Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

This week on Duck’s Dwelling, I’m going to talk about something that really represents geeks everywhere.

You know, it’s quite possibly the best time to be a geek. Many of our most popular stars are geeks publicly, and being into a bit of fandoms has never ever been so popular. Both Vin Disel and Stephen Colbert are DnD fans. Colbert even shows off his comic love too during his shows. Many other stars and athletes are full out and open gamers, that really, being a geek isn’t as bad as it used to be

And this summer, our geekness was rewarded by a great movie called Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. This was a film for geeks, about geeks, and by geeks. It was everything we would love to see in a movie. It was OUR film. And we would see it obtain glory!

or.. not

It was not a success at the box office. It will end up making it’s money, but it really didn’t perform strong in opening week. And worse later on. But, the great film, lead to the great game.

The first thing you’ll notice about this game is how retro it looks. Everything is done in pixels and old school sprites. This isn’t TOO unique, but man, it does look good. The art of the game is done by Paul Robertson. If you recognize the name, you’ll probably recognize the art style. He’s done a few animations, and man those are so good. He’s mostly known for

I imagine the people who green lit this game had a little conversation like this:

Exec 1: We need a game for this movie coming out.

Exec 2: Yeah, it’s gotta be retro styled.

Exec 3: Hey, you guys see this?

Exec 1 and 2: What?

Exec 3: Some pirate baby thing

Exec 1 and 2 peek over at the laptop

Exec 3: Dude.. this should be a game

Exec 1 and 2 grin: We can DO that!

If that’s not how it went, I will be kinda disappointed. Everyone who saw that video was like “Man, this should be a game” and well now, it actually is. Everything is animated smoothly, and yet still has that very old school look and feel. It’s very much like River City Ransom in a way.

Simple controls, weak attack, strong, block, jump, special and striker. Really, you just make some combo’s, and beat up bad guys. Grab weapons, and sometimes foes, and use them to beat your buddies. Get items from shops, for healing and stat boosts. It’s simple, and it works well.

So, it looks good, plays good, how about sound. How about AMAZING. Chip tune band Anamanaguchi does the soundtrack, and man it’s great. It’s all 8 bit sounding, but it’s still very good. Each level has a good mix of sound, and the sound effects are pretty good too. Boss music pumps, stages keep you peppy and going. Really, it’s great, and it’s downloadable on iTunes, which isn’t normal for game soundtracks.

So, that’s the good, is there something bad about it? Well, there ARE a couple things that plagued me while playing. First, there is no online multiplayer.

Let me say that again, there is NO ONLINE MULTIPLAYER. This is a four player game, and everyone’s gotta be in your room, crowding around your TV. Really, in this day and age, not having online multiplayer in a beat em up game, is practically a sin. Second, this game has a few glitches that come up once in a while. During a game with my buddy, I had two glitches in the first level. One, my buddy, who was playing Ramona had the mash Y button above her head for a while. The game glitched up the dog pile, as if it was on her, and she wasn’t even hit with it. So, until we got to a shop, or another place to load in the stage, she had this floating Y above her. Second glitch, made the stage unplayable. A few enemies were defeated, but never faded from the screen. So it didn’t register for them to be gone. We could not progress, so we exited the map and had to re-start it. And the last thing, the WORST thing, is the game freezing.

I’m told, that this really only happens in multiplayer, but at times, the game will just freeze up. It took us four times to beat level 3, due to it freezing at the Envy fight. Leading to a few restarts, and a lot of irritation. Not only this level, but the next level too. It really made it hard to try and continue. We did for a bit, but really, we had to spend about an hour on one level due to restarts. That’s just not fun.

So, overall, how is this game? I REALLY wanted to be like “This is one of the best games of the summer” but with those problems, I really can’t. Sure, it’s fun, and it’s well played, but I wish they could have pushed it back a little bit, to make sure the glitches didn’t happen often or at least stop the game freezing. So, it’s with a heavy heart, I have to give this a 7/10. Now, before some get mad, AVERAGE is 5, so this is an above average game. It’s good, I’d suggest it, but really make sure you have buddies to play it with. And make sure they have patience.