- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game
- Scott Pilgrim EX
After Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, some of the staff left Ubisoft to form Tribute Games, who created a number of retro-style titles like Wizorb, Mercenary Kings, Flinthook, and Panzer Paladin. In 2022, they were reunited with both the TMNT license and the beat-em-up genre with TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. This led to another wave of 2D beat-em-ups, including a new Scott Pilgrim game, titled Scott Pilgrim EX. While the title might imply an enhanced version of the original game, it’s actually a brand new sequel, which was released a little more than two years after the cartoon revival, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.
In Scott Pilgrim EX, Toronto has been taken over by three gangs – the Vegans, the Robots, and the Demons. Plus, reality seems to be falling apart, with various places collapsing upon each other and time rifts opening. It’s up to Scott and his team to once again venture through the Canadian city and get to the bottom of this mess, though lots and lots of pummeling. Scott and Ramona return as part of the main roster, though since they’ve mostly made amends with Ramona’s exes, some of them are playable too: Roxy Richter, Gideon Graves, Lucas Lee, Matt Patel, and Robot-01 (as a stand in for the Katayanagi twins). Also available as DLC are the rest of Scott’s band: Stephen Stills, Kim Pine, and Knives Chau.
With Shredder’s Revenge and Marvel Invasion, the latter of which was released a few months before, Tribute Games had gotten much more experience with the beat-up-genre, so Scott Pilgrim EX is a huge improvement over the first game. This features much faster combat and movement, with enemies mercifully featuring smaller lifebars and less prone to turtling. There are plenty of basic moves, including unique hopping and landing attacks, plus character specific special attacks, activated with a special button along with a direction. There are also a few super special moves by pressing both the main and special attacks together with different directions, which sap your guts power. Roxy, for example, wields a sword and has a variety of ninja powers, while Matthew can summon his beloved demon hipster chicks. Many of these help differentiate the characters from one another, a welcome improvement since much of the cast of the first game blended together. Additionally, you can equip a helper character to call into action, which can join in for a quick assist attack, provide brief status buffs, or in the case of Young Neil, cause a stampede of Sex Bomb-omb fans and attack everything on the screen. You’ll also regularly find secondary weapons, ranging from Super Mario Bros. 2-style radishes to Castlevania-style whips.
The leveling and balancing from the first Scott Pilgrim has also been completely revamped. There are no longer any experience points, and all characters start off with their complete moveset. However, you still gain one of four stats when eating food purchased from various shops, or grabbing power-up items from defeated bosses or completed quests. Additionally, there are four equipment slots for items that boost any of the four stats, plus two accessories that can provide other buffs and effects, like increasing the amount of obtained cash or making you stronger at max health. Each character has different starting stats, but even with the weakest, the combat is never as tedious as it was in the first game, as you can still take down most regular enemies without much of a struggle. You will probably want to power-up for the boss fights, though, because they obviously hit harder and can soak up more damage, but even most of these are not overwhelmingly powerful. Characters are leveled up individually, but equipment and cash are shared between the players. That way, if you switch to a new one, you have a leg up if you have some good equipment and can use some spare cash to quickly build up some stats.
The story mode of Scott Pilgrim EX also ditches the linear structure of its predecessor in favor of a proper Kunio/River City world layout. At any time, you can access the world map to show you to your next goal, though the helpful “Go!” indicator will also point you in the right direction. The main world is laid out in a straight line, encompassing various parts of Toronto, though there are a few spots where reality has cracked where you can hop directly to the beach, or into Casa Vania (a parody of the real life Casa Loma). You’ll also find warp portals that need to be activated by finding various instruments and melodies, which are played via directional and button commands a la Ocarina of Time. Missions typically consist of running around on a few fetch quests before you have to fight a boss, with twelve missions altogether. You’ll also find a few optional missions that require beating a certain number of enemies or completing a task within a time limit, which grants assorted rewards.
Getting around the game world is extremely quick, thanks to your character’s fast running speed, as well as a handful of Subspace shortcuts. In fact, if there’s any central issue with Scott Pilgrim EX, is that it’s a little too condensed. Areas are rarely more than a few screens, and you can blaze through them quickly. That Casa Vania area is pretty cool just for the spooky gothic vibes, but it’s only a few rooms. This applies to every section in the game, where you’ll find a themed encounter or a boss fight, then you’ll fight for a few minutes and then that’s basically it. A full playthrough for one character will take roughly three to five hours, which is longer than most arcade beat-em-ups and about on par with the first Scott Pilgrim. But it’s also a fraction of the length of either River City Girls game.
And there are a ton of great ideas here! In Casa Vania, you’ll fight Envy Adams, who takes on a form similar to Lady Maria from Bloodborne. Another adventure sends you back to the 1920s where you defeat a black-and-white crooner version of Matthew Patel, channeling the same vintage cartoons as Cuphead. There’s also Mecha Scott, who is ripe for Mega Man references. The three main bad guys end up being related to Gideon Graves, one of whom is a baby piloting various machinery, much like Baby Head from Captain Commando. There are also plenty of beat-em-up references too, like Stephen’s house looking almost identical to the flaming apartment at the end of the first stage in the arcade Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a post-apocalyptic area taken straight out of the first screen of Double Dragon.
The story is also much wilder. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World didn’t have anything in the way of dialogue or story, but Scott Pilgrim EX assumes you’re familiar with the many side characters, nearly all of whom appear in various subquests. The game also involves time travel, so you’ll find ancestors of many characters who look and act similarly to their modern day counterparts. The story was co-written by comic author Bryan Lee O’Malley so it’s quite authentic, but it will be completely inscrutable if you’re not familiar with the comic (or cartoon) and still halfway nonsensical even if you do know them. Also available is a more straightforward arcade mode, which divides the areas into linear chunks, scales back the RPG stuff so you only gain stats after big fights, and cuts all of the plot.
The graphics are the same pixel loving style from the first Scott Pilgrim, and are just as chunky and brilliantly animated, with each frame loaded with personality. The original game was already richly detailed, but the crazier story allows for an even more diverse range of environments. Anamanaguchi returns to provide the soundtrack, and they’ve expanded beyond using NES chiptunes to a wider variety of video game synths. There are plenty of tracks that recall the music from the first game, but several tunes that recall arcade FM synth or MSX SCC music. Overall, it’s maybe not quite as impactful as the first game’s music, but it’s absolutely no sophomore slump either. The only downside has to do with the game’s structure – again, since the game moves so quickly, you’re constantly running from area to area. Since you never hear any one song for too long at once, they don’t quite weave their way into your ears (and head) the same way.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is an important part of the new wave of 21st century beat-em-ups, but even at the time of release, it was more celebrated for its visuals and sound rather than its beat-em-up gameplay. Scott Pilgrim EX fixes all of that up, with another brilliant looking and sounding game that’s also a blast to play. It’s unfortunate it doesn’t last a bit longer, but considering how it’s overflowing with beautiful artwork and wild concepts, it’s much better to have a short and sweet brawler over one that wears out its welcome.
