DLC Domination Part 9: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for the PS3 and 360

Welcome back to DLC Domination! Today, I decided to cover a fan favorite DLC game. Not only is it an awesome DLC game, it’s a movie-based DLC game. I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out. Yeah, most licensed games suck and there are a lot of good examples like Charlie’s Angels, E.T, and you get the idea, but this one is good. I mean there is a small movement that some games based on movie license are doing better now. A lot of people seem to really enjoy the Back to the Future games from Telltale Games, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a step up and is pretty fun. There is probably one game that really stepped it up and really had actual effort put into it. That is the thing that is wrong with movie-based games since they don’t put a lot of effort into them and they turn out to be very mediocre games, but let’s get back on topic. Remember Scott Pilgrim vs. The World? That was one of the best versus games Capcom ever made. It had so many balanced characters. Granted, it was just Scott and the World in this game, but it was awesome! Oh, wait it was a movie. Well, do you remember the film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World? I don’t remember it either. No, I’m kidding. I actually saw the film recently and it was pretty good, definitely a very action-oriented and very flashy film. I mean it had its flaws, like Michael Cera’s character is a jerk for a majority of the film, but it’s a fun film that I could recommend to anyone. Ubisoft then decided to make a game based off of it. It kicked so much butt! This is probably the best movie-to-license game ever. They definitely did a good job and I wanted to review it. So, let's dive into the crazed candy-coated world of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

The story is very simple and that’s good. Scott is in love with Ramona and wants to be her sweetheart. Apparently that can’t happen since there are 7 evil ex-boyfriends. Well, technically, it’s 6 evil boyfriends since one of the exes is a girl, but still. They want him dead and it is up to Scott Pilgrim and his friends to beat them all and get Ramona’s heart. The story is simple and there really isn’t much more to it than that, but that’s a good thing due to the style of game this is. 

The game is like an arcade style beat em’ up in the vein of games like River City Ransom, Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and the TMNT Arcade Game. You go around multiple levels beating the tar out of bland generic enemies, you gain special moves, and you go into random buildings to get food, upgrades, and some other stuff. At the end of most of the levels, you have to take down a mini-boss and then one of the evil exes. The levels mix things up from time to time, like having a Castle Crashers style chase level where you need to outrun one of the evil exes or else you will get damaged and thrown through about 7 or 8 walls. There is also some minor puzzle solving in one area where you fight the movie star ex-boyfriend. There is also some DLC that gives you a volleyball mini-game, which is nice since it doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the game, but it’s a fun diversion. Then again, since this game is a bit over the top, the volleyball kind of fits in with the chaos. You can play up to 4 players at the same time offline, with you being Scott and the three other characters being Ramona, Kim Pine, and Stephen Stills. It is actually 6 characters if you include the DLC character of Knives Chau and Nega Scott, but you can only play with 4 people at a time. As you go along through the game, you will need to grind and level up to become stronger and gain new abilities to beat down on everyone. There are even little side areas that look like a NES game that look a little glitchy.

The graphics are great. It reminds me of the 16-bit and 32-bit games of that time during the 90’s. Everything that moves has such fluent animation and I saw in the credits that the team that made this had a boatload of artists on board for this project. This is basically pixilated eye candy. The music is amazing also, with a huge amount of upbeat and catchy songs composed by a chiptune band called Anamanaguchi. It’s all pure eye and ear candy with high-pitched beeps and bloops and colorful graphics.

There are some minor flaws to this wonderful little title. Due to the multiple plains like the beat em’ ups I listed above, it can be hard to judge your distance when you’re trying to do some platforming. The game can also be hard and requires lots of grinding, which is fine since it drags the game to a total of 10 hours, but it can be tedious when you have to play through earlier levels on a Super Mario World style overworld to level up and buy upgrades. 

Overall though, I could really recommend this game to anyone. You need a great downloadable game? You want a great downloadable game that is only 10 bucks and has offline multiplayer on either PSN or Xboxlive? Well, get Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Thanks for reading and see you next time. Let’s just hope next time they make better movie licensed games. We can pray for that can’t we?

This game gets a solid 8 out of 10