Over the last couple days, Josh (my boyfriend) and I finished playing Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game. After many hours of going from anger to happiness, we finished the game’s seven levels. Now, in this article, I would like to give a rundown of the game and my own personal opinion about it.

A Game Rundown

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game is a side-scrolling brawler action game developed and published by the game company Ubisoft. Ubisoft has published well-known games including Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry. Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game is based off of the graphic novels Scott Pilgrim and ties into the release of the film of the same name. The six graphic novels were released between August 2004 and July 2010 and the movie was released in 2010. The game was created largely due to the love of the movies and books that were coming out all around the same time. Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game was originally announced at the 2009 San-Diego Comic Con and was later released in August 2010 on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was then later delisted in December 2014, possibly due to the license expiring with Ubisoft. It was rereleased on January 14th, 2021, now available on a variety of consoles for $14.99 with new and improved graphics and gameplay.

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Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game follows the story of the graphic novels where Scott Pilgrim falls in love with Romona Flowers. With this love comes a great challenge: Scott must battle Romona’s seven evil exes. Each of the exes have different powers, abilities and challenges that make each of them difficult to fight. 

Players can choose to play from many characters such as Scott Pilgrim, Romona Flowers, Kim Pines, Stephen Stills, unlockable character NegaScott, and downloadable characters Wallace Wells and Knives Chau. Each character has their own movesets and abilities that make them unique and fun to play. On top of their abilities, the characters are also given heart points (HP) and gut points (GP). GP can be used when a player is knocked bv out to revive themselves and get back into the fight. GP can also be used for special “ultimate” abilities or to summon Knives Chau for assistance.

When in combat, enemies who are defeated drop coins which can be used to buy a variety of upgrades. When buying items, the player can get upgrades in strength, defense, willpower, and speed. Some items are also allowed to be taken “to go” which allows the player to bring snacks to heal themselves while fighting in other levels.

As there is a multiplier option, up to four people can play the game at once. Players have the ability to revive team members that are knocked out at the cost of money. If a player is unable to revive a teammate, they will die and have the option to take a life from an alive player if they have any to spare.

Now, that is a simple and condensed rundown of Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game. I would like to now talk about my personal opinion of the game and my own experience playing through it.

My Opinion & Experience

After playing Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game (which took Josh and I about 7 hours to complete) I had a variety of opinions about the game itself. There were certain mechanics that I felt were annoying or even a little stupid. Although, I do have a lot of good comments about the game as well.

To start, one of the biggest flaws of the game, in my opinion, has to do with cooperative game play. When a player gets killed, there will be a countdown above their head for teammates to show how long they have until the player can no longer be revived. While I was playing with Josh, a problem we would face with this is that we would start to revive the other person and then get killed ourselves. When that happens, the player has to sit and wait for the 10 second countdown on both players to end. Although this is a very minor inconvenience, it was something I found extremely aggravating while playing the game.

In addition to that flaw, one of my least favorite things is that despite being put on the “Normal Joe” difficulty, the game was extremely hard at some points. It is honestly super difficult in the beginning as the player has no money to get upgrades, so it’s this constant loop of dying, replaying the level and then hoping it ends soon. This is especially annoying in co-op as the game will already be more difficult if a player plays with friends. So, playing through the game for the first time was not a walk in the park by any means. Some people will disagree with me on this opinion, but I do feel that it is way too hard to play the game in co-op.

Despite these negatives, I honestly have more positive opinions and outlooks on Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game. I absolutely love the fact that there are so many character options and each of them are fun to play for their own reasons. When I first played the game with Josh, we played as Scott and Ramona (Josh was Scott and I was Ramona), which was super fun. More recently though, we changed it up a bit and Josh played as Kim and I played as Wallace. Having this variety in the characters that I have played honestly made the game so much more fun as each character has their own ability and quirk. One of my favorite things about Wallace is the fact that when he punches or slaps an enemy, his hand turns into a rainbow (because he is very gay).

This leads me into another thing I love about the game which is the inclusivity. Wallace is gay, Ramona, Kim, and Knives are all bisexual. This inclusion makes me extremely happy as there is progress being made in different sexualities shown in pop culture. This is a small and not necessarily gameplay related detail, but it makes me happy and makes me love the game even more then when I started playing it.

Finally, two of the biggest reasons I love this game are due to the soundtrack and the classic video game feel. Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game has an awesome song in every single one of the levels. These songs easily set the mood for the battles and makes the game ten times more enjoyable. With this soundtrack being a very fun, more modernized 8-bit tune, it makes the game itself feel like a very classic video game. I truly love this because as a kid I never really played many classic video games, so Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game does a wonderful job of giving me an experience that I didn’t necessarily have as a kid.

All in all, I would recommend this game to anyone who has seen the movie, read the novels, or even simply just loves video games. It is fun with lovable characters that the player just can’t get enough of. Overall, out of 10, I would give this game about a 9 as despite its flaws, the overall experience makes up for those tiny flaws.