Scott Pilgrim vs The World
With the last of Brian Lee O Malley’s Scott Pilgrim Comic book series released last month and Edgar Wrights feature film only a couple of weeks away, Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game hit the Playstation Network this week and due to appear on xbox arcade on August 25th. With both the comics and film heavily influenced by video games the question is how do you make a game based on a comic based on games? The answer: You make a retro styled beat ‘em up stuffed with coins, extra lives, continues, heart points, combos, co-op and game overs and hire pixel artist Paul Robertson and chiptune artists Anamanaguchi to put it all together. As well as visually being based on the Comic’s Artwork it also loosely follows the story. Scott Pilgrim is dating Romona Flowers and must defeat her seven evil-ex boyfriends, his own personal issues and everyone else he meets for that matter. The game starts off on a Super Mario World style overworld stage selection screen. From here each stage is selected. Once in a Stage you and up and to three friends playing as Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers, Stephen Stills and Kim Pine proceed to punch, kick and generally Streets of Rage your way to an end boss. All the while listening to Anamanaguchi’s top class retro score which seriously deserves an award of some kind. The whole experience is stuffed with nods to popular games, highlights including a guitar hero inspired base battle and the glitchy subspace highway.
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Several modern touches have been added to the old genre, characters gain experience for every enemy defeated which allows them to level up and gain new moves. Coins are dropped which and be collected and used in Shops, which can be entered during the levels. From here power ups can be bought in the form of books, food and bionic arms in order to buff up your stats. This isn’t just a tacked on feature either, even before the end of the first stage and on the easiest difficulty you’ll need to put some money into power ups. The enemies get much tougher very quickly and you’ll seriously start running through those lives if you don’t constantly return to the shopping district. Speaking of lives get used to using them! You start with three and at every game over screen get 3 back. In order to progress you must complete an entire area (which can include 3 zones) and defeat the boss or bosses. There’s no checkpoints between each boss so if if you run out of lives its back to the start for you! The only way to get extra lives is to either beat one specific boss character over and over again (fans of the comic will know who I mean) or to buy them at a huge price from a hidden market on the first level. At the start of a new stage I recommend getting game over on purpose if you’ve lower than three lives so they’ll be refreshed, which is silly. The game really shines when you’ve four people playing together in one room not just because it’s more fun but because it’s easier. Not that many extra enemies are added and there’s a handy revive mechanic where team mates who are still standing can button bash a fallen friend back to his feet. There are also multiplayer exclusive moves when characters work together that cause serious damage. Unfortunately for some crazy reason there’s no online co-op meaning your friends have to be present with one controller each. Overall the Scott Pilgrim vs The World shines as a wonderful nod to the games of yore that captures the spirit of its comic roots and at only €10 is well worth it. It’ll have you jumping for joy one minute and throwing the controller out a window the next. 4 buritos out of 5
Lucas Lee is Ramona’s second evil ex-boyfriend, a pro skateboarder turned movie star (and a “sell out“). Scott gets $14 in coins and a mithril skateboard (that he can’t use since he lacks askateboarding proficiency) after “defeating” him by tricking him into attempting a dangerous skateboard trick. He is named after pro skateboarder turned actor Jason Lee.
