Scott Pilgrim EX

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.