Scott Pilgrim [video game]

[Defenestrated]

The game definitely starts out slow, but liberal use of the double tap dash at the start helps, and as you upgrade the characters speed they can almost become TOO fast, so that isn't really an issue later on. I think the overall "curve" of character speed should probably have been a bit less (start faster, end maybe not quite as fast) but it's definitely acceptable for me.

Regarding the movie, I actually enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. Michael Cera isn't terrible, the supporting cast is great, and I loved the action sequences. The actual narrative isn't very interesting beyond providing a framework for these characters to do crazy things, but I had great fun with it.

[Psych]

Bayonetta, God of War and Devil May Cry are "Hack n' Slash" games...

You press buttons to punch bunches of guys, that seems like a brawler to me.

(Did you know you CAN hit them while the are down? That you could pick them up?).

Whenever I tried hitting anyone when they were down my guy just picked them up. Which would have been alright except that hitting a one guy against another doesn't hurt the guy you're holding, and throwing the guy does very little damage. So I found it was generally quicker to wait for them to get up.

I found the early going a little slow - but I wasn't hugely disappointed by that. It's a nice difficulty curve: unlocking the dash attack changes your gameplay style, and upgrading your strength (buying objects in shops boosts your stats, RPG-style) helps to put enemies down a lot quicker. My level 16 character can sail through the earlier levels on replay.

Now that really addresses my concerns, it seems I was right to suspect that the demo wasn't indicative of the product as a whole.

[Karimi]

So, at the recommendation of some of the people in this thread I got my hands on all 6 volumes of Scott Pilgrim 4-5 hours ago. Just finished the last volume a few minutes ago. I must say ,I thought it was fantastic. It had its slow parts\ but the story was heartwarming and the characters interesting and humorous. I've never been a fan of anime/manga art but it was done nicely, and not too frustrating to someone who isn't the biggest fan of that style.

Thanks again for recommending it guys, 5 hours well spent

[miffy495]

It's certainly not the Mazes and Monsters of video games, which you might get from miffy's pre-review - in fact, the characters don't spend much time playing video games, but rather played a lot of Nintendo when they were younger and filter the world through that set of cultural references.

I take some exception to that. All I pre-reviewed, and I made this clear while doing so as well, was the impression of Scott Pilgrim from the people who were salivating over it in the early going of this thread. They made it sound like about the most unappealing thing possible for a gamer-targeted comic. This does not mean that it actually is, but what I was told sounded like that. It could be fine, but based on the recommendations here, I'm more pushed away from it than I am drawn to it.

[Karimi]

I take some exception to that. All I pre-reviewed, and I made this clear while doing so as well, was the impression of Scott Pilgrim from the people who were salivating over it in the early going of this thread. They made it sound like about the most unappealing thing possible for a gamer-targeted comic. This does not mean that it actually is, but what I was told sounded like that. It could be fine, but based on the recommendations here, I'm more pushed away from it than I am drawn to it.

Just try it, grab a torrent. Worst case scenario its 20 mins of your day wasted.

[Denial]

I take some exception to that. All I pre-reviewed, and I made this clear while doing so as well, was the impression of Scott Pilgrim from the people who were salivating over it in the early going of this thread. They made it sound like about the most unappealing thing possible for a gamer-targeted comic.

I didn't mean to offend, but I must respectfully disagree. You moved onto speculation about the essential qualities of the text here:

I actively seek out readings that piss me off, but there is a difference between getting pissed off and motivated by your reading and getting frustrated that the pigeon-holing of geek culture is only being furthered in a way that makes you ashamed to enjoy your hobby.

As has been suggested, you might be in a better place to condemn Scott Pilgrim's representation of video gamers once you've become more familiar with the work. If you don't want to gain that familiarity, that's fine, but what you have to say about it is going to be pretty limited - limited, in fact, to metacommentary.

Back on the video game - if I'd been hesitating about recommending it, which at $9.99 I don't think I am, my mind would have been made up by something I noticed just now. At one point, you find yourself fighting wild wolverines (not a huge spoiler, I hope), which attack using Wolverine's berzerker barrage move from the Capcom X-Men arcade games. That realisation was, I think, the highlight of my week.

[syntheticgerbil]

As has been suggested, you might be in a better place to condemn Scott Pilgrim's representation of video gamers once you've become more familiar with the work. If you don't want to gain that familiarity, that's fine, but what you have to say about it is going to be pretty limited - limited, in fact, to metacommentary.

Yeah Miffy, so no critiquing unless you've read every volume and jumped on the bandwagon! GEEZ!

[Patters]

I take some exception to that. All I pre-reviewed, and I made this clear while doing so as well, was the impression of Scott Pilgrim from the people who were salivating over it in the early going of this thread. They made it sound like about the most unappealing thing possible for a gamer-targeted comic. This does not mean that it actually is, but what I was told sounded like that. It could be fine, but based on the recommendations here, I'm more pushed away from it than I am drawn to it.

I'm going to second this, adding that I have read the most of first book (which I have nothing positive to say). The references are fucking stupid and far too upfront, to the point where I would call it a parody of games. References should be subtle.

Everyone I know, personally, who is a big fan of the comic is either not a gamer or is an illiterate, Kotaku reading hypocrite. Maybe tending to a different type of game (serious tones, modern, etc) and being fed up of 8bit type games leads me to this.

[Ben X]

Everyone I know, personally, who is a big fan of the comic is either not a gamer or is an illiterate, Kotaku reading hypocrite. Maybe tending to a different type of game (serious tones, modern, etc) and being fed up of 8bit type games leads me to this.

Ouch.

Yeah, the references are very in your face, but he's doing that on purpose, and I like how stuff like magic kung-fu fights and power-ups suddenly get jarringly chucked into this otherwise naturalistic little character drama with no explanation. I don't think references HAVE to be anything.

I am not illiterate, I'm a gamer, and I don't read Kotaku. I'm probably hypocritical from time to time.

[Tanukitsune]

I'm going to second this, adding that I have read the most of first book (which I have nothing positive to say). The references are fucking stupid and far too upfront, to the point where I would call it a parody of games. References should be subtle.

Everyone I know, personally, who is a big fan of the comic is either not a gamer or is an illiterate, Kotaku reading hypocrite. Maybe tending to a different type of game (serious tones, modern, etc) and being fed up of 8bit type games leads me to this.

Woah! Do you know how big of an insult it is to call the game 8-bit? Paul Robertson and the rest of Mecha Fetus are legends in the pixel art world! Calling this 8-bit is like calling the Mona Lisa a child's crayon drawing!

I'm also a literate gamer who doesn't read Kotaku... I even met the author at MOCCA a few years ago, before he got popular and all that rot...

[Chris]

Just try it, grab a torrent. Worst case scenario its 20 mins of your day wasted.

Please don't suggest people pirate materials on this forum.

[syntheticgerbil]

Read it at Barnes and Noble and get your grubby hands all over the inside pages.

[Denial]

Yeah Miffy, so no critiquing unless you've read every volume and jumped on the bandwagon! GEEZ!

You're absolutely right. What sort of a cock am I to suggest that any familiarity with a written work at all would be useful in criticising it? And what sort of a bandwagon-jumping assclown must I be to have read a book? Honestly, I disgust myself.

Funnily enough, segueing neatly across media, Linda Holmes of NPR noticed a tendency in negative reviews of the film to review the audience rather than the film itself.

For reference, Patters, we've played together a fair few times. I don't think I'm illiterate, although I can't type for toffee during Left 4 Dead, and I'd hope you didn't come away from that thinking that I was an illiterate hypocrite. I like the books. I enjoyed the film. I'm enjoying playing the game. It feels like a fairly rare example of a properly interrelated set of media. Possibly it's just an age thing - as Linda Holmes points out in that NPR article, the people who actually experienced 8-bit gaming as an event in their lives rather than a piece of learned cultural history are going to feel different about reference to it. I'm happy to accept that it's not your bag without making a judgement about you as a person.

[Karimi]

Please don't suggest people pirate materials on this forum.

Sorry Chris. Meant it more like 'Hey borrow it from a friend or check it out at a bookstore', if it helps my case I ended up buying it , it can have my money.

[Lu]

Patters making sweeping generalizations?! UNHEARD OF!

In my mind, as Patski talked about that, I just imagined the entire thing starting off with one of his groans.

[miffy495]

I didn't mean to offend, but I must respectfully disagree. You moved onto speculation about the essential qualities of the text here: [snip]

It may be irrelevant after the exchange that's happened since (haven't been online for a couple of days) but the way that the quote you took was intended was actually about the impression that the people describing the book gave me, not about the book itself. I can see how it could be read as speculation about the text, but was not meant as such. You folks are right though, I should read the book before criticizing the content. I was not intending to criticize said content, but we wouldn't be here if at least a couple of people had read me as such. Until a couple of months ago, the books, movie, and everything were completely off my radar, so this is me coming in mostly cold but being disappointed by the bits and pieces I have picked up. I will try to read the first volume sooner or later (currently my graphic novel quota is being filled by a read-through of the Locas series by Xaime Hernandez) but don't feel it is entirely necessary in order to register my overall non-plussed reaction to what Scott Pilgrim I have been exposed to. As far as I can tell, it is Juno but with Sonic Youth and similar replaced by Video Games. I liked most of what was referenced in Juno but found the movie incredibly irritating because it felt like it was trying way too hard to pander. I get the same impression from the trailers and similar for Scott Pilgrim. As such, rather than get excited and be really let down like I was by Juno, I am simply keeping away from it until the hype blows over.

[syntheticgerbil]

You're absolutely right. What sort of a cock am I to suggest that any familiarity with a written work at all would be useful in criticising it? And what sort of a bandwagon-jumping assclown must I be to have read a book? Honestly, I disgust myself.

You don't have to read the whole ugly ass comic to be familiar with what it is and what it's about. Really now. You can jump all the bandwagons you want, but this Scott Pilgrim shit is getting so out of hand now. The six page Amazon preview will suffice at the very least. It shows exactly why I avoid almost 100% of what Oni Press puts out (That and the godawfulness of Jim Mahfood), in my eyes. I think both the movie and the game do a damn good job showing themselves as way more appealing and worthwhile. It's a shame the source material is just so underdeveloped in terms of art style and seemingly vapid in terms of story (again I haven't read all six volumes).

The amount of defensiveness and "I was there first" from the fans that I'm hearing is almost like when punk rock was continually attempted to be brought back late 90s/early 00s at the mall.

Funnily enough, segueing neatly across media, Linda Holmes of NPR noticed a tendency in negative reviews of the film to review the audience rather than the film itself.

NPR though, really? This is almost the most major stretch in defensiveness I've seen on any forum for a while besides some guy explaining to me that water coolers cost a lot of money to keep in working condition and that this is why the art for the Special Edition of Monkey Island looks bad. It's not that classic though.

[Nachimir]

seemingly vapid in terms of story (again I haven't read all six volumes).

The series actually has quite a nicely done end.

I think what most people here are saying is "I'm entitled to my opinion!". Others are also then saying "No you're not!". I suggest: Going outside

[Denial]

The amount of defensiveness and "I was there first" from the fans that I'm hearing is almost like when punk rock was continually attempted to be brought back late 90s/early 00s at the mall.

This is almost the most major stretch in defensiveness I've seen on any forum for a while besides some guy explaining to me that water coolers cost a lot of money to keep in working condition and that this is why the art for the Special Edition of Monkey Island looks bad. It's not that classic though.

Defensiveness. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Cigol]

Played the demo. Loving the audio; both music and sound effects, but particularly enjoyed the extra layer of polish when transitioning from ground level into the tunnel and back outside. Little things like that I wasn't expecting, and surprisingly it seems to have enough flair and added detail to make it feel fresh and exciting despite being unashamedly derivative and retro.

Didn't really get the 'slow' argument made earlier either, especially when you use the power ups Ramona has. I can see it getting repetitive, but then as Tanu already said; that's brawlers down to a tee. Still, based on the demo it seems to be inventive enough to keep things interesting as you progress.

[Patters]

Everything you are about to read is written by a hungover and angry person.

I wrote personally. I'm fucking fed up with people wanking over the god damn property, proclaiming that it's the best thing ever. My point is it attracts the worst kind of gamer, those who I have distanced myself from. Maybe I'm being a dick about this, but so are a lot of the fans. I feel that the way they are advertising it is horrible, in the same way those that link feeds (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc) and auto updates from websites like Raptr, I don't fucking care, I don't want to read the same thing twice, I don't want to know what you are playing (if I did I would look on Xbox.com/Steam).

This sort of behaviour is similar to extremists, be they religious or otherwise. I'm not going to force Vegetarianism down your throat so stop fucking spamming shit about Scott Pilgrim. There is a big difference between enthusiastic and annoying, SP fans tend to be the latter.

AND DONE, sorry.

Addendum:

Very little/none of this applies to Thumbs

by 8 bit I don't mean the game, I mean game trope which started in 8 bit coins flying out of enemies, etc,

I'm not going to touch the art in the game, nor the music,

"loud" references are pretty much bullshit, like overused memes.

[Tanukitsune]

So if this game wasn't about Scott Pilgrim you wouldn't hate it? That's... ridiculous? I've played games based on franchises I don't like that much anymore, they still make good games!

I never listened to heavy metal music before, that didn't stop me from enjoying Brütal Legend, I don't like superhero comics, but when they make good games, I play them!

This game plays just like River City Ransom... you could almost call it a rip-off, those tropes are the usual stuff you get in these games, if you hate retro games, then just say it, don't say it like people who enjoy it are utter morons for liking things like actual colors in their games...

Frankly, I kinda wish this wasn't a Scott Pilgrim game, because the game would have been great without the franchise behind it and we could stop this talk about the franchise....

Come to think of it, how many of us are actually commenting about the game? Or are we just calling each other names for liking or not liking the comic and/or movie this game is based on?

[Denial]

Patters Fair enough - in essence, you're reviewing the audience. You don't want to talk about the game, so there's not a huge amount to add in a thread at least notionally about the game.

Likewise, if I'd known that syntheticgerbil was an angry comic book afficionado, whose fundamental antipathy towards Scott Pilgrim and anyone who failed to slag it off (with or without the experience of reading it) was part of an ongoing beef with its US publisher, I probably would have approached that one differently.

Cigol - I can see where people are coming from on the slowness - there's a point, specifically around the Shopping District (world 1, level 2) where if you're still doling out 4 points of damage with a strong attack it feels kind of treacly. That was frustrating until I worked out that the the thing to do is to head to the bookshop as soon as you had $24.95 and buy the strength-boosting book. That, and the ability to dash-attack enemies on the ground (annoyingly absent from Stills' move set) really speeds up the game. On my third run through I cheated by grinding between World 3, where you can pick up a lot of coins, and the Shopping District until I could afford to buy the bionic arm in Wallace's secret shop, which turned worlds 4 to 6 basically into a massacre.

(I'm afraid that the fact that this can be described in a manner morphologically indistinguishable from Zelda is, for me, quite gratifying. I may be part of the problem).

The art and the soundtrack of the game are, I think, quite interesting - more interesting in many ways than the gameplay. In the same way that Edgar Wright is on the arty side of pop culture - not that he's making Wild Strawberries, but he's a kind of populist auteur in a pre-Spiderman Sam Raimi sort of a way - Scott Pilgrim vs the World: the Game is kind of what I imagine a AAA art game might look like. Or rather what one approach to a AAA art game might be; playing it and Limbo back to back got me thinking about how they both represent different approaches to a highly stylised visual and sonic approach which is consciously out of step with the current SRS BSNS approach - realistic worlds, carefully researched weapons, orchestral scoring.

Edited August 22, 2010 by Denial

[syntheticgerbil]

I completely see where Patters is coming from. I'm so disturbed that this stupid comic that's been around for over half a decade is now suddenly ridiculously overhyped within a few of the more "hip" people I know.

So I don't know how much experience people have had with shit that suddenly gets hyped. It can make great things seem cheap, it can make crap seem like it's worth your time, and it can also lead to a large period of anti-hype. I always go by Public Enemy when they say, "Don't believe the hype."

So now we have this comic that certain people will think less of you if you never gave it a chance, probably not so much with the regular Thumbs, but you know. You can't shrug off a piece of media for failing to tickle any of your bits of fancy once it's been hyped to the teeth, because then everyone expects you to somehow at least try to be in tune with this vehicle that everyone else is currently lest you become the asshole that hates everything.

The most recent extremity of this I can think of is that garbage Juno movie I was dragged to and certain friends of mine proclaiming I don't have a heart or something for thinking it was mediocre to the core. Then said friends started their kick on Moldy Peaches, thinking for whatever reason this band deserved to be within ear rape of me. When people start listening to the unlistenable because it's cool... well, anyway I have a lot different friends now who either don't believe the hype, are adverse to it, or just take the stuff with a grain of salt. Life's happier that way.

And uh... with that, I'll take up whatever Nachimir said and dodge Mr. Defensive here.

Anyway to sum up, game animation is good (much more technically skilled, rounded, and constructed than the comic), I might see the movie when it's in Red Box, and the comic still embodies much of what I hate about the current U.S. independent comics.

So if this game wasn't about Scott Pilgrim you wouldn't hate it? That's... ridiculous? I've played games based on franchises I don't like that much anymore, they still make good games

I can see both sides of this issue, but sometimes playing good games based on bad licenses can be like having above average sex with a person you don't like/are unattracted to. I don't know if Brutal Legend comics within the license type issue, but I'm sure a liking of Metal helps immensely. I'm not interested in motorcycles or vehicles in general but it did not hinder my eternal love for Full Throttle. I think it's a personal preference thing.

[SiN]

Everyone I know, personally, who is a big fan of the comic is either not a gamer or is an illiterate, Kotaku reading hypocrite. Maybe tending to a different type of game (serious tones, modern, etc) and being fed up of 8bit type games leads me to this.

Seriously, this is silly. I don't care if you like the comics or not, but try not to insult my intelligence, please.

Your position strikes me as being the same argument as "Everyone I know, personally, who is a big fan of Halo is either not a gamer or is an illiterate, Kotaku reading hypocrite."

Basically, when something has mass appeal respond by taking the elitist position and hate it. Very vocally.

So what if the people who like the comics are not gamers? I think that's great! In the same way that Halo widened the audience of video games, I'm glad that Scott Pilgrim brought Video game-isms to cinema. Are they the best introductions to video games? No, not really.* It would be nice if people were introduced to video games via, I dunno, Deus Ex and a more serious movie on video games, but screw it, I'd rather people have some sort of interest/awareness of video games than our precious hobby continuing to lurk in the dark corners of the general consciousness.

Mo

* although I think Scott Pilgrim captures video games & gamers more than we'd care to admit