Game Reviews

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the video game adaptation of the Scott Pilgrim film, which in turn is an adaptation of the six-part Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley. (The Scott Pilgrim cooking show is on the way.) Both the original comics and the film tie-in are stuffed full of game culture references, visual clues, and a story that seems to have been designed with video games in mind: an unlikely hero, a princess waiting to be wooed, and a bunch of badass dudes blocking the path to true love--is that not the most timeless premise in video game history? Judging by our first hands-on preview of the game, Ubisoft Montreal has kept all this in mind. We had a chance to play through the first two levels of the PlayStation 3 version to find out just how well our slacker hero lives up to the hype.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a downloadable-only game that will be available first through the PSN and later through Xbox Live Arcade. It’s a four-player offline brawler that takes the premise of the original comics and combines it with side-scrolling action and 8-bit-inspired pixel art by renowned pixel artist Paul Robertson. During our hands-on demo we could pick from only four playable characters: Scott, Ramona, and Scott’s bandmates, Stephen Stills and Kim Pine. Each character comes with a distinct set of moves and attacks, the majority of which are unlocked throughout the game. The game opens on the snowy streets of Toronto, where we discover our objective is to make it to a gig on the other side of town while continuously punching oncoming waves of street punks in the head. We felt instantly at home with the combat, being the brawler connoisseurs that we are. There are three attack buttons (fast attack, strong attack, and super attack) as well as block, jump, throw, powerslide, and a quirky little thing called a taunt, which is used to intimidate enemies but seems to always cause them to pummel you harder than ever.

Each of the three attacks has its own advantages: the fast attack, as its name suggests, is speedy and thus more easily chained together to hit enemies repeatedly; the strong attack is slower but stuns instantly; and the super attack is your best friend when you're surrounded. We also discovered that if you manage to knock out a few enemies without getting a single hit, you’ll enter a brief period of "magical awesomeness" (n.b. may not be the correct title), where you’ll experience stronger attacks and take less damage. However, we found that the most fun element of combat by far was the ability to pick up random objects such as trash cans, umbrellas, baseball bats, and bottles and throw them at enemies or use them to dish out a serious beatdown.