The World Hits Back
7 Princesses and 7 Exes. Coincidence?
It’s been one of those months where I find myself so engrossed in a particular game that it was difficult to try something new. As I mentioned a few weeks back, a 2025 goal is to finally experience the complete Kingdom Hearts saga, so I dove back into the first entry to try and keep pace with my target. I’m still trying to pinpoint what it is exactly, but this may be the most that nostalgia has ever hooked its way into me overriding my usual sense of “quality”.
What I mean by that is there are plenty of times in the moment-to-moment gameplay where I should be frustrated. The lock-on targeting and camera fight against you in combat, traversal outside of battles feels dated, some boss fights encourage spam tactics rather than strategy, and the gummi ship sequences continue to be an active waste of time. AND YET...as soon as I land in a new Disney-themed world or I earn a new cutscene I’m grinning y’all. Purely reinvigorated to see what’s next.
I’m so charmed by these characters that I’m engrossed in their plight all over again. What I’ve yet to decipher is if this is because 30-year-old me is actively enjoying the drama or if it’s due to 10-year-old me finding comfort in revisiting his virtual friends again. But I’m also wondering - does it matter? Is there a difference?
I’ll keep thinking on that one as I head into the game’s final few worlds. In the meantime, I managed to spend some time with a newer to me title that’s a little more simple.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game
As I imagine most other 16-year-olds who played video games at the time would, I loved Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World when it was released in 2010. It was one of the few films I went to see multiple times in the theater at that age. I was and continue to be impressed by its editing, vibrancy, and all around ingenuity. For me, it’s one of those movies I can flow with. It’s an unfair comparison, but the 2D side-scrolling beat ‘em up released the same year Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game doesn’t leave the same impression.
From the first in-game fight, it became obvious that the speed of the game was going to be an issue. Scott (or whichever fighter you select) moves through the stage at an annoyingly sluggish pace. I had to constantly be sprinting in order for it to feel close to natural. This affects combat as well. There have been numerous occasions where I appear to be doing well only to be knocked down (where gameplay basically stops for 5 seconds) because I’m hitting the buttons too fast and it doesn’t register. It feels like I’m dancing with the game and it refuses to go my tempo, so I’m left stumbling through trying and failing to match its groove before the song ends. I’ve tried to keep in mind that this may be in line with the old school arcade games it is imitating - which, if true, I can applaud the commitment to the bit - but that doesn’t translate to enjoyment. Those opening moments were filled with frustration.
That is until I noticed a couple levels in that you can walk into some of the shops in the background and give your fighter stat boosts. Some of this is definitely on me for not reading the “How to Play” in the start menu, but I feel the game could have made this RPG element more obvious by at least indicating when you can interact with the background. The way the mechanic works is that players can purchase items that either give health back or increase their Speed, Defense, Strength, and Willpower (this impacts your Super Attack power). Once I realized this the difficultly became more manageable, but it also revealed more frustrations in the game’s design. First, the item selection menu does not tell you what the item does until you’ve purchased it. This is a small quibble until it’s combined with my second issue, the game necessitates grinding. The loop I found myself in too often was thus: proceed to a new level, make it about halfway through before failing thanks to the overpowered enemies, return to the first level’s halfway checkpoint because it’s the closest to item shops and a sequence that rewards a lot of money, purchase an item, realize that it increased the wrong stat leaving me with not enough money for another item, finish the first level, repeat the first level until I can purchase the item I want, return to the original level that started the loop and hope I increased my stats enough to get through. It’s all just too clunky.
It’s a bummer, because everything about the game aside from the gameplay is great! It was such a smart choice to go with the pixel art which feels both timeless and in-line with how this narrative has been presented elsewhere. The character designs mesh with the spirit of the original work and seeing familiar images like the bass guitar battle and screen-filling “KO” brought a smile to my face. There’s also no denying how kinetic the Anamanaguchi soundtrack is in this game. It’s the perfect companion to push you forward with its pulsing retro-future sonic blend. I’ve had a few of these songs saved in Spotify for years now, and they have been getting a lot more plays in recent weeks. The presentation package is simply spot on for this story’s whole vibe.
To be fair to the game, I wanted to point out that I exclusively played this in single-player mode. With these kinds of beat 'em ups there’s always a new level of fun when other players are introduced, so there’s the possibility that some of the more grating gameplay elements become less so with friends. With that in mind, it’s still tough to recommend as an extended play, but maybe there’s room for it as a secondary title you go back to when you need something to fiddle with for fifteen minutes. While the movie is something I revisit even to this day, playing the game doesn’t capture the same magic.