GTCknight's review of Scott Pilgrim
First things first, this game is going to reference multiple 8-bit games and at least in my opinion one anime, more on that later. Second, I should point out that while I can (and did) find the majority of the games that are referenced there were some that I can only say due to Jeff’s and Brad’s quick look (River City Ransom).
Now then let’s begin. The very first thing anyone is going to notice right off the bat are the Mario references that Scott Pilgrim has, the world and character select menus are all call backs to those games. However the actual gameplay follows the rules of brawlers (most notably River City Ransom) anybody and everybody who has ever played any brawlers will feel right at home. Most of the enemy’s you will encounter in the game not only follow a Final Fightish look (as in they all look the same), they’ll eventually begin to become hard to deal with due to their rare ability to phase through your attacks and hit you.
The sound and music of Scott Pilgrim will easily catch your attention with obviously 8-bit tunes. The music is very well timed and never came off as annoying while I was playing; in fact I found it rather enjoyable. However, it should be noted that whenever I had left one world and reentered another (usually the shopping district for me), the music and pretty much all sound would stop playing until I had ran up and hit some dude. The graphics of Scott Pilgrim are, well there like really clean looking 16-bit sprites. The game does seem to have trouble handling certain things though; I have encountered multiple Screen Tears.
At last the gameplay of Scott Pilgrim just might be its most flawed area (due to no fault of it's own). The game realizes heavily on the 360 D-pad which as anyone is more than willing to tell you isn’t that well made or useful. Often times I found myself struggling just to get Scott to run in any direction, however, I was able to find a way around (quick tip go to the options menu) some of that pain. While this helped a great deal fighting still feels a bit like a royal pain. Most of the time you’ll just spend time grinding both your money (in order to buy extra lives and other useful goodies) and XP so you can learn new moves. Most of the humor from Scott Pilgrim comes from all of the reference material they have and use. The bosses in the game make great examples of this kind of humor two great examples of this would be Todd (vegan powers: the anime Akira) and the Twin Dragons (being Japanese: the videogame Double Dragon) these are just some of the ridiculous bosses that you will have to fight in Scott Pilgrim. One last thing to mention is the complete and utter lack of online co-op the game only features players 1-4 local only.
In all I had (and still am) having a good time playing Scott Pilgrim. I would highly recommend this game to anyone. I myself knew only what I saw in theaters (haven’t read the comics) so I can’t say much in the way of there accuracy in terms of the comics or anything Scott Pilgrim related. But it does feel good seeing a Todd give me the finger again and an again.
