“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be on hiatus?” is what I assume regular readers of my work are asking right now? Well, I am and I am writing this to you from the distant past… I can only assume that 2021 is shaping up to be a great year and that Wonder Woman:1984 debuted to universal praise and acclaim.
By the time this publishes you’ll be able to get your grubby gaming mitts (or well-manicured hands, I don’t know you) on a game that was long thought to be lost to the mists of time: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game Complete Collection. I never had a chance to play the game during its initial release, but ever since its removal from online stores in 2014 it has become the stuff of legend due to its solid gameplay and retro-charm.
Ubisoft was kind enough to furnish me with a download code for the game and I promptly got to work on playing it. A side note: around the holidays I made the lateral move to a Nintendo Switch Lite which was something I should have done initially since I never use my Switch in the docked configuration. For me, the Switch works leaps and bounds better as a compact handheld…not that I had anywhere to go in 2020 but being able to play The Witcher in the bathroom was me living my best possible life.
But I digress.
The legend surrounding this Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game Complete Collection is absolutely for real. It’s the distillation of all your favorite arcade beat-‘em-ups from yesteryear (The Simpsons, X-Men, TMNT all spring to mind), but perfected. The game is pleasantly difficult but not punishingly so. Not once did I curse a blue streak or throw my Switch across the room… I just kept playing.
The game was seriously hard to put down because of how much fun I was having. And, not for nothing, it doesn’t appear to be a battery hog on the Switch either. The game is very easy to pick up and play, I personally jumped right into the story mode and as of this writing I’m about midway through fighting Ramona’s League of Seven Evil Exes. If you’re familiar with the titular comic book or movie the plot of this game mirrors the source material and even if you’re not the game is able to stand alone on its own merits.
I’m the most casual of gamers but even I’ve taken notice of the glut of “retro” style games out there since the technology to make them has become so readily accessible. Games that ape the aesthetics of old school 8-bit and 16-bit games are a dime a dozen and that’s what makes Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game Complete Collection so good…it’s actually a great game beyond its retro trappings. Having grown up with games that look like this I’m predisposed towards liking that visual style and when I’m handed a game that combines that with solidly fun game play…well, that’s how you live up to the hype.
