Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game

In the 2010s, retro games became chic. Progress in the video game medium had become substantial enough that gamers started appreciating what had come before instead of always looking ahead. Older video games that had previously been written off as obsolete pieces of technology were being celebrated. It’s very common in other forms of entertainment and culture to retroactively celebrate the past and incorporate it into the lexicon of modernity. I guess we decided in the early 2010s that it had been long enough. We decided that retro games were hip and cool, which is exactly the tone of Edgar Wright’s 2010 film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a film adaptation of a popular comic series based out of Toronto, Canada. The film was a success and one of the biggest achievements of the film was how Wright made the viewer feel like they were watching a video game. The film had the energy, aesthetic, and progression of a video game, so the comparisons made sense. With a film that was already oozing video game flair, the natural plan of action was to make a licensed title based on the film. As you probably know, licensed games tend to be shameless cash-grabs that piggyback off of the success of the film. This was not the case for the video game tie-in that came with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The developers of this game absolutely understood the appeal of not only the film but the comic it was based on as well. The Scott Pilgrim game had the same charm, energy, and hip, retro-chic sensibilities that made the film and comic series so appealing. At the same time, it helped usher in a movement in gaming that was recalled a time long ago.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Scott Pilgrim, he’s a twenty-something-year-old man living in his hometown of Toronto, Canada. He lives a simple, relatively responsibility-free life chasing girls, playing video games, and playing bass in a garage band. He also has a smattering of friends in the foreground of his life who are around his age and share the same laid-back lifestyle. One would think that the way these characters are, they’d be college kids around 20-22, but most of the characters including Scott are in their mid to late 20’s. The world of Scott Pilgrim is in a state of arrested development, even video games. Scott and his friends aren’t having Halo or Call of Duty lan-matches like every other person in 2010. They frequent arcades that showcase games from yesteryears, even before their time. It’s like the Scott Pilgrim universe is enveloped in a nostalgic bliss, a universe that cherrypicks things from youth to put in the foreground.

The video game adaptation needed to be as hip, youthful, and stylish as the source material it’s based on. Given that Ubisoft was at the helm of development and production, achieving the charm of the source material could have faltered. Ubisoft’s well-known properties at the time were open-world games, and I wouldn’t exactly call any of these games “charming”. They seemed unfitting to adapt a comic/film filled to the brim with style and charm, but it ended up being a success. These developers had a total grasp of the source material. They made the game as lively, youthful, and hip as one expects from the Scott Pilgrim universe. This game oozes style from every single pore, each pore being a sum of the whole experience. The style of the game is heavily inspired by the art of the comic series with a pixelated texture to bridge the aesthetic of the comic and a retro video game. The music is a high-energy chiptune soundtrack that matches the powers of the game. Even though the game was released as a tie-in with the film, the developers implemented plenty of things strictly from the comics like Robot-01 and Scott’s parents showing that they went the extra mile to incorporate more from the Scott Pilgrim universe to give the game more depth than just a movie tie-in.

Besides the video game-like energy Scott Pilgrim has, the premise of the film already lends itself to the video game medium. Fighting seven evil exes in seven different areas, progressively getting harder as they come, is not the plot of a film; it’s a video game plot. Naturally, this is the premise of the Scott Pilgrim video game. Why would they take the time to conjure up another plot when a perfect one has already been given to them? Each level is a run to a boss, the boss being one of the seven evil exes.
The game is styled like a beat ‘em up, a popular genre of action game popular in arcades in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Scott Pilgrim faces waves of enemies, scrolling past backgrounds like city streets, clubs, dojos, etc. on his way up to one of the evil exes. Some of these backgrounds may be familiar to the comics and or the shows, but a lot of them are common settings in many old-school beat 'em-ups.

The influence from old-school video games makes the Scott Pilgrim game seem like it could’ve come out in 1991. Besides the pixel aesthetic, Scott Pilgrim borrows heavily from this era of gaming. Some familiar aesthetic properties are readily noticeable like the world map, a reference to the world maps of Super Mario Bros. 3/Super Mario World. Scott’s combat style is very reminiscent of Ryu’s from Street Fighter as he can do the spin kick and the uppercut blast as special moves. Of course, Scott Pilgrim borrows plenty from the old-school beat ‘em ups that the game directly emulates. The local multiplayer aspect, playing as either Scott, Ramona, Stills, or Kim, with friends, is reminiscent of Double Dragon or Streets of Rage. The classic beat ‘em up Scott Pilgrim takes the most inspiration from is definitely River City Ransom, a beat ‘em up on the NES. Like in River City Ransom, Scott Pilgrim will fight hoards of street toughs wearing sports jackets and greasy, expensive dress shirts. He can pick up and use the elements of the street to his advantages like trash cans and car tires. He can also use the weapons that the enemies drop like in River City Ransom. Scott Pilgrim also carries out its RPG elements similarly to River City Ransom. Scott and the company visit stores off the beaten path and order off a menu consisting of different food items and other goodies. The food items level up different attributes like speed, strength, and durability and will sometimes level up your character entirely. Some of these items will grant you an extra life, act as life insurance when you die, and other perks that will make the game easier for the player. Borrowing aspects from older titles is exactly what made the indie games of this time so charming. It’s almost like we forgot ourselves in the midst of progress and found that what already worked never became obsolete.

The biggest issue with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is that it plays exactly like River City Ransom too. They both control like dogshit but in River City Ransom’s case, it’s forgivable. We give some leeway to the hiccups in older games because they didn’t have the resources or have the inherent privilege of burgeoning video game progress. Scott Pilgrim, a game that came out in 2010, has no excuse for controlling the way it does. The controls are so stiff and unresponsive that executing either running or rolling always chalks up to a matter of luck. This is also in tandem with how much platforming is in this game, so good luck with those sections. These aren’t even the hiccups of an endearing indie developer that didn’t have the time or budget to buff out the scratches. This game was made by Ubisoft for fuck sakes.

The controls aren’t the sole issue with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. For a game developed by a triple-A developer, the game sure carries a litany of problems. For one, it doesn’t have a lot of replay value. The game is appropriately short but has a disappointing number of characters to replay the game with. Besides the base four, Wallace and Knives are available as DLC, and Nega Scott is unlockable, but that’s it. Why can’t we play Neil, Julie, Envy, or all of the other characters from the Scott Pilgrim universe? Remember how many unlockable characters there were in Castle Crashers (another beat ‘em up revival game from around the same time. It comes highly recommended by the way)? There is just so much missed potential here. Castle Crashers is a longer game and it was developed by an indie studio, so what’s your excuse, Ubisoft? You’re one of the biggest video game developers in the world.

The game is also needlessly hard. You’re going to want to stock up on items every chance you get in this game because like the classic beat ‘em ups, it requires a steep learning curve with the combat. It always feels like every enemy does a ton of damage no matter the level in the game. You level up incrementally, but it doesn’t really amount to much. You don’t learn any new moves and it’s hard to keep track of how close you are to leveling up. Did they only bother with the RPG elements to tribute River City Ransom? Collecting these items isn’t easy either. The currency in this game is are Canadian coins and judging by how little they are worth, this game is definitely adjusted for inflation. The game forces you to be frugal which doesn’t help matters when the items are really expensive. Once you buy off Scott’s rental fees for 500 Canadian coins, the matte of stocking up lives becomes trivial. As you can imagine, however, 500 coins is an insane number of coins, so the game falters into grinding territory, one of my gaming pet peeves. The only way to do this and not drive yourself insane is by exploiting a glitch in the first level that gives you at least $60 worth of coins, but I shouldn’t have to resort to cheating anyways.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game is a love letter to the comic and the film fans. Ubisoft did a great job channeling the same high-octane energy of the comics with a great understanding of the source material. The game is also a love letter to classic arcade games which works wonders with the youthful, nostalgia-tinged aura that the Scott Pilgrim universe gives off. However, the final product is highly flawed. It’s a clunky mess that tends to exhibit a lot of my video game pet peeves. Many of these hiccups are inexcusable considering a triple-A studio worked on it, compared with the indie studios of the time making similar games of higher quality. This isn’t the story of “the little studio that could”, but a case of a big studio that just decided not to unlock this game’s full potential. I hope the fans of Scott Pilgrim got more out of this game than I did.