nice review meta. i played it and no online coop really was a deal breaker for me not to buy it
Scott Pilgrim the Game review
Game Review | September 8, 2010 9:09 pm
By Meta
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the Game is a 2d side-scrolling beat ‘em up developed by Ubisoft Montreal with Ubisoft Chengdu and published by Ubisoft. It is loosely based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley and the film of the same name. It is available on Xbox Live Arcade for 800ms points.
Scott is a 23-year old slacker who plays bass in the band Sex Bob-omb. He is joined by Kim Pines the drummer and Stephen Stills the guitarist and singer. The fourth playable character is Ramona Flowers, the potential love interest who is plagued by her seven evil exes. In order to date her, Scott and company must battle the evil exes and this is where the game starts.
The game doesn’t present much in the way of story, with only brief cut scenes and most dialogue consisting of anime-inspired emotes like !_! and >_<. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the comics then you might not understand what’s going on, but that’s just fine because the gameplay is the real star here.
At their core, the controls are the usual basics for a beat ‘em up--there are light and heavy attacks and buttons for blocking and jumping. As you defeat enemies, you gain experience which increases your character’s level and opens up new moves. By the time you hit the cap at 16, you will have air stomps, counters, special tech moves, and a few fun combos.
There are a ton of items in the environment that can be picked up and swung or thrown at enemies. The game does kind of a sloppy job implementing them, though, as many do less damage than your regular moves and items that are thrown or knocked around can bowl your character over and hurt way too much.
Defeated enemies also drop money which is used to purchase food, drinks and other items that increase your character’s stats. This is important because leveling up only increases moves. All stats are useful but you’ll definitely want more STR; also, SPD will make you stand up faster.
Besides powering your striker and super moves, guts points are also kind of a health reserve for your character. When all your health is depleted, GP can be used to recover some HP. In multiplayer, your friends can mash B by your character to bring them back to life for free, and if you all perform a taunt at the same time it unleashes a massive band performance attack that does good area damage at the cost of some GP.
The first thing many players and reviews will tell you is that this game is similar to River City Ransom. This is correct in that it is mostly brawling and you can collect money and level up, but it only tells part of the story. Scott Pilgrim creates a unique experience because of the way it adds humor and makes many nods to anime and popular video games. Super Mario World, Contra, Guitar Hero, TMNT arcade, Street Fighter, Legend of Zelda and many others are parodied.
There are 3 difficulty levels to the game, and they mainly affect the toughness of enemies as well as their aggressiveness. The amount of money dropped stays the same, as do the level cap of 16 and the max 100 in each stat. Veteran gamers may be tempted to play on Hard right out of the gate but this makes for a difficult and tedious experience until you have gained new moves and raised your stats, especially STR, so I would recommend you start on Easy or Medium until then, even if you have friends playing with you.
Speaking of friends playing with you, Scott Pilgrim makes a grave error--there is no online multiplayer. You can have up to 4 people but only in local co-op, so I hope you have friends nearby. This game is much more fun with friends, and there are nice conceits to this like the ability to share money and optional friendly damage. Even with it turned off, you will probably hit each other with items frequently, and this makes for some hilarious moments.
The big battles against mid-level bosses and the Evil Exes at the end of levels are great fun and the highlight of the experience. Each boss has its own special move set and patterns and are pretty difficult until you get the hang of them, and they recalls the glory days of video game action.
Along with the constant brawling, there are some light plat forming sections in certain levels, and these can be a fun challenge or frustrating damage sinks depending on how you approach them. There are also mini-game challenges that pop up and reward good performance with extra money.
The visuals of Scott Pilgrim are awesome if you’re a fan of pixel art. The art direction is handled by Paul Robertson who puts his signature style in the design and animation of everything from the playable characters and NPCs to the levels themselves. If you haven’t seen his short films, Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 and Kings of Power 4 Billion %, you are seriously missing out--any fan of games and/or anime needs to watch them.
The soundtrack is equally awesome. The chip tune punk-rock band Anamanaguchi wrote and performed the original songs and, besides being awesome in their own right, they go perfectly with the gameplay. I would like to have seen some of the tracks from the movie show up but that’s nitpicking.
Overall, I give Scott Pilgrim the Game an 8. It provides a nice amount of fun gameplay and offers good playability. The $10 price point is also nice. It loses major points for the lack of online multiplayer, though. Also, if you are only going to be playing this solo, you can knock the score down to a 7 because it just isn’t as good alone.
Extras: Scott Pilgrim doesn’t come with any unlockable gamerpics, themes or avatar awards. It does have an unlockable 5th character with a 6th to come later alongside the DVD release, and there are numerous cheat codes that enable extra play modes like Survival Horror and Boss Rush and don’t disable Achievements.
Achievements: you will get 3 or 4 Achievements just from playing through the game once. There is an achievement that requires you resuscitate friendly players 25 times, but you can do this alone with a second controller if need be. There is also an Achievement for completing the game solo on the hardest difficulty, and one for unlocking and using every striker summon. Overall nothing is too difficult but it will take some grinding to max out stats, and getting the last achievement will require beating the game on any difficulty with each of the 4 main characters.
Rating: 8.0 of 10
Reviewed: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game
Keywords: scott pilgrim, oni press, ubisoft, bryan lee o'malley, ubisoft montreal; review
