In gaming, it’s usually only when a game is set in New York City that some players can claim a game takes place in their neighbourhood. In a first for gaming, Torontonians can now make the same claim, especially those who live in a part of the city known as The Annex. Thanks to Scott Pilgrim Vs: The Game, I can now say that I’ve beaten hipsters to a pulp in my own neighbourhood and even gotten run over by a Toronto Transit Commission, but that may not make for a masterpiece of gaming, but it sure makes for a good time.
More Comic Than Movie
While Scott Pilgrim was released to coincide with the new movie (starring Brampton, Ontario native Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim himself), the look and feel of the game has much more in common with its original source material, the comic book series by Bryan Lee O’Malley. As in both works, the common plot is that Scott Pilgrim, a Gen-Y slacker, is desperately trying to date Ramona Flowers, an Amazon delivery girl.
In order to do so, he must defeat Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends, which, as you might expect from a comic that takes its structure from video games, translates effortlessly back into video game form. However, due to the short, unvoiced nature of the cutscenes, players unfamiliar with the comic may find the interludes confusing at best and downright incomprehensible at worst. The game assumes that if you’re playing this, you know the story and don’t need to be told.
The game’s art direction is deliberately, unapologetically retro, with a 16-bit look reminiscent of the ’90s arcade scene and consoles like the Genesis and Super Nintendo. The colors are bright, and the backgrounds have a surprising amount of authenticity for the city of Toronto, with little details like the circular bike racks and the seats on the streetcars accurately, if stylistically, nailed. Scott and friends are rendered in a slightly more cartoony style than the actual comic, but still retain a Japanese-inspired, manga-esque look that is consistent with the fact that the game is an old-school Japanese brawler.
“Scott Pilgrim v The World: The Game is a solid, entertaining game that is guaranteed to appeal to a specific audience.”
The audio goes back even further than the game’s 16-bit look to the 8-bit era of the Nintendo Entertainment System with a track provided by Anamanaguchi. The band has earned a reputation for producing sound through a hacked NES and GameBoy while layering regular instruments on top, and it works beautifully with Scott Pilgrim‘s simpler sound effects. Older gamers will also recognize many of the audio sound effects from classic games like Super Mario Bro and Sonic The Hedgehog. In other words, Scott Pilgrim, true to its retro-game roots, is itself masquerading as a retro game.
Toronto City Ransom
Scott Pilgrim is essentially River City Ransom updated for the 21st century. The brutal, often merciless mechanics of the old-school brawler have been meticulously recreated for a gameplay experience that is at odds with its presentation. While it looks and sounds light and fluffy, the actual game itself will slaughter those who are unprepared, as did many games of the late 80s and 90s. In this regard, the game is not necessarily for everyone, as contemporary gamers will likely find themselves surprised and overwhelmed by the game’s steep difficulty curve.
Older gamers who remember the brutal difficulty of older games will find a certain cruel familiarity with the experience, and seasoned retro gamers will also feel right at home. Others, however, may find even the game’s easiest setting too difficult for the kind of interactive experiences they are accustomed to today. There’s no hand-holding in Scott Pilgrim; it will take the uninitiated, chew them up, and spit them out.
As with River City Ransom, there are RPG-lite elements to add depth to a game that is essentially “run from left to right while punching everything in your path”. The homage to RCR is so loving that even features such as the “secret shop under the bridge”, which contains the game’s best stat-boosting items, have been recreated.
The bizarre physics of RCR also return, with players able to punch or kick objects with the potential to bounce endlessly between points. This also means that players can team up with enemies to juggle them endlessly if the timing is right, simply by punching or kicking an enemy back and forth between them as long as they can maintain a rhythm. This opens up some unique opportunities for strategic yet comical combat that even carries over into boss fights.
“There’s no hand-holding in Scott Pilgrim, it will take the uninitiated, chew them up and spit them out.”
And make no mistake; this is a multiplayer game. Whether you’re playing alone or with a full crew, the game never seems to increase the number of enemies it throws at you, so what was once insurmountable as a solo effort becomes much more manageable with more friends to help you out. There are even co-op attacks when all players manage to initiate a taunt at the same time, with Scott and friends going into band mode for a Musical super-attack. All this emphasis on co-op play makes some of the game’s design choices all the more bizarre.
In what must be a mixture of old-school authenticity and scheduling issues, Scott Pilgrim allows for one to four players in a strictly local co-op mode, with no drop-in/drop-out gameplay. While the game is best enjoyed with as many people as possible, expecting a household to have four controllers is a bit of a stretch. Not allowing new people to join unless the current session ends is-although authentic to the old-school console experience-a major inconvenience. There are also reports of instability. During the course of the review, the game froze twice, requiring a complete restart of the system, but others have cited more frequent occurrences.
Scott Pilgrim v The World: The Game is a solid, entertaining game with that is guaranteed to appeal to a specific audience. That audience is retro-gamers, older gamers of the NES era, and fans of Scott Pilgrim who are actually good at video game For everyone else, the difficulty may be an issue, and for gamers used to a world with connected to the internet, the unforgiving nature of the game combined with the lack of online play may be deal breaker But if you’re one of the demographics mentioned above, this is one the more pleasant surprises of the summer and well worth your time.
