Scott Pilgrim v.s. The World: The Game was published by Ubisoft, developed by Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Chengdu. It was released on 8/25/2010 and retails for 800 microsoft points.


Scott Pilgrim has grown into quite a sensation. Started as a little indie comic from a Canadian no-one had really heard of, and now it has been a 6 volume epic, a major motion picture, and a videogame! Now if you have read the series or seen the movie you know that Scott Pilgrim just bleeds videogame references everywhere. So shouldn’t it be obvious that the game would be AMAZING pretty easily? Well read on to find out!

The game is a side scrolling brawler, very similar to River City Ransom from the NES/GBA. You can play it by yourself, or with up to 4 players with local co-op (sorry, no XBL co-0p at this point.) You choose from 4 of the major characters from the series:

  1. Scott Pilgrim, the eponymous 24 year old slacker/bassist for Sex Bob-omb that is also the #1 fighter in Toronto.
  2. Ramona Flowers, Scott’s love interest, the spark to the whole storyline, and a pretty kick-ass girl I must say.
  3. Stephen Stills, “The Talent”, friend of Scott and singer/song writer/guitarist in Sex Bob-omb.
  4. Kim Pine, an old girlfriend of Scott’s that has an eternal hatred for him, also the drummer for Sex Bob-omb.

There are also 2 unlockable characters, and you can look them up if you want to ruin the surprise.

You (and possibly three friends) travel a Super Mario Bros 3. styled map and progress through the storyline, you level up by earning XP by defeating enemies, earn money that enemies drop and use it to upgrade your skills/buy food through various stores. And defeat Ramona’s Seven Evil Exes. Every time you level up you unlock new moves which are different depending on each character. And as standard fare in beat’m’ups, there are numerous weapons littering the streets of Toronto (tires, icicle spikes, garbage bags, plastic dixie cups, beer bottles, etc) that you can use the defeat enemies as well.

Now here is what we liked:

Retro graphics: The game looks very similar to the old beat’em’ups of the SNES/Genesis area. And it looks brilliant. Obviously the game isn’t do-able on those old consoles in it’s current form (no HD support back then, or even widescreen!) but it is still obviously reminiscent. And by no means are they bad, or dated graphics. They just have that old styling to them. My favorite touch is the emoticons that will pop up above some enemies if you scare them off.

Soundtrack : Now you may have heard about it already, but if not the soundtrack is by “chiptune legends Anamanguchi” and it is really good. I am not the type that will pretend I listen to chiptune music, because I don’t, but this soundtrack is very nice. If it is the type of music that interests you, you will definitely love it and can purchase it on itunes right now. The sound effects for attacks are also very old school and I love it.

Gameplay: The beat’em’up genre is definitely one of my most missed of the genres that have disappeared. There is just something fun about walking around on a 2D plane and punching generic enemies, I am not sure why but I like it. And I know I am not the only one. It plays very similarly to the old arcade games like X-men, TMNT, Simpsons, Streets of Rage, etc and easily tops all of them.

Now here is what we didn’t like:

Lack of online co-op: I know, it wouldn’t fit in with the old school vibe, but it would have been really nice. Is it a deal breaker? Not by any means, but it wouldn’t have hurt them to put it in. It’s very possible that it will be updated into the game later on this year like with Laura Croft.

Glitches and bugs: It has been improved over the PS3 version, but there are still a few bugs. Within my first hour playing the game it froze halfway through World 1, and that annoyed me a bit but I got over it. There are also just plain weird glitches, like when I grabbed a trash can and an enemy at the same time, it didn’t freeze up or anything but it was just strange.



So, if you were a fan of old school beat’em up games/the scott pilgrim franchise, you will definitely like this game. I should add that the game is based off the comic and not the movie, so there are little easter eggs that players won’t catch if they only watched the movie.

Verdict: BUY IT!