Well, this week has been a dream week for Scott Pilgrim fans, with the movie coming out on Friday, and the game coming out on Tuesday on the PSN.

Just from the trailers, it was clear this game was gonna be great, and obviously a tribute to games of the old. The trailers displayed colorful graphics, fun gameplay, and incredible 8-bit music. Enough to make any gamer happy.

So obviously I was hyped for the game, and not just because I loved the Scott Pilgrim comics, but because it looked like a legitimately great game.

Read on and see if I was right!

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Date of Release: August 10th 2010
Platforms: Playstation 3 (PSN) (Xbox 360 XBLA release coming on August 25th 2010)

Genre: Beat ‘em up
Rated T for Teen

Presentation
It’s colorful, it looks really fun, there’s lots of detail even though all the sprites are masterfully pixelated. It’s not pixelated because the sprites are low quality, of course, it’s pixelated to fit with the SNES style. There’s actually lots of nice detail in the graphics, the animation is simple but smooth and it just looks really awesome. The sprites mimic the look of the the comic almost perfectly, but still have a very unique look. The mini-cutscenes between levels are cheesily awesome as well.

Sound-wise, the game couldn’t be much better. The best part here is definitely the superb 8-bit soundtrack by chiptune band Anamanaguchi. I was already a fan of their stuff beforehand, so I couldn’t wait to hear it…. And I wasn’t disappointed at all. The composition of each tune is great, all of them are fitting to the environment/situation and they’re energetic and fun to listen to. The rest of the sound-effects are really good, though nothing really surprising here.

There’s no real story here. It goes through various areas and events from the comic books, but there’s no dialogue or anything, so the game really concentrates on the gameplay rather than the story. There’s a few “cutscenes” but nothing really huge.

Gameplay

Fighting
The basic gameplay is really fun. It’s very reminiscent of old-school beat ‘em ups of the NES and SNES era, but the main influence is definitely River City Ransom.

You start with a few things you can do. X jumps, Square does a “weak” attack, Triangle does a strong attack, Circle blocks, R1launches a special attack that hits around you (using Guts Points) and L1 uses your Striker (at the beginning every character has Knives as a Striker, but she has different effects for everyone… my favorite is when Kim calls Knives… ). The controls are solid and very easy to use. You can move around pretty easily and dash. You can also pick up items such as trash cans and weapons like hockey sticks… or even pick up downed enemies to hit people with, or throw them. And you get extra moves as you advance through the game.

In addition to life points, you have Guts Points. Those are used for special attacks and summoning Knives, but it has a secondary feature: if your HP gets to 0, if you have more than 1 GP left, you revive, which takes away some GP and gives half that amount to HP.

Killing enemies gives money, and comboing enemies in the air generates some more, and each enemy type has a certain AI which you have to figure out to fight them properly, so button-mashing isn’t exactly an option here.

Leveling
Killing enemies, other than giving money, also gives experience. Enough experience levels you up. That fully heals you, and it also teaches you a new move. All the characters have a level cap of 16, and there’s another move you have to find and buy. In addition to levels, you have stats to care about. Stats are gained by finding shops. Some are hidden and some are in plain sight. Using money, you can buy various sorts of food, or books, or CDs, each raising a certain amount of stats. Some items, mostly food, heals your HP and GP. And some items can be bought as a Snack, where it’s used when you die. You can raise Strength, Defense, Willpower and Speed, each which are incredibly useful. There’s really not much more to say about leveling. It’s simple, but it works. (note: if you level a character up but want to restart him/her for whatever reason, you can do so in the character data options).

Difficulty
The game is pretty tough. Enemies hit hard, have pretty good AIs that can be tough to figure out, and are generally pretty hard to deal with. And some of the battles are just crazy hard. Of course, there are ways to deal with the difficulty. Figuring out enemy AI is probably the most important part. But stat building does bring the most direct change, as you can hit harder, get hit not as hard, move faster, get more critical hits, so, if you’re having trouble, you can always go on a shopping spree in the shopping district.

And the difficulty is never at a Battletoads level of cheapness, or even a Ghosts n’ Goblins level of challenge. If you lose all your lives, you only return to the level-select screen, which isn’t too bad. The number of enemies is rarely overwhelming, and boosting your stats/leveling your characters generally really helps to advance. It’s not incredibly impossibly challenging, but it’s still a healthy challenge.

Problems
The game does have a few problems.

The first minor problem is the lack of online. It’s not a big problem for me, since I have extra controllers and friends. I don’t know why it lacks online. Some people from the team are saying it’s to make the game as old-school as possible, so they want people to meet up and play together. It’s not a big problem for me, but it is for other people. So if you really care a lot about this feature, you’ll be unhappy with this game.

The other problem is actually in regards to local multiplayer. You can have people either joining as guests, or loading a profile. If someone joins as a guest, all the levels and stats that person gets are lots forever once the game ends. Only the stats and level gained by the first player count, and that’s kind of annoying. Same for profiles, except they actually save their stats on their profile. Another problem with the local multiplayer is that there’s no “drop-in”. So you can’t just add a player to an ongoing game, you have to exit the game, add the new player, and start a new game. And you can’t drop players from games at all. If you’re playing with other people, and one of them falls asleep (it happens), you can’t easily drop him from the game.

The last problem is that the game is really glitched. I’ve seen people talking about loading errors, which I didn’t see, but I did come across various other glitches, like enemies that couldn’t be hit and just moved everywhere never hitting you either… which kinda slows down the game when you have to kill said enemy to advanced. I’ve seen a few variations of that, and it’s annoying having to pause, choose to return to the level select screen and then having to restart a level. I don’t know how many glitches there are, and how big they are, but the ones I found were incredibly annoying.

Overall
The game is just really fun. The gameplay is fun, smooth and really easy to pick up. The presentation is some of the best I’ve seen this year, with really fun graphics and an incredible soundtrack. The game offers a pretty good challenge too, and it adds a bit of enemies when you get more people in your game.

Just like the comic book it’s based on, it does a lot of references to various things in the video game industry. Of course, some things graphically show things in regards to other games (end of level animations for each character is a reference to games). But some elements of gameplay/level design are also references to other levels. Heck, one of the levels is actually pretty much remade from a classic NES game. And I did already mention that the game, as a whole, is just a big tribute to River City Ransom. Most gamers will love finding out all those references.

Some people might complain about the lack of online, but it’s really not such a big problem. The single-player is really fun, and I’m sure most people will have friends they’ll be able to play with locally… right? The only big problem with the game is the glitches, and from my experience they don’t happen TOO often.

This is a MUST play for both fans of the comics and people who are into classic games. No questions about it. While Ubisoft has been pretty crappy in the last few years, this is easily the best thing they’ve done in a while.

Pros and Cons
Pros
- Awesome gameplay
- Awesome graphics
- Awesome music
- Fun boss fights (though the Twins were way too damn easy)
- Challenging even with a maxed-out character
- Local Multiplayer is great
- Gamers will appreciate the ton of references to other games

Cons
- Lacks online (not a big problem for me, but it might deter people from playing this game… even if it really shouldn’t)
- People playing as guests doesn’t save the progress of the character they are using
- The game occasionally suffers from glitches that require you to exit the map and restart a level
- Not really a con, but I might as well mention it here: all the characters play exactly the same, other than their support attacks

The Save Factor
The game costs 10$, and the gameplay alone is worth that. Add in the awesome soundtrack and great presentation, this would be priced well even if it was 15$, despite the lack of online (which shouldn’t be much of a problem anyways, if you have friends and extra controllers).

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