Ant’s Rant: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game

Scott Pil­grim is a 6-part graphic novel series that recently con­cluded with the release of the live action film adap­ta­tion and a comic tie-in game. The final vol­ume of the novel series released at the end of July of 2010 while the movie was released in the mid­dle and the game at the end of August (The Playsta­tion 3 ver­sion released first in the mid­dle of the month while the Xbox 360 ver­sion released towards the end). This is a down­load­able game that only costs $10 (or 800 Microsoft Points). This is a great value con­sid­er­ing most down­load­able games release at $15 (1200MSP) or more. Is it so cheap because it’s only worth some pocket scratch, or is it actu­ally a very good deal wor­thy of the price? Read on to find out.

The Scott Pil­grim series is filled to the brim with clas­sic gam­ing ref­er­ences and prides itself in pro­vid­ing a world which abides by many of the rules of games most of us have played before. Even the back cov­ers of some of the graphic nov­els had fake screen­shots of Scott Pil­grim video games. Lots of pixel art ver­sions of char­ac­ters and loca­tions and such which made the fans think “Man, what if this really was a game? That’d be sweet.” Well, now we have the game and it def­i­nitely is sweet. This is a 2D sidescrolling beat em up with a lev­el­ing sys­tem and coin-dropping ene­mies that is basi­cally a big homage to River City Ran­som. It’s 4 player co-op with a large empha­sis on coop­er­a­tive play. You could play this game with your friends and never help each other, but you will find that the already dif­fi­cult game (EVEN ON EASY MODE!) will kick all of your asses until you sur­ren­der and decide to play as a team. When a friend is down, you can revive him. Low on health? Have a team mate give you some of his health. Want to clear out an area quickly? Use a team taunt spe­cial attack. Need some cash to buy an upgrade or some health? Have a friend lend you some. You can also call in an assist to help for a sec­ond. One assist dazes any oppo­nents nearby, another attacks indi­vid­ual oppo­nents at ran­dom with mas­sive dam­age, another bick­ers at the oppo­nents until they run away. Each char­ac­ter has their own spe­cial and their own assist, with more assists unlock­able through­out the game. There are even some hid­den game modes you can unlock using some classic-style cheat codes.

To keep faith­ful to the comics, the game’s set­tings are all pix­e­lated copies of set­tings from the books. The game’s graphic design was taken care of by Paul Robert­son, who is best known for Pirate Baby’s Cabana Bat­tle Street Fight and Kings of Power 4 Bil­lion %. Paul Robert­son is an amaz­ing pixel art ani­ma­tor, and I still can’t believe Ubisoft could even get the guy to work on this game. Tasked to take the graphic novel, pix­e­late it, and turn it into an inter­ac­tive clas­sic gam­ing homage, he pulled it off per­fectly. It feels very much like I’m play­ing a Super Nin­tendo or old school arcade game. Hav­ing never worked on a game before, it shows that he fits the role of a video game pixel ani­ma­tor very well. It’s like he was made to do this kind of work. He did an amaz­ing job and I hope to see him work on other games soon.

The sound­track, done by New York’s chip­tune rock god Ana­managuchi, sounds like it was pulled straight from the early 90’s. All of the musi­cal pieces in this game are works of chip­tune art. It all sounds like it belongs in a clas­sic video game, and this com­pli­ments the game’s pix­e­lated art style so well that it cre­ates the per­fect homage to clas­sic gam­ing that the Scott Pil­grim series always tried to be. Full of rock and energy, but com­pletely syn­the­sized and using only sound qual­ity you’d find from music no later than the mid-90’s, I couldn’t ask for a bet­ter soundtrack.

Graph­i­cally and musi­cally, this game is a treat for any­one who’s ever enjoyed gam­ing in the 90’s. Just because the graph­ics and the music may be bright and uplift­ing, that doesn’t mean the game is going to be a cake walk. Play­ing this alone on easy mode made me want to throw my con­trol before even reach­ing the first boss fight! This game is a tor­turer, and it only gets eas­ier through rep­e­ti­tion and play­ing with friends, as you keep get­ting money to buy upgrades and keep lev­el­ing your char­ac­ter up. The game con­tin­ues to get more chal­leng­ing as you go along, so you never feel like you’re too over­pow­ered and the won’t become too easy. The only way it’ll get eas­ier is if you go back to pre­vi­ous stages with a higher level char­ac­ter. The dif­fi­culty con­tin­u­ously scales up but doesn’t explode until the final boss fight. Even with friends and a maxed out char­ac­ter, the final boss stretch is designed to be a royal pain wor­thy of rage­quit­ting. Not only do you have to fight the boss more than once, but you have to go through an entire stage after he’s defeated with no save point any­where except before you go to fight the boss! That means if you’re unlucky enough to have to use a con­tinue, you have to start from the begin­ning of the level all over again, before reach­ing the final boss and the final stretch of the level. This game is a BRUISER and that makes me very happy. Noth­ing upsets me more than a short game (yes, it is rel­a­tively short with only about 13 lev­els and 6 or 7 boss fights) that is way too easy. Even if it was easy and short, that’s still be worth the $10 I paid for it. My only real com­plaint is that, in keep­ing with the clas­sic gam­ing rou­tine of hav­ing friends sit on the couch and play with you, Ubisoft opted to avoid the inclu­sion of online mul­ti­player. While i under­stand the rea­son­ing behind it, I would’ve loved to at least have the option.

Judg­ing by the humor, the music, the graph­ics, the chal­lenge, and how faith­fully it stuck to the source mate­r­ial, I have to say this is well worth more than $10 (but no more than $20) and is a must have for any­one who likes break­ing out the old con­soles when you have friends over. There’s too much fun to be had here to pass up on it. The only rea­son I’d allow for any­one to pass it up is the exclu­sion of online multiplayer.

Ant

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