E3 Hands-On: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 20 June 2010 / 3,094 Views
Scott Pilgrim Versus the World is a movie being released soon which has also spawned a video game. Both the movie and the video game are based on a comic book series by Bryan Lee O’Malley. The story of all three is that Scott Pilgrim is kind of a loser but he has fallen in love with a girl named Ramona Flowers. When he finally gets the courage to ask her out the party is crashed by an ex-boyfriend of Ramona who tells Scott that if he wants to date Ramona he must defeat her 7 evil exes.
The game version of this unique world is a Beat ‘em up similar to games like Battletoads. As I defeated enemies with a friend (actually some stranger at E3) we leveled up and earned new moves. I also had the more standard abilities of picking up items and using them as weapons, and I could even throw my partner if I saw fit.
Visuals are probably what make the game the most unique. It comes off as an 8 bit version of the comics which fits perfectly into a world that constantly references and gets inspiration from video games in the first place. The visuals help add variety to a genre that can sometimes get repetitive.
Killing enemies also means you can steal whatever change they had in their pockets which you can use to buy food to restore health and give you power ups. A boss fight with Ramona’s first evil ex capped off the demo. He wasn’t really that menacing until he started spawning succubi that attacked me from the air.
Scott Pilgrim Versus the World is one of my most anticipated movies coming out soon and it looks like the game may be worthy of similar anticipation. We’ll just have to wait and see if the final game has more variety than the demo when it releases on XBLA and PSN.
