Story

17/20

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game follows the exploits of Scott Pilgrim and his fight against the League of Evil Exes. In order to win the heart of his beloved Ramona Flowers, Scott must battle and defeat each of Ramona's seven evil exes. To face these formidable foes, Scott enlists the help of his friends as they travel through a vibrant 8/16-bit world. Along the way, they'll battle foes, gain powerful abilities and collect coins to buy items to assist them in their journey. Ultimately, Scott must face the final evil ex, Gideon, in an epic showdown that will decide his and Ramona's fate.

The game faithfully follows the story of the comic. All of the major characters and events are present, including the “League of Evil Exes”, the Ramona/Scott rivalry, and the “Power of Love”. In addition, the characters interact with each other in a manner that captures the tone of the comic books.

The only downside to its story is that the game's relatively brief length means that some events and characters that are mentioned in the comic are left out. This makes the story a bit shorter than what is found in the source material.

Overall, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is a faithful adaptation of the Scott Pilgrim comic book series. It captures the characters and the comedic tone of the original material, while providing an enjoyable side-scrolling arcade-style experience. It may be a bit light on content for some fans, but still provides an enjoyable romp through the world of Scott Pilgrim.

Gameplay

20/25

Experienced players of brawlers should feel right at home here. It feels a lot more like the River City games than, say, Streets of Rage. Since this is a complete version there's a pretty large roster. You'll choose between Scott, Ramona, Knives, Kim, Wallace, Stephen and a secret character.

Level up your characters as you play through the stages. The gameplay is quite addictive, but be aware that the RPG-like use of EXP and attributes can make it a little grindy at times. Unless you choose the easiest difficulty you'll probably initially lose on the first stage, but the idea is to build your character up so they can overcome the odds. Every stage has a boss. They're all designed reasonably well.

The combat is fairly simple but enjoyable. Use a variety of moves to take the bad guys out. There's a large amount of fun weapons and environmental hazards you can use to your advantage. Defeated enemies will explode into coins which you can buy health and EXP boosters with from shops. As you level up you'll learn new moves. Each character has their own set.

Performance

5/10

In my experience the game runs very well and can maintain a smooth 60fps. In that respect it nailed it. Alas, it falls short in a few other areas. The biggest concern for most people is the DRM. This essentially has three layers of DRM: Ubisoft Connect, Denuvo and Steam itself. I find the player response slightly exaggerated, though.

Make no mistake, as consumers we'd all be better off without any Denuvo, but this is one of the better implementations, with support for playing offline. Ubisoft Connect is more of an issue

Is it really as bad as people are saying though? All I can say for sure is that your mileage may vary. For me it hasn't been a big deal. I logged into a Ubisoft account when I launched the game and was asked to register Scott Pilgrim to the account. From there it linked my purchase to my Steam account. I haven't been nagged since.

Online support isn't great. I've had no success connecting to anybody in public lobbies so I can't speak for the online multiplayer, but others have spoken and said it's as terrible as it was previously. Fortunately it does have Steam Remote Play, which is the same way River City Girls works online. It's a great alternative and should work fine as long as you have a good connection to your friend(s).

Finally, contrary to reviews, controllers do work. Just change the input to generic controller so it uses the native XInput controller drivers. By default that's overridden by the SteamInput.

Longevity

7/10

The longevity is pretty good. On the easiest difficulty a playthrough should only take you a few hours, even as a newbie. I think it's better at the medium difficulty despite the small initial grind. Going back to old areas to build your stats can be slightly tedious but River City Girls can be a little like that too.

It's nice that all characters get their own attributes. It gives you more of an incentive to replay the game. Complete it with all of the main non-DLC characters to unlock the secret character.

Unfortunately, it lacks achievements. If it had them through the Ubisoft Connect client, I could accept that. Not ideal but at least we'd have them. Misleadingly, it has achievements in the main menu but this leads to a blank page on Ubisoft Connect.

Graphics

18/20

This is one area where Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game shines. It has an iconic vibrant pixel art style. The artists genuinely nailed the feel of the original comics. It looks fantastic. Player characters and enemies alike are animated well.

You'll fight the evil exes in environments taken straight from the comics across seven different stages. The first four take place in locations in Toronto, while it takes a more bizarre turn as you fight the last of the exes. The carefully detailed environments add a lot of variety to the experience.

Sound

10/10

This game was many people's introduction to the band Anamanaguchi, who composed the wonderful chiptune soundtrack. There are many aspects of Scott Pilgrim worth questioning, but I don't think anyone would dispute its glorious and energetic background music.

This rocky fusion of 8-bit synthesisers and electric guitar is catchy and upbeat, truly befitting an arcadey game of this type. Simply put, the music evokes fun, just like the graphics. Sound effects are nice, featuring many classic gaming motifs which will certainly please any fans of the golden age.