Never has a movie or game come out that we’ve so been able to identify with other than Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. We’ve imagined strutting down town to the music of Zelda, imagined the ability to hurl might punches and we’ve even been love sick to the point that we become consumed by it…(all perfectly legal though!). We are Scott Pilgrim, you are Scott Pilgrim! We are the gamers and the geeks that these books/movie/game were made for. We might not fight off ‘Seven Evil Exes’ but we’ve certainly imagined ourselves doing it.
Without further ado we bring you a special look at both the game and movie inspired by some of the best graphic novels ever made!
The Game
There hasn’t been a game available for download that we have craved more than Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Brought to us by Ubisoft, the game was first announced at last year’s Comic Con. It has only been available on Xbox Live Marketplace for a week and has been available on the PS Network since the start of August and in that short time it has fast become one of the top downloads of the month and the summer.
Everyone, from fans of the novels to the movie and just die hard side scrolling adventurers are dying to get their hands on this game and it is pretty obvious as to why!
The game follows the plot of the graphic novels, allowing you and three friends to take on the roles of Scott, his friends Kim and Stephen and the elusive Ramona Flowers. On your own or together with friends you must smash, punch, clobber and dash your way through the city of Toronto on a quest to defeat Ramona’s seven evil exes! The game is a nostalgic throwback to the age old side scrollers from the late 80’s and 90’s, Double Dragon, Streets of Rage and the newer release Castle Crashers.
Every stage is littered with colourful backdrops, hordes of enemies and tonnes of useful weapons lying around for both you and your enemy to use against each other. Each character you pick has specific abilities and through some serious grinding you can level them up, developing their stats and unlocking new attacks. Over the course of the game you can collect coins dropped by your enemies and splurge them on revitalising food or beverages to boost your attributes.
The objective of the game is to ultimately battle your way throughout the stages and defeat each of the exes, the plot of the game and the movie differ slightly but we don’t intend to let you in on any spoilers!
Needless to say if you haven’t bought this game you need to get it now, costing less than €10 (800 Xbox Live Points) this one game you will go back to stave off boredom and with the added bonus of the calamity of multiplayer it’s something you and your friends can enjoy for a very long time – who said retro was dead!
The Movie
So if you think we enjoyed the game how do you think we reacted to the movie?
We hated it…
No, that’s a lie!
We are now officially living and breathing Scott Pilgrim – never in our lives have we felt more validated by a movie (that sounds sad no matter how many times we read it) than we have by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
We’d heard all the hype and we’d read previews and even some sneak reviews but it wasn’t until we sat down ourselves to watch it that we realised the magic of this movie.
Michael Cera plays Scott Pilgrim, a 23 yr old bassist working in the band Sex Bob-omb along with his friends Kim and Stephen. Scott lives with his best friend Wallace (Kieran Culkin) and is an altogether laid back individual who has just started dating 17 yr old Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). However when Scott has a dream about a girl on rollerblades and the next day he sees the same girl his infatuation for her turns him away from Knives and he begins his quest to find and woo the mysterious girl. After finding out her name, Ramona Flowers [Mary Elizabeth Winstead) Scott asks the delivery girl out on a date. Unaware that if wishes to continue seeing Ramona he must confront her seven evil Exes, Scott is attacked by her first at a gig his band were playing at and so begins the real journey for our hero.
With amazing and goosebump tingling special effects, retro gaming and geek in jokes and even some classic midi track music we were immediately under the trance of the movie. Performances from Culkin and Wong were stupendous and we found ourselves falling in love with enigmatic Ramona.
The strength of the movie lies not in the special effects, its humour or the actors’ performances but in the fact that we as an audience can see ourselves as the dorky and awkward Scott – a generation of geeks and gamers bumbling through life searching out our own quests.
Forget your weekend plans and get yourself down to the cinema; you need to watch this movie!
Click here for an example of the fantastic Scott Pilgrim sound track on YouTube.
