Some of you might remember that when I reviewed Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, I liked it but didn't necessarily love it. Some more of you might remember that until the beginning of this year, this game was another unfortunate loss to the fires of the digital hellscape largely brought about by publishers wanting to control every facet of the industry they can, and so some more of you that are especially clever might have deduced from these two facts that my purchase of this game was less due to a love of the original material and more due to a desire to get it while it before Ubisoft decided to kill it again.
It may not necessarily have been Ubisoft's fault (in fact to this very day no one knows why the game was ever de-listed, PR being shady as hell), but I certainly didn't want another P. T on my hands, and I felt like having more games on my recently bought Switch, so what the heck.
And to my surprise, I don't regret buying it. It's a fun throwback to old 16 bit beat em up games, and upon realising that, I was struck by just how much sense that made for the material it's based on. The film is constantly adopting aesthetics from games of that era, there's almost no weapons other than good old fashioned fists and feet used, and you already have seven boss fights pretty much designed for you. It makes so much sense for a game adaptation, period.
So presentation wise, this game absolutely hits the nail on the head. The graphics are fantastic, stylized as hell, and they even went to the trouble of putting some cute little details in that not everyone will notice. In general it's a fantastically directed game.
The soundtrack by Anamanaguchi absolutely shreds and brings the levels and even menu screens to life in such a brilliant way. The rest of the sound design is great too, but my god that soundtrack is eargasmic. The best one I've heard in a game in quite a while, to be honest.
So most of my issues with the game are in its gameplay. For the most part, it's pretty solid old school beat em up stuff, the controls are responsive, hitting bad guys is satisfying as hell, and there's just enough enemy, stage, and attack variety to stop it from getting too monotonous.
However, while some of the new attacks and abilities you'll unlock will make you wonder how you ever lived without them, some are the gameplay equivalent of those little mites that are always in your eyebrows. You forget they're even there and they do almost nothing to benefit you.
Another massive annoyance I have is that when you finish a level, your lives and health aren't replenished at all when you enter the next one, and the only ways of getting extra lives are by paying for them in secret shops that most people won't find, so you'll be going into the next level almost certain to die and have to do it all over again. Either that or go into the level you just beat and let enemies beat you up until you get a game over.
This might not be so bad if the game's leveling system scaled properly with its difficulty, but playing on normal mode, I found that without fail, in every single new level, I would find myself completely outmatched by all the enemies in it, because you don't get enough money to buy enough upgrades to properly prepare you for the next level. This means you are almost required to grind after finishing every level to stand even a remote chance in the next one, which is just an awful way of designing a game.
Some of the bosses are great, like Lucas Lee and the first stage of the final boss, some of them, like the psychic vegan guy and Negascott phone it in a bit, but to my surprise, there wasn't really a single basic enemy I considered annoying. Or at least not one I didn't also consider fair. That said, some of the level designs can take the mick a bit, with pretty annoying hazards, and the fourth level in particular goes on for WAY too long.
And in addition to that, for some bizarre reason every character you can play as has a different ending - even though you'd assume no one except Scott and Ramona has a personal stake in the story other than just helping them out. And some of their endings are actually godawful and honestly seem to make a mockery of the story in general. Sometimes, less is more, and I think here, they should have just stuck with the ending of the original material.
Added to that I've heard that online co-op is notoriously unreliable, paired with the fact that the extra game modes are...well, terrible, this is definitely a game I have a few gripes with.
There's a lot of great stuff here though, and if you're a fan of the graphic novels or film, or are just salivating for a good beat em up in an era where they have unfortunately joined the pile of genres continually ignored by big publishers because they don't make that sweet Call Of Duty money, then you should absolutely give it a try. I was both to an extent, and I don't regret getting it at all.
And anyway, do you know how long it would take to beat? Like two hours! TWO hours! You couldn't waste your time on it.
