Scott Pilgrim is having a bit of a media explosion at the moment. It’s gone from an independent comic (started in 2004) that I had only heard about in passing, to a franchise that the entire internet seems to be talking about (both positively and negatively) with a movie and a videogame released last week.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is an old-school brawler through and through. You and up to three local friends (sorry, no online multiplayer) play as either Scott, Ramona, Kim, or Stills and get to punching and kicking your way through each of the game’s stages.

At first, the game feels overly simplistic. Thankfully, as you defeat more and more enemies, you’ll level up. Every time you level up, you gain a new ability. This adds a much needed sense of progression and depth. Throughout the course of the game, you’ll learn counter-attacks, dodge rolls, double jumps, and other classic moveset staples.

Learning new abilities gives you an added incentive to progress, and the game gets better each time you get one. In fact, when starting the game over with a new character (all your leveling is saved on a per character basis), you’ll really miss the abilities you don’t yet have, like kicking enemies while they’re down.

"Each boss battle feels unique."

Strangely enough, leveling doesn’t affect your stats. To increase your character’s attack, defense, speed, and willpower you will need to purchase items in shops. Doors to shops can be found throughout the various levels.

Thankfully, the game makes revisiting shops easy. The levels are spread out on a map screen. Each level also contains a halfway marker, which is often where shops are, that you can go straight to. Once you’re done, you can hit pause and return to the map screen resulting in minimal backtracking to shop.

The shops themselves are a bit strange. You aren’t told what items do until you buy them, resulting in guess work and forcing you to keep this information in memory for later. Sometimes descriptions can help you figure it out, but more often than not they won’t.

This way of increasing stats also comes off as pretty chaotic. At one point, I bought a large number of strength enhancing items because my strength was incredibly low. The next boss I fought went down in only a few hits. He went down so fast that I thought it was a fake-out before the real boss fight. I didn’t have to grind for money to do this. I can’t help but feel that a more guided stat increasing system would’ve made the game more balanced.

"There are tons of classic gaming references around every corner."

The level design, enemies, and boss fights provide a great sense of variety. I never felt that the assets were used ad nauseam. Each stage is a bright, colorful, and unique feeling world that throws new enemies at you regularly. The levels are also of decent length, often greatly changing the scenery within a single stage.

Paul Robertson’s art direction is fantastic. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is a constant treat to look at. The quality of the sprite-work reminds me of how impressed I was when I first saw Metal Slug. It may be intentionally blocky, but it’s also incredibly detailed, both in the drawings themselves and in how they’re animated.

You’ll find tons of references to classic gaming. From Scott’s hurricane kick to Kim floating away on a star at the end of the level, you won’t go a minute playing this game without seeing a barrage of playful nods to gaming’s past. If you are a classic gamer, there’s a lot to appreciate here.

The soundtrack definitely deserves mentioning. The entire score is done by Anamanaguchi, a band with a unique hybrid style of punk rock and 8bit sounds. It fits with the game perfectly and mirrors the game’s entire feeling of “old, yet new” with great success.

There are a few unfortunate quirks. Unlike the arcade games that inspired it, players can’t drop in and out, meaning if a buddy shows up and wants to play, they have to wait till you’re starting a level. It’s not too big of a deal, but as I mentioned, the levels can be quite long.

I’ve also ran into an occasional glitch where, despite defeating all enemies, the level does not progress. It only happened once or twice, but given that I’ve heard multiple other people talk about the same problem, I feel it is worth mentioning.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is a very competent brawler with charm oozing out of every orifice. It may not be as deep in certain regards as a brawler like Castle Crashers, but there’s definitely enough there to keep the game from getting stale. And like all brawlers, it’s exponentially more fun with friends. If you do have people to play local co-op with, Scott Pilgrim manages to be a very memorable experience in a genre whose games normally blur together in my mind.

Tags: brawler, licensed games, multiplayer, ps3, psn, Scott Pilgrim, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, xbla, Xbox 360

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.