you’re playing with friends, you have the advantage over players on their own, as you can swoop and bring other players back to life if they lose all of their health. This can also be a difficult task as it takes a few seconds to help a fallen ally, and in that time you can be attacked by the aggressive foes. Scott Pilgrim is I feel at it’s best in two-player mode, but if you go forth with four players, you are in a different world. It’s difficult to keep track of what’s going on with so many characters and enemies onscreen, so it turns into a maddening, button-mashing muddle and yeah sure I know some will love that so enjoy.
Money you earn from battering your foes lets you buy apparel and food (both of which boost your character stats) but disappointingly there’s no way to tell what stats will get boosted until after you’ve laid your money down, except the very small caption giving you a vague hint what each item might do. All items available add something to your character, even if it’s a minor hit point upgrade - and a lot of hit points are essential to make it through later levels.
Scott Pilgrim may have the appearance of being easy with unlimited continues, but trust me, it’s seriously brutal. Even on the lowest difficulty setting (Average Joe), I had to grind through later levels over and over again, earning money for new upgrades just to be able to survive long enough to make it to the Boss. It was encouraging then, due to this tough difficulty to use cheap tactics like spamming certain moves continuously or trapping thugs in corners. As effective as it was, for me it’s never a satisfying way to play.
The games look and sound are what make this game playable. The hand-drawn characters are nicely detailed and smoothly animated, The backgrounds encompass a wide variety of different environments, from the snow-covered streets of Toronto to a Zombie-filled graveyard, though the colour palette is at times a little dull. The charming, cartoony pixel-art evokes retro games perfectly, encapsulating even the imperfections of that time, and the 16-bit sounds of Anamanaguchi’s chiptune are a key highlight of what the game best has to offer. The visual and sound presentation go a long way toward making Scott Pilgrim stand out from similar games, but it’s visibility issues hamper your fun. It’s not always clear what’s going on, especially with four players and groups of enemies on screen at once, and makes for blocking incoming enemy attacks almost impossible giving the player at times a real sense of frustration in that it could be so much more enjoyable.
While the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World seem to be on-par, I experienced a fairly crippling issue with the Xbox 360 version of the game throughout my playing time of a few hours, It seems that there is a problem with the game completely seizing up a random points during play, with no apparent trigger for this issue. I didn’t get to try the game on another 360, but just by looking at the feedback from others online this doesn’t seem to be limited to just my Xbox 360, so If you’re looking at buying the Xbox 360 version of the game, you might want to wait for a patch that hopefully will address this issue, as It’s an extremely annoying to be beating a tricky boss only to be rewarded by a major system crash.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The world should be undemanding fun, but it’s technical and in-game flaws are highlighted due to it’s obsessive admiration of by-gone retro classics. It has a nice comic book/NES-style vibe throughout that is sincerely faithful, with great music and it’s visual style good at points, it’s the lack of online co-op and high number of issues that make Scott Pilgrim vs. the World far from perfect unless you’re still living in 1990!
By Robb
