Scott Pilgrim EX review: retro brawler is all references, little heart

Scott Pilgrim's new beat-'em-up gets all experimental and stuff

An homage to the kinds of games that inspired Bryan Lee O’Malley’s original comic book series, Scott Pilgrim EX trades in heady storytelling for a buffet of retro references. Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, River City Ransom — they all become sight gags in a 2D adventure that’s less invested in deconstructing its source material than it is reinventing the genre it’s working within. That’s a fine task for the studio behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, but Scott Pilgrim EX struggles to find substantive play that can replace narrative depth.

Scott Pilgrim EX proudly plays like a franchise tie-in game you’d find at an arcade in the '90s. The story? Toronto has been taken over by dastardly vegans and robots, and it’s up to Scott Pilgrim’s cast of characters to save the day. Only this time, there are no emotionally-charged battles to win the affection of a lover. Evil exes become co-op partners in a game that’s simply about smashing through bad guys and nabbing power-ups. It’s a bit of a surprise that Bryan Lee O’Malley was so closely involved with writing the project, considering how devoid it is of his usual reflection.

It’s a bit of a shame, especially coming off of the subversive Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. The Netflix series showed that O’Malley was still thinking about the meaning of his comic book and how that has changed over time. It cemented the series as an ongoing meta chronicle of emotional maturity and how you’re never really done growing. It’s disappointing, and maybe even a little infantilizing, that the same level of thought hasn’t carried over to the series’ first new video game in over 15 years. Why can’t games be a vehicle for heady self-examination in the same way comics, film, and TV can?

Perhaps it’s just that O’Malley and Tribute understand that games speak their own distinct language. Scott Pilgrim EX is a proud act of play above all else. Channeling the simple joy of the games that captured a younger O’Malley’s imagination, the adventure revolves around some reliable arcade brawling. Pick your favorite character, run through the streets of future Toronto, pummel a bunch of comic-referencing bad guys, and pick up the coins they drop. It’s Scott Pilgrim finally built in River City Ransom’s image.

Tribute has the fundamentals of that kind of game down to a science. The fighting, for instance, is hard to argue with. Each character has the same foundational moveset — a mix of basic attacks, more complex combos, and specials built around each hero’s personality — but there’s enough nuance across the board to tempt you to try them all. Ramona Flowers is an obvious standout with her impactful hammer smashes, as is Roxie Richter with a bevy of sword slashes that make the most of Tribute’s chunky sprite work. I eventually found my “main” in Matthew Patel thanks to his summonable "hipster demon chick" tricks, but I was happy to take advantage of the fact that you can change characters as many times as you want throughout the story. The action is only slowed down by clumsy movement that can make navigating some more platform-heavy rooms tiresome.

That’s one half of the equation when it comes to a successful retro beat-'em-up. The other half is aesthetic, which is where Tribute really knows how to flex. Rather than repeating generic city assets, even the smallest stretch of street feels thoughtfully constructed here to reflect the real city it’s based on. When I walk by a rail yard, I can see pixelated pigeons bopping around on the scaffolding above me and someone graffitiing in the background. Beyond that, there’s a hint of a larger city in the distance. Bright beaches, busy main streets dotted with mom-and-pop businesses, and even little stretches of industrial decay all give this version of Toronto real character as opposed to making it feel like any old town.

It’s also proudly referential to video game history, the one place where O’Malley’s usual sincerity comes through. There are legally distinct Piranha Plants that practically wink at you. Old characters get dressed up in goofy costumes like they’re in a Game Gear Garfield game. There’s even a Metal Scott, paying direct tribute to Sonic the Hedgehog in playful fashion. You get the sense that O’Malley and Tribute were just happy to rifle through their old game collections and pack in as many little nods to the games that influenced them as possible.

Toss in a chiptune soundtrack from Anamanaguchi that both fits the retro feel and stays consistent with the wider Scott Pilgrim universe, and you’ve got an easy enough recipe for success. But Tribute doesn’t just stop there, and that’s where Scott Pilgrim EX struggles with its ultimate ambitions. You might have a fairly clear vision of what this game looks like at this point. Jump into a stage, run left to right, beat a boss, repeat, right? That’s not the case. Instead, Scott Pilgrim EX plays like a traditional adventure game transposed to 2D.

You’ll need to collect musical instruments and use them to unlock previously inaccessible routes on the map, sometimes just opening a small alcove that’s home to a boss. It’s a clever callback to The Legend of Zelda on paper, but it ends up being a hassle in practice. Despite the fact that the world feels even smaller and more compact than a two-hour arcade game, you’ll actually explore much less space over more than double the runtime. Those extra hours are mostly spent backtracking over the same few screens and fighting the same mobs of enemies to grind coins that can be used to buy passive perks and level-raising experience points that drop at random. In creating something that strives to feel larger than a traditional beat-'em-up, Tribute instead ends up with a game that stretches its limitations thin to create the illusion of scope.

I can respect the drive to innovate here. After all, Scott Pilgrim’s long-term staying power is built on reinvention. You get the sense that Tribute isn’t comfortable just being known as a novelty act that recreates arcade nostalgia for popular IP. There’s a real attempt to bring the beat-'em-up genre forward in the same way that Absolum successfully pulled off last year with its roguelike infusion, but Scott Pilgrim EX overcomplicates an elegant formula without putting forth a big picture “why?” If this is a game that’s so indebted to the classics Scott Pilgrim was inspired by, why deconstruct and then reconstruct it all in this way? If you’re going to forego a heartfelt script full of thematic weight to focus on the language of play instead, that design needs to communicate something of its own to fill the space. Without it, Scott Pilgrim EX’s heart is lost in a sea of low-hanging video game references.

Perhaps that’s where the series’ usual self-reflective streak ultimately comes in. Scott Pilgrim EX isn’t a coming-of-age story as much as it is an ode to the media that goes on to shape that journey later in life. The genre-twisting experimentation doesn’t land, but Tribute has still made a heartfelt return to the retro games that built O’Malley’s world. You don’t get a generation of nerds unpacking their emotional baggage, their past relationships, and their own toxic behaviors without River City Ransom tossing out that first punch.

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Scott Pilgrim EX is out now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Windows PC using a prerelease download code provided by Tribute Games. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.