Game Review: Scott Pilgram vs the World. (PS3/PSN)

More Scott Pilgram. More World. More people gettin' tore out the frame.

I can straight up give you a tl;dr right here if you want it. Scott Pilgram vs the World: The Game is a River City Random Clone.

And right there, if that turns you off of the game, you might wanna go jump off a cliff cause RCR is the truth. Bias aside, this game is solid.

Genre: Beat-Em Up, 4 players. With that real old school feel. Ok, maybe SNES old school, but it's really simple and fairly difficult.

Story: In short, you pretty much follow the story of the movie, which I then have to assume follows the story of the comic. I really don't want to go into details because of spoilers, but note that you won't miss anything if you play this before the movie. Also, you won't really spoil the movie by playing the game first.

Gameplay: Solid. You get a choice of 4 characters, Scott, Ramona, Kim, and Neil. So far I've only played Kim, cause any chick with a hip attack is awesome, but curb stomping the dirt-trash out of people never gets old. You wind up taking your character to 7 levels, each smaller sections that you can later backtrack to for grinding/leveling up (which, like RCR, you will have to at some point whether you like it or not). Each character has stats that you build by buying specific items, and gains experience up to level 16. Every time you get a level, you get a new technique. Aside from the animation (and for a few, the hitbox), all of the characters have the same moves up to level 16. In short, you earn new ways to troll on people as you progress through the game, as the game does a good job of giving you a nice array of useable moves.

Kinda wish it had Javelin Man though. XD

Music: A bunch of chiptune music. Nice stuff. Not alot of tracks, but all of the tracks are fairly catchy. I'd have to actually sit down and pay attention to the music, but I can't imagine there being more than 7 tracks. You'll be listening to one main theme for a majority of the game, though, so enjoy it.

Graphics: Sprite-based. Trying to recreate the comic book feel of it. Infact, they might have literally brought the comic book to life (again, I haven't READ the comic yet, so forgive me for being ignorant). While most of the sprites aren't "highly-detailed", per say, the total package of the artwork does well to create a great "modern, old school" feel for the game. I WANT to call it retro, you can clearly tell that, even with them trying to give that vibe, it's been properly modernized to function by today's standards.

In conclusion: The game is worth the buy. It's a PSN download (should be on XBL shortly, and I'm going to get it). If you love beat-em ups, you should be there. If you want a game with some difficulty behind it, got you covered too. Crazy over Scott Pilgram? The World's waiting for you.

Totally worth checking into if you haven't already.

Loose End Numbers for stat whores:

Gameplay: 8/10
Music: 7.8/10
Graphics: 8/10
Difficulty: Normal+ or Hard-, in that range.
Replayablility: Moderate. The more people you have to play with you, the more likely you'll be willing to play again.

Random Dogy Sidenotes: For all the advance tech junkies out there, you can definitely come up with a few with this, just for lols. I came up with run-stop-grabs, sidestep flips, and stomp walking, just to name a few.

On another note, holla at some Kim curb stomps. ^_^