Scott Pilgrim Vs The World – The Comics & Video Game
Scott Pilgrim, the movie about to hit cinemas directed by Edgar Wright, captured my interest as soon as I saw the first trailer. Here was a movie that was based on a comic, but one that I was unfamiliar with, & it seemed to be the closest thing to a comic book brought to life that I had seen since Sin City.
Sure, I was blown away by 300 & Watchmen, but they didn’t have the same feel as I was getting from the Scott Pilgrim trailers – that feeling that someone had managed to turn a comic into moving pictures, but still make it feel like you were watching a comic.
So I made my mind up. I wasn’t going to be ignorant of Scott Pilgrim anymore &, as Edgar Wright & the cast of the movie prepared to go to Comic-Con & quite literally steal the show, I placed my order with Amazon & waited for the arrival of the first book (I decided to be sensible for once & not put my money down on the entire series of 6 books, with one still to be published at that time, just in case I didn’t enjoy it the way I hoped I would). And then I waited for the parcel to fall from my letterbox so I could see what all the fuss was about.
So three days later I got home from work & there was a parcel waiting for me. Once opened, I started reading my first Scott Pilgrim comic. Ten minutes later I was online placing an order for the remaining five books.
Yes, I enjoyed Scott Pilgrim that much.
The story itself is fairly simple. Scott Pilgrim is a 23 year old living in Toronto. He has no direction, shares a bed with his gay flatmate Wallace &, at the beginning of the first book, dating a highschool student called Knives. And he also ays bass in a local band called Sex Bob-omb.
But then he starts dreaming of this girl on rollerblades. And he cannot get her out of his head. So when he finds out that she is real he finds himself infatuated with her.
This girl, Romona Flowers, is the new Amazon delivery girl & Scott cannot stop thinking about her – so much so that he makes an order off of Amazon just so he can ask her out.
Soon enough, the pair of them are dating & Scott has to stop putting off breaking up with Knives.
But then things get even more complicated when, at a Sex Bob-Omb concert, Scott suddenly gets attacked by Mathew Patel.
Patel, it turns out, is the first of Romona’s Evil Ex Boyfriends & Scott must defeat them all if he actually does want to be with her.
So now Scott is in for the fight(s) of his life as he is confronted by each of the exes in turn, leading up to a climatic fight with the final Evil Ex, the mysterious Gideon.
Throw in Scotts own exes, a cat & hyperspace & you just know that things are going to get very complicated.
Now, it’s not just the story that pulled me in & made me want to finish all six comics as quickly as possible (even though it is very well written) but it was everything else as well.
The artwork, for instance, is deceptively simple. When you first start reading the comics you could be forgiven for comparing them to more polished work from the likes of Marvel or DC but then you get to one of the first Anime inspired fight scenes and the whole thing suddenly explodes & comes to life. It’s at that point that you realise you are holding & reading something very special indeed. You come to notice that the seemingly simple art is actually chock full of detail & nuances that at first might escape you.
There is a real feeling to the comics that captures the feelings of turning from a teenager into an adult, whatever age that actually happens, and it helps that this “coming of age” drama is played out with humour, love & more than a little bit of fighting.
Sure, this might well be a comic for “the younger generation” who spend their time reading comics & playing video games but I truly believe that it has much more than that to offer, and speaks to people my age (I’m nearly 33) just as much as it does to people around the age of the characters.
While reading the comics you are drawn into Scott Pilgrim’s world & I, for one, cannot wait to revisit that world when I get the chance to watch the film. If it manages to capture even a little bit of the magic of the comics then it will be sure to be one hell of an enjoyable ride.
As a fan of comics, I heartily recommend this. Go buy the first issue now. In fact, sod it, go buy the entire run. You won’t regret it.
So what about the video game made by Ubisoft, which is based on the comics that the film is based on? It’s a download only title available from the Playstation Network (where it has been out since the 10th of August) and Xbox Marketplace (as of the 25th of August). And, in keeping with the sensibilities of the comics, it is a side-scrolling beat-em-up just like you would have gotten in the 1990′s – think River City Ransom or Streets of Rage & you should know what you are in for, but that’s only the beginning of the video game references thrown in!
There’s even a Mario Bros style World Map for crying out loud!
In keeping with the 1990s feel is the lack of an online multiplayer – instead you get a local four player co-op mode, which is great if you have gaming friends living near by. If you don’t, you are left to tackle the games increasingly harder levels by yourself – and without a friends help to revive you or watch your back as you’re fighting off the hordes of enemies you’re going to be in for a rough time.
Rough, but damn good fun.
As well as the story mode, which features more than enough challenges & power ups that you purchase in the games shops to keep you occupied for hours (and demand more playthroughs) there are also bonus modes, one being the Survival Horror zombie mode & the other a “Boss Rush” mode, to deliver hours of fun.
At £7.99 on PSN (sorry, no idea how much it costs in MS Points) this is an absolute bargin. There is a part of me that hopes Ubisoft do patch in an online multiplayer option, but even without that, this is one hell of a fun game.
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