Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Hands-On Impressions

If you don’t know who Scott Pilgrim is and why everybody’s fawning over him like he’s Edward Cullen, then this brutally short summary should clear some things up: Scott Pilgrim is a 20-something unemployed dweeb/bass player from Toronto who finds true love in the shape of Ramona Flowers, a sarcastic punk with an affinity for brightly coloured hair. However, to win Ms Flowers' heart, Scott must first battle her seven evil exes (and win, obviously). If you’re still stuck on that part about Edward Cullen, you should probably stop reading and go outside for a while.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the video game adaptation of the Scott Pilgrim film, which in turn is an adaptation of the six-part Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley. (The Scott Pilgrim cooking show is on the way.) Both the original comics and the film tie-in are stuffed full of game culture references, visual clues, and a story that seems to have been designed with video games in mind: an unlikely hero, a princess waiting to be wooed, and a bunch of badass dudes blocking the path to true love--is that not the most timeless premise in video game history? Judging by our first hands-on preview of the game, Ubisoft Montreal has kept all this in mind. We had a chance to play through the first two levels of the PlayStation 3 version to find out just how well our slacker hero lives up to the hype.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a downloadable-only game that will be available first through the PSN and later through Xbox Live Arcade. It’s a four-player offline brawler that takes the premise of the original comics and combines it with side-scrolling action and 8-bit-inspired pixel art by renowned pixel artist Paul Robertson. During our hands-on demo we could pick from only four playable characters: Scott, Ramona, and Scott’s bandmates, Stephen Stills and Kim Pine. Each character comes with a distinct set of moves and attacks, the majority of which are unlocked throughout the game. The game opens on the snowy streets of Toronto, where we discover our objective is to make it to a gig on the other side of town while continuously punching oncoming waves of street punks in the head. We felt instantly at home with the combat, being the brawler connoisseurs that we are. There are three attack buttons (fast attack, strong attack, and super attack) as well as block, jump, throw, powerslide, and a quirky little thing called a taunt, which is used to intimidate enemies but seems to always cause them to pummel you harder than ever.

Each of the three attacks has its own advantages: the fast attack, as its name suggests, is speedy and thus more easily chained together to hit enemies repeatedly; the strong attack is slower but stuns instantly; and the super attack is your best friend when you're surrounded. We also discovered that if you manage to knock out a few enemies without getting a single hit, you’ll enter a brief period of "magical awesomeness" (n.b. may not be the correct title), where you’ll experience stronger attacks and take less damage. However, we found that the most fun element of combat by far was the ability to pick up random objects such as trash cans, umbrellas, baseball bats, and bottles and throw them at enemies or use them to dish out a serious beatdown.

Defeating enemies and miscellaneous objects will earn you cash and experience points. The former can be spent inside shops scattered throughout the levels for three types of items: snacks, meals, and accessories. Snacks and meals will replenish your health and give you experience points, while accessories will improve your character attributes (strength, defence, speed, and willpower). As you earn experience points from combat, you will automatically be upgraded to the next level when you reach a certain number of points, with 16 levels in total. Upgrading levels will unlock new moves and combo attacks, such as the powerslide, and will also award you with something called gut points, which affect your character’s ability to get up when knocked out. Gut points can also be spent on things like calling for help when in the middle of a particularly challenging rumble, reviving knocked-out players in co-op mode, or performing a super attack.

Towards the end of the first level we stumbled upon the first Subspace Highway, a kind of bonus level that allows you to collect as many coins as possible by kicking the crap out of several flying piggy banks. It’s fun, trust us. We finally reached the end of the level to face our first boss, Ramona’s first evil ex, Matthew Patel. Dealing with him put us through a series of smaller challenges that involved throwing objects at his band of demon-hipster winged cheerleaders who were shielding him from attack. Once they were down, we moved in on Patel, and after a few successive stuns, it was simply a matter of kicking butt the old-fashioned way.

The second level took place on the Casa Loma film set, leading us through several back-lot rooms. We noticed a slight increase in difficulty in both the number of enemies we had to face and the addition of environmental challenges (like destroying all objects in a room before being allowed to proceed to the next). We also had to fight pesky costumed monsters in addition to the usual miscreants. The end of the level saw us face another boss fight with Ramona’s second evil ex, Lucas Lee, who was equally as annoying as Matthew Patel but just as easy to take down. (Again, this involved taking down his cronies before we could fight him.)

At this stage, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is looking like a solid brawler that builds upon the screwball humour of its source material. We look forward to seeing more of the game ahead of its release later this month.