OXCGN – Breathing Life Into Gaming

by Belgavion

© 2010 Gav Ross

For those without a finger on the pulse of pop culture, Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game is based on the recent film of the same name which relates back to the rather excellent Oni Press series of graphic novels by artist Bryan O’Malley.

The comics were always full of video game references both obvious and vague, so a Scott Pilgrim game feels like a natural evolution of the brand moving into a new realm of media. But is that  reason enough?

The large, colourful and slightly blocky sprites presented in the opening cut-scene make it immediately clear that Scott Pilgrim vs The World is here to stimulate your brain’s nostalgia lobe. It’s a loving homage to several titles from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras: the world map screams Super Mario Bros. 3 while the gameplay itself is reminiscent of Double Dragon and every other side-scrolling beat ‘em up from back in the day.

• Scott Pilrim’s Love Affair

Scott the slacker muso is propelled through 7 levels of mayhem not by any sense of revenge or redemption, but by love. His new girlfriend, Ramona, happens to have 7 belligerent ex-boyfriends waiting to bring the pain down on Scott in countless different ways.

Beginning on the snowy suburban streets of Toronto, Scott must to deal with a variety of thugs (and sometimes vicious dogs) that appear from either side of the screen. Combat starts out simple enough with just an ‘attack’ and ‘strong attack’ button, but things get more interesting and satisfying as the character gains experience and levels up.

Pretty soon there are directional modifiers that enable Scott to execute slides, flying kicks and other damage-inducing maneuvers.

The first run through when your character is sitting on level 1 can be daunting, but the beauty of a leveling system like this is that if you’re playing through a stage and having trouble with either an end boss/ex-boyfriend or any enemies before him, you can simply spend some time boosting your stats and come back with a stronger resolve.

The stages are littered with weapons ready to be picked up and utilised – from simple trash cans and boxes through to umbrellas and basketballs. Certain stages have shops towards the upper section of the screen that can be wandered into for health replenishment ‘snacks’ and various other goods that can help upgrade stats.

Although the game tends to be more forgiving once a character has been leveled up a bit, the whole adventure is made a lot easier and more enjoyable with friends.

After all, Scott has a whole swag of friends in the comics and the film, so it makes sense to have a rollicking good time with co-op here, right? Wrong.

It is almost unforgivable that a pick-up-and-play arcade title such as this doesn’t have an online component whatsoever. The gameplay style practically begs for multiplayer to be enjoyed with friends over Live, but it’s nowhere to be seen.

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Including regular local co-op is something at least , but even that isn’t fully functional. Playing with more than one player in your physical presence can only be done when starting a new stage as there’s no drop-in feature, and playing with more than two players presents another problem – you can’t see what’s going on.

The characters on screen are fairly large to begin with, so if there are four of you alongside a host of baddies things start to get messy, especially when players start overlapping one another.

Some of the time it’s alright as long as each player sticks to one quadrant of the screen, but during something like a boss fight you’ll end up performing worse than if you were playing on your lonesome.

The 7 stages can be breezed through within 4-5 hours but they’re varied enough to be constantly enjoyable to look at. Thematically, they also have some humourous touches: play through the second stage – a ‘movie-set world’ – and you’ll be greeted by thugs playing paparazzi as well as green screen suited men running around like dazzled frogs.

There are secrets sprinkled throughout the adventure, such as hidden shops and multiple endings, but not enough to keep the average gamer interested after beating the final level.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World is the kind of experience that’d keep most gamers satisfied for a couple of hours one evening – anything more than that and they’d feel they’d had their fill. It’s not all bad though: the good news is Michael Cera is nowhere to be seen.

“6.5/10

© 2010 Gav Ross

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Filed under: Game Impressions, New Xbox 360 Games, XBLA News-Reviews, Xbox 360 Tagged: | Boss (video gaming), Double Dragon, games, Michael Cera, Oni Press, Scott Pilgrim, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Nintendo, Video game, XBLA, Xbox Live Arcade