WHAT IS IT?

The best entry in the best modern racing series.

IS IT GOOD?

It is the best.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Gearheads. Shuichi Shigeno. My buddy Matt.

START YOUR ENGINES

Growing up, my favourite racing games were, in no particular order, Mario Kart 64, Gran Turismo 3, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

Vastly different experiences, to be sure. The first, a cartoony mascot racer with an emphasis on fantastical track design and multiplayer mayhem. The second, a rigorously assembled simulation with top-notch graphics. And that last, now-forgotten one, a stylish arcade racer featuring flashy cars and wicked cool, Fast and the Furious-style, street racing (from the creators of Grand Theft Auto, no less).

Forza Horizon 6 doesn’t necessarily do any of those things better. But it does do each of them really, really well, combining awe-inducing graphics, blisteringly fast quasi-arcade gameplay, and even some cartoony fun, like its absurdly destructible environments and yes, you may have heard about this, at least one race against a giant bipedal mech.

Forza Horizon 6 is easily the best entry in this already legendary series, and a late-arriving contender for best racing game of all time.

THE UNREAL DRIVING SIMULATOR

Gran Turismo 3 may have been the game of my childhood, but even I can understand the appeal of the less rigorous arcade-style racers. Where the GT series – including its excellent, current PS5 incarnation – is known for its fidelity to real-world physics and real-world tracks, arcade racers are, by design, quite different, with entertainingly dubious physics, over-the-top track design, and an emphasis on style over realism.

For over a decade now, Forza has been the best exemplar of that approach.

All of the Forza, or at least the Forza Horizon series (2012 to present) have been excellent, the series beautifully iterating on the open-world design introduced by the aforementioned Midnight Club, not to mention Club‘s fellow PS2 racers such as Need For Speed: Underground 2 and Burnout Paradise. In this open-world format, half the fun is the journey between races.

It’s been fun to watch Forza Horizon evolve.

The 2012 original was limited to a fictionalized version of Colorado. 2014 expanded things with a Europe-set racer which guides players across southern France and into parts of Italy (notably, the Amalfi Coast). Horizon 3 went to Australia, while 4 (sadly now impossible to find) embraced the car culture of the U.K., while 5 (which I glowingly reviewed) offered up a pixel-perfect digital simulacrum of Mexico, from its sopping wet rainforests to ancient archaeological sites and beachside resort towns.

Last year, if you’d asked me what one racing game is worth playing on modern consoles, I would have said Forza Horizon 5.

FH 6 is better than its predecessors in every measurable way.

STREETS AHEAD

Forza Horizon 6 looks better.

It plays better. It moves faster, and yet does so in a way that doesn’t give you motion sickness.

FH 6’s world is impeccable. Like Assassin’s Creed Shadows before it, it’s a delight for the virtual tourist in all of us, encouraging players to wander across a beautifully realized Japan, from snowy mountaintops through coastal towns to after-hours street racing in the streets of Tokyo.

Forza Horizon 6 is also, and always, fun.

It’s fun to drive from Point A to Point B. It’s fun to rack up points through the game’s generous skill system, which throws points at you for pretty much anything, good or “bad” – blazing through a speed trap, going airborne over a huge jump, smashing down trees or guardrails.

About that last one: while also true in prior entries, this Horizon is easily the most destructible yet. Your car is basically a 200 kph battering ram, smashing through not just fencing (tired) but also densely thicketed forests (wired) and other hazards like concrete barriers, bamboo groves, and the game’s hundreds if not thousands of collectible mascot statues. Even on my relatively underpowered Steam Deck, there was nary a moment of slowdown as I sent my Aston Martin DB5 plowing through a mountainside forest, racking up points even as I clearcut worse than Bowron.

On a related note, what I especially love about Forza Horizon 6 is how much of its activities occur naturally, uninterrupted by menus or structured races.

Drive through a “Drift Zone” on the map, and the game automatically triggers a counter which challenges you to pull of an extended series of drift turns through a discrete area. Blaze through a Speed Trap, and the game instantly captures your top speed, rewarding points on a scale of one- to three-stars.

Then there are the jumps, oh the jumps. As with the smashing and crashing of its generous physics system, FH 6 loves to send you seriously airborne. The open world has specific jump spots which challenge you to generate airtime, but even within races you’ll have plenty of opportunity to fly through the air at crazy speeds, often in slow-motion. It is absolutely, 100%, unrealistic, and it is awesome.

GO

Races in FH 6 generally fall into one of five categories: stunt challenges (self-explanatory), track races (both on- and off-road; off-road is more fun because I get to drive my beloved Lancer Evo), Midnight Club-style street racing (very illegal, always awesome), cross country treks (my favourite category, in which you race point-to-point across the world map, instead of looping through laps), and drift courses. Pretty much of all of which, incidentally, can be accessed through the game’s optional multiplayer, which allows you to quickly and mostly painlessly hop into online races, co-op challenges, or “convoys” alongside other players.

There are also the occasional gimmick races, making fine use of the game’s more unusual vehicle selection (pickups, old-timey Fords, etc.), and of course the now-famous Gundam race, in which you go head-to-head against a thirty-foot-tall Japanese robot. (Spoilers: you win.)

If Forza Horizon 6 falters anywhere, it’s in the drifting. This has also been a problem in the past, and it’s clear that in Playground’s desire to offer everything to everyone, they’ve had to compromise on what might have been more accurate (if more difficult) drifting. At least the game makes up for it by offering up several garages’ worth of the greatest drift vehicles of all time, including the fabled Sprinter Trueno of Initial D fame, the Nissan Silvia, and the Mazda Miata.

Exploration is also the name of the game in FH 6, promising just as much, if not more fun, outside the confines of its structured challenges.

I love exploring the idealized, largely unpopulated Japan of Forza Horizon 6. For one, it’s a great way to track down the game’s many secrets, from unlockable vehicles to quasi-hidden (albeit heavily signposted) destructible mascot figures, to properties which can be purchased and then used as fast-travel garages spread across the map. (Though why anyone would want to fast-travel is beyond me.)

For another, it’s just such a beautiful, and beautifully-realized, landscape. The amount of time I’ve spent in photo mode (also handily available at the tap of a button) – capturing a shot of my Evo perched on a mountaintop, my VW Beetle snaking through the streets of Tokyo – is almost embarrassing. It’s a graphical showcase from top to bottom, and probably the best-looking racing game ever made. In a sense, it’s what we remember Gran Turismo 3 looking like, through the haze of rose-tinted memory.

In short, Forza Horizon 6 is a masterpiece, and easily the must-play game released so far this year. See you out on the road.

***
Final score: 10/10

Visit the official website for Forza Horizon 6 here.

The post Forza Horizon 6 Review: Wakarimasu appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

A beautiful HD remaster of 1993’s R-Type III: The Third Lightning for the SNES.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s a great shmup from a bygone era.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Shmuppers.

FLY RIGHT

My favourite shmups – Ikaruga, Einhänder, the little-known Sine Mora – work best when they make you feel like a gaming genius. Combining blistering difficulty (Dark Souls ain’t got nothing on Ikaruga) with repeatable, learnable attack patterns, these are games that are meant to be honed over countless hours of practice, only to finally reach the point where the whole adventure can be finished in less than sixty minutes, its toughest sections no longer a match for your lightning fast reflexes.

R-Type is one of the progenitor shmup series, and it’s easily one of the best. R-Type Final was one of my favourite games on the PS2 (it narrowly missed the cut on my rundown last year), but the series, with its attachable “Force” powerups, has always been good. While R-Type Delta (1998, PlayStation) is generally considered the best of the bunch, that’s no knock against the SNES-era R-Type III: The Third Lightning, or as it’s now been confusingly rebranded, Dimensions III.

FLY RIGHT

It’s been seventeen long years since R-Type Dimensions, an Xbox Live Arcade title (remember those?) which brought together and remastered the original R-Type and R-Type II for widescreen, HD gaming. There’s been nary an R-Type since then (saving the release, earlier this year, of an HD compilation of the offshoot turn-based Tactics games), and that’s a shame for what was once a widely-heralded series.

Dimensions III – even more confusingly, there is no Dimensions 2 – comes at a great moment for fans of retro-shmups. There’s Saros, busy applying the shmup ethos to third-person roguelike shooters, while the ever-expanding Switch/Switch 2 retro console library features a plethora of classic shmups, ranging from the aforementioned Ikaruga to the similarly-celebrated Radiant Silvergun and a large swath of the R-Type games.

FIRE

What Dimensions III brings to the table is the ideal version of a game widely considered among the best 16-bit shmups. Optional HD graphics – you can swap between the classic and modern with the tap of a button – alongside local shared screen co-op make for a fun afternoon, if you happen to know any other shmup nerds. (I know, we’re a dying breed.)

As for the game itself, it’s got the same solid core of spacefaring combat, albeit with the same extreme difficulty the series is known for. Difficulty modifiers help ease the pain, but players should bear in mind that this isn’t so much a game to be sit down and played through, as it is one to be mastered, over countless hours of improvement. It’s still far less daunting than Elden Ring, at any rate.

That said, we did notice some occasional slowdown, both in 16-bit and HD mode, and we actually found the original graphics to be preferable in certain areas. (Less visual clutter.) The lack of online multiplayer is also disappointing, if forgivable. Mostly, our main criticism has to do with difficulty: it is very hard, so unless you have the stamina to keep pushing through the same levels over and over, this one may not be for you. (Again, Elden Ring sickos, you’ll understand.)

***
Final score: 7/10 Vic Vipers.

Visit the official website for R-Type Dimensions III here.

The post R-Type Dimensions III Review: Pew Pew Pew appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

Original Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Where We Played It: Nintendo Switch, SNES library, Switch Online.

Verdict: 90s kids were a heck of a lot more patient than me.

Super Mario World is legendary.

Perhaps the most legendary Mario title. Odds are, if you ask someone to draw Mario, the version they come up with looks an awful lot like the 16-bit hero of this game: bright blue and red, slightly paunchy, that famous pixel moustache.

Super Mario World is the best-selling Super Nintendo game of all time. It sold 20,610,000 units, a number which cannot be explained solely by the fact SMW came packed in with the console at release in 1991. For a time, it seemed like everyone owned SMW, and if you didn’t, you’d begged, borrowed, stolen a copy in order to fit in. So yes, sure, I’d dabbled in SMW in the past, at birthday parties and sleepovers and at arcade bars like Toronto’s ZED*80. What I had not done, until now, was actually sit down and play the dang thing from beginning to end.

No taking turns with a cousin, no abandoning my progress mid-World-3 because Dad came to pick me up. Booting it up recently, I felt like I was travelling through time: finally sitting down to my own copy of SMW, finally in with the cool kids. Even if they’d all long since grown up, had kids, and dusted off those very same cartridges to introduce a whole new generation to this legendary experience.

My name is Steven Lantier, and I am here to tell you Super Mario World is not as good as you remember.

This realization shocked me, and it took a while to reconcile myself to it. (This was one of the harder entries to write in the burgeoning Late to the Game series.)

But before we get to my concerns (and your opprobrium), I think it’s fair to start with the good stuff.

First and foremost, Super Mario World is a walking, running, jumping blueprint. The urtext for the side-scrolling platformer, SMW is inherently fun to play, if only to spot all the ideas which set the standard for decades to come.

Without Super Mario World, we simply wouldn’t have Donkey Kong Country, Crash Bandicoot, and Super Meat Boy. No Celeste, Rayman, or Braid either, not to mention the thousands of other games that owe a debt of gratitude, one way or another, to this 1990 classic directed by Takashi Tezuka and produced by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. Obviously, there’s a lot that works here.

The level design is fun and interesting, with a bevy of powerups – a feather which grants a flying cape, a flower that lets you shoot fireballs – which keep level progression interesting. Enemy types are well-designed, albeit rather repetitive (there’s something like twelve different Koopa Troopas). The miniboss fights at the end of each world against the various Koopalings – Lemmy, Wendy, and other characters I’d only ever encountered in Mario Kart – are enjoyable and fair.

SMW also sees the introduction of the Yoshis – this game clarifying Yoshis are a species, not just one individual – with many of the game’s best moments happening when you’re astride a green, blue, or yellow giant dinosaur, hoovering up enemies. This is, in all honesty, peak Yoshi, the perfect combination of novel gameplay mechanics married to rewarding level design. No other game – not Yoshi’s Island with its annoying Baby Mario, not Super Mario Galaxy 2 with its decent-but-less-imaginative Yoshi levels – comes close.

Super Mario World is also beautiful, albeit not as beautiful as my beloved Donkey Kong Country, which arrived late in the SNES lifespan and which clearly shows it. As you’re undoubtedly already aware, SMW’s soundtrack is also memorably and dangerously earwormy.

But – and here we go now – SMW is also tricky, and annoying, in ways that become increasingly unpleasant as you make your way across its nine worlds (ninety-six levels total, if you track down all the secret ones, which I most assuredly did not).

The controls are floaty – Mario moves like he’s on ice – and the levels are ripe with devious challenges purpose-built to trip you up. Surprisingly, and disappointingly, SMW is very much a game of trial and error, with traps that surprise and enemies that confound the first, fifth, or tenth time you encounter them. I demand an apology from anyone who ever mocked my adoration of Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. Super Mario World – and Super Mario himself – is just far too finicky, far too likely to go careening off a ledge despite my best efforts.

These problems are also more or less absent from future Mario entries, further reinforcing the notion that what people think they love about SMW is really what the series became, later on.

Often when I start a new platformer, I’ll try something I call the “Emmitt Smith test”.

It works like this.

In a perfectly designed platformer, it should theoretically be possible to complete a full run-through of a stage, vaulting platforms and dodging enemies, without stopping or slowing even once. If a level hasn’t been optimized – if there are platforms you’re forced to wait for, or syncopated enemy attacks which interrupt game flow – the game fails the test. Sonic the Hedgehog is a case study for Emmitt Smith’ing: even on your first attempt, it’s possible to thrillingly blast your way through a level in one shot, provided you’re paying close enough attention and trusting your reflexes.

SMW, on the other hand, regularly grinds to a halt as you’re forced to stand around and wait: for a platform to move to just the right spot, for an enemy to complete its attack loop, for one or another thing to trigger so Mario can move forward. Valley of Bowser 2 is a prime example of this: half the level is spent idly waiting for screen-filling sand to raise or lower until the operative path becomes available. It’s slow, it’s not particularly challenging, and the only real risk of dying is from boredom.

Probably SMW’s worst sin, however, is its habit of making you jump through an extremely convoluted series of hoops in order to escape one of its endlessly repeating level loops.

Picture this: you’ve completed every level in a given world (Forest of Illusion, Chocolate Island, etc.), only to find there’s no escape route: all roads lead back to levels you’ve already completed. With no other option, you wander aimlessly, hoping, through sheer stroke of luck, to figure out which power-up, in which level, you must find and then carry onward to a different level, where a hidden warp pipe may or may not be waiting for you. Bearing in mind that, if you take any damage, you instantly lose the power-up and have to start the process all over again.

None of this is signposted or even hinted at: you’re expected to find it through guesswork or, as I did, GameFAQs. (I guess in SMW’s heyday, I would’ve asked somebody at school.) This is, frankly, bad game design, and would be unacceptable in 2026: even notoriously vicious games like Elden Ring are suffused with hints and gentle prods to get you going in the right direction.

Other aspects of SMW just beg for the kinds of quality-of-life improvements which became common in later Mario installments:

The lack of overworld checkpoints (it became awfully tempting to use the Switch Online’s “save state” function to protect my progress between levels). The lack of checkpoints within levels, an annoyance which is especially pronounced in the miniboss castles, which must be repeated several times until you emerge triumphant. Then there’s Mario’s default weakened state, where one blow guarantees instant death until you grab a red mushroom and embiggen your hero. Then, too, there’s the anxiety-inducing timer, which grants a maximum of around 204 seconds (three-and-a-half minutes) to complete a level, and which adds needless stress to an already challenging game. (Confusingly, the on-screen timer is a lie: though it appears to display “300” seconds, it actually runs faster than a standard second.)

At times, SMW reminded me of, of all things, Trap Adventure, the notoriously difficult “joke game” in which everything – the level elements, the timer, even the pop-up notifications – is out to kill you in cruelly unpredictable ways. (Incidentally, I have actually beaten Trap Adventure 2, which is perhaps my sole claim to hardcore gaming fame.)

One thing I swore to myself while playing SMW was that, despite the many temptations to do so, I would not exploit the Switch’s “save state” system to drop manual checkpoints for myself. If I were going to defeat SMW, I was going to defeat it by the game’s own rules, saving only when the game prompted me to do so (which isn’t nearly often enough).

In the end, SMW took me about six hours to complete its core campaign, an honest run from World 1-1 to the final battle at Bowser’s Castle.

I dabbled in, but did not bother much with, the “Star Road” secret world, which contains five optional – and uniformly challenging – levels, nor did I bother with the yet more difficult “Special Zone”, which contains such delightfully-named levels as “Tubular”, “Way Cool”, and “Funky”. (Yes, really.)

The Star Road and Special Zone challenges have long been a source of fascination for the global speedrunning community, representing as they do the more experimental (if borderline unplayable) strains of 16-bit design which, even in 2026, feel out of place in the bright, beautiful world of Super Mario World.

Did I enjoy my time with SMW? Well, yes. Insofar as I had fun platforming around the main levels, largely avoiding the optional (tough-as-nails) secret areas, and making recourse to GameFAQs whenever – and it was more often than I expected – I ran into a progression wall, whether trapped in a haunted house or wandering in circles around the overworld.

But I also found SMW frustrating, in ways that simply aren’t present in later or even earlier Mario entries. (I didn’t mention this at the top, but I’ve defeated the original NES Super Mario Bros. on several occasions, and that game is hardly a cakewalk either.)

SMW is, in other words, a flawed entry in the Nintendo canon, an opinion which I know will likely get me into hot water, to which I’d ask, have you even played Super Mario World recently?

I’d also ask, is it even possible to play SMW with fresh eyes, if it already resides so firmly in your rose-tinted memory? (Maybe one day I’ll start a series called #FF1D8D-Coloured Glasses, where I revisit beloved games from my own childhood… but that’s a project for another day.)

It’s a funny thing, really. After so many successful Late to the Games, I really didn’t think Super Mario World would be the game to force me to admit, yes, the classics aren’t always as welcoming or accessible as we’d like to think.

I still believe it’s worth trying Super Mario World if you’ve never played it – and it’s easy enough to find, in 2026 – but I wouldn’t recommend it with the same vigour as, say, Link to the Past or Final Fantasy VI, to pick two previous games I’ve covered here.

Super Mario 64, on the other hand? Required homework.

***
Final Score: 8 out of 10 Power Stars.

For more “Late to the Game” adventures, check out our archive.

The post Late to the Game: Super Mario World appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

A (surprisingly violent!) stealth/horror title with a wonderful Burtonesque aesthetic.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s entertaining in its own morbid way.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Wednesday Addams.

THE HILLS ARE SILENT

Tarsier Studio’s macabre Reanimal, its first new horror title since the well-received pair of Little Nightmares of 2017/2021, is an engaging, well-told, if fairly disturbing adventure, where the emphasis is less on the truly frightening and more on maintaining a generally eerie vibe. As such, it’s not as scary as fans might hope, though it definitely has its standout moments, even as its story is interesting enough to pursue on its own.

THE EVIL IS RESIDENT

From its opening, contextless sequence – a stormy rescue at sea – Reanimal takes off and rarely lets up.

Following the trials and tribulations of a pair of animal mask-wearing siblings as they seek to escape the clutches of a horrifying assortment of adult-coded foes, Reanimal offers a solid core of stealth gameplay, in service of a series of disturbing setpieces overflowing with dark shadows, slithering monstrosities, and quite a lot of blood and guts. The fact that these are children we’re playing as makes it all the more distressing.

Moment to moment, Reanimal plays a lot like a horror-inflected version of Ico, that classic of PS2 immersive adventuring. Whether playing in two-player co-op or solo (we honestly preferred solo, it contributed to the oppressive vibe), expect to spend a lot of time exploring expertly rendered environments – a coastal castle, a tumbledown cinema, a flooded city – in pursuit of doohickeys to unlock the next obstacle in your way, all while being stalked by a myriad of Burtonesque foes.

Although the aesthetic remains fairly consistent – grim, grey – throughout, this set-up does allow for quite a bit of diversity in terms of what you’re exposed to, each new area an opportunity for another new set-piece. One minute, you’ll be dropped into an extended homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Birds, while in another you might be easing your rickety motorboat through a flooded building while underwater monsters bear down on you. It’s good stuff.

THE FRAME, FATAL

While technically a spiritual sequel to Little Nightmares, Reanimal perhaps has more in common with the horrifying creations of Playdead, the brains behind the critically-acclaimed Limbo and Inside. Like those games (and, to be fair, like Little Nightmares before it), Reanimal embraces an approach which might best be described as “horrifying stuff, plus kids!”

This both lends it a certain sense of urgency – you worry more for these oddball kids than you would for, say, a lonely explorer traipsing through an abandoned space station – but it also occasionally allows for Reanimal to veer into the unpleasant. Frankly, it feels borderline wrong to see these kids subjected to certain of these environments, these visuals. The fact they’re merely avatars for you, the player, makes it tolerable, but there’s an unshakeable “ick” factor, not present even in the previous Little Nightmareses, which were decidedly more tame.

Another fair comparator might be BioShock, in which you could – with a merciful fade to black – “harvest” the spirits of that game’s mutant Little Sisters, which at the time represented a rare dalliance with a relatively untouchable aspect of interactive storytelling. Reanimal, in which your youthful protagonists can die in fairly macabre ways, does not offer such a fade to black, though the stylized art at least blunts the trauma of it.

That said, my main criticism is, perhaps ironically, the opposite: Reanimal fails to make death consequential. Checkpoints are frequent, and there’s rarely any cost to failing a segment and restarting. Over time, this both encourages risk-taking (why bother trying your best when you can just instantly retry) and dulls the threat of foes or obstacles: the third or fourth time you begin the same chase sequence, it’s hard to get exercised about the giant snake dude slithering from up-screen.

Still, at a breezy five-hour campaign (with a handful of optional unlockables to pad out the extra time for those interested), Reanimal nevertheless earns a hearty Toronto Guardian recommendation for any horror fans. It looks great, it plays wonderfully, and it has enough spookiness – and more than enough entertaining set-pieces – to reward the interested horror gamer.

***
Final score: 8/10 Pugsleys.

Visit the official website for Reanimal here.

The post Reanimal (PS5) Review: Big Nightmares appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

The latest – and, spoilers, fantastic – entry in the surprisingly long-running Scott Pilgrim series of comic books, video games, movies, and cartoons.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s a delightful, if canonically ambiguous, entry in our beloved, Toronto-centric series.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Every Torontonian, most geeks, and definitely Michael Cera.

BREAD MAKES YOU FAT?

There’s never been a better time to be a Torontonian.

Between last month’s side-splittingly funny Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie – a film that begins and ends with a CN Tower “heist” of sorts – and this month’s release of Scott Pilgrim EX, sequel to the goofy movie with which Nirvanna shares no small amount of DNA, Toronto is proudly, entertainingly, back in the spotlight.

It’s been sixteen long years since Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the Movie blew our collective minds with its raucous, geekified take on Toronto, introducing a whole generation of dorks to the awesomeness that is our city. It’s been longer still since Scott Pilgrim debuted, in the pages of the cult classic graphic novel – the first entry of which arrived in 2004 – written and illustrated by Ontario’s own Bryan Lee O’Malley. (He grew up in London, Ontario, but moved to Toronto in the early ‘00s.)

For a long while, Scott Pilgrim had the feel of a precious, hidden gem: one you either knew about and lovingly embraced, or missed out on entirely. Despite landing director Edgar Wright – of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame – the film adaptation performed poorly at the box office before quickly disappearing into obscurity, the flame kept alive in only the most obscure (and not necessarily even Canadian) corners of the Internet.

Over time, though, something wonderful happened.

Acclaim for the film, not to mention the excellent, underrated comic book series, began to grow. Critical reappraisals followed, even as it became hard not to notice the film’s impeccable casting instincts – its bevy of future-famous faces includes Kieran Culkin (“Wallace”), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (“Ramona Flowers”), and Aubrey Plaza (“Julie Powers”) – not to mention Brampton’s own Michael Cera in the title role. Amusingly, the movie also features a plethora of superhero actors, including ex-Superman Brandon Routh (“Todd Ingram”), ex-Human Torch/future-Captain America Chris Evans (“Lucas Lee”), and future-Captain Marvel Brie Larson (“Envy Adams”).

It took some time, but eventually Scott Pilgrim went from cult classic to cult canon, earning for itself a sequel animated series – 2023’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off – and several beautifully remastered editions of the graphic novels, not to mention various action figures, Funko pops, and board games. (Surely, the truest sign of nerd success).

Now here we are, 2026, and Scott Pilgrim EX – the title is an amusingly geeky double-entendre – has arrived. A direct sequel to the 2010 Scott Pilgrim tie-in video game, as well as a pseudo-sequel to both the comic book and the recent Takes Off, with which it shares its canonically dubious continuity, EX is a fantastic (if flawed) retro-action title, and a must-play for gaming geeks and Canadians alike.

It’s also very, very funny.

I’M IN LESBIANS WITH YOU

Like its decade-and-a-half-old predecessor, Scott Pilgrim EX is a hardcore 2.5D side-scrolling beat-em-up, a genre which generally involves moving left to right, foreground to background, as you and, in optional multiplayer, your team of allies, take on a succession of missions. Here, the six-or-so-hour campaign is suitably silly, as you track down your band’s missing/stolen instruments, dispersed across space and time thanks to the machinations of “Metal Scott”. And yes, if you recognize that as a Sonic CD reference, you’re tuned right into this game’s wavelength.

Selecting from a roster of familiar faces – Scott, Ramona, a few of their famous “Evil Exes”, some spoilery characters – your team of one to four players (crossplay enabled; shout-out to my PS4-owning buddy Carl!) is set loose on a wonderfully realized 16-bit Toronto, here rendered as an interconnected set of screens which can be more-or-less freely explored. It’s a nice touch, having everything connected from the start (with hidden shortcuts connecting the farthest flung locations), instead of the more traditional structure of standalone levels, as in the recent Marvel Cosmic Invasion (also from Tribute Games) or the previous Scott Pilgrim game.

Gameplay is slightly more sophisticated than button-mashing, as you’ll need to learn the difference between regular and heavy attacks, expert use of the throw/pick-up function (for weapons), and of course your various super attacks. Most fun of all, EX has an abundance of unlockable summons, ranging from Sex Bob-omb’s #1 fan Young Neil (who summons a legion of groupies, it’s hilarious) to Ramona’s zippy housecat. We’ll refrain from spoiling more, but part of the fun of EX is unlocking each new summon and trying him/her/them out until you decide on your favourites.

Also, the soundtrack, by returning chiptune artists Anamanaguchi, is fantastic, demonstrating that the band, which scored both the original game and the recent Takes Off TV series, haven’t lost their touch.

THINK ABOUT DEATH AND GET SAD AND STUFF

Splitting the difference between nerd homage and Toronto love, EX is overflowing with fantastic references, from knowing character and level designs to tributes to iconic parts of Toronto.

On the nerd/gamer side, you’ll encounter an overwhelming amount of familiar-looking enemies and items, liberally “borrowed” from titles like Super Mario, Mortal Kombat, Devil May Cry, and a frankly absurd number of allusions to my favourite 16-bit series, Ghosts ‘n Goblins. (Clearly, someone at Tribute is as big of a Sir Arthur aficionado as I am.) There’s also an entire Ocarina of Time-like system for learning various “riffs” (bass, drums, etc.) which progress the story. It’s awesome.

When it comes to Canadiana, Montréal-based Tribute Games – founded by several veterans of the Ubisoft team that developed the original game – clearly knows their Toronto. There’s the obvious – the CN Tower, a brilliantly reimagined Casa Loma, plentiful TTC references – accompanied by the more specific, like lovingly parodic takes on Toronto stalwarts such as Honest Ed’s (rip), Second Cup, and Shopper’s Drug Mart. Heck, there’s even a whole shop which exclusively sells power-ups named after Neil Young albums.

CONSTANT COMMENT

Scott Pilgrim EX is not without its problems, at least some of which are inherited from its tough-as-nails predecessor.

To begin with, EX can be ruthlessly difficult, refusing to dole out a bare minimum of health power-ups even as it sends you through increasingly harsh challenges. The placement of checkpoints – often before a long gauntlet of enemies preceding a boss fight – can feel unfair, albeit accurate to the quarter-munching era to which this game also pays homage. EX also crashed several times during our playthrough, most notably at the height of a particularly tough boss fight. Not cool.

Indeed, EX is one of the few games to earn a rare Toronto Guardian “Easy Mode” Stamp of Approval: it’s frankly a better game on lower difficulties, since the combat, while still challenging, is offset by what feels like a fair allotment of health and other power-ups.

EX is also clearly designed with multiplayer in mind, so woe be to any solo gamers. Combat in general is more fun with allies, while boss fights are more tolerable with multiple players teaming up. In fact, there reached a point during my single-player playthrough that I began activating a second controller for every boss, leaving my idle ally to soak up enemy attacks as a distraction. Also, fair warning: some mechanics – like the ability to revive after being K.O.’d – are only available in multiplayer.

Then there are the minor, but nevertheless irritating, problems. Puzzles and Shops which don’t save your progress when you die between checkpoints, forcing you to go back and repurchase/redo everything. Unskippable dialogue sequences. Unskippable dialogue sequences. In 2026. The (bizarre) inability to swap characters from anywhere but Ramona’s house, necessitating longish treks across the map whenever you want to change your hero. EX also suffers from some fairly mediocre platforming controls, which mostly don’t matter, but occasionally hinder the game’s optional challenges.

Perhaps the game’s single worst failing is its atrocious revive system. It took us forever to figure out that, once an ally is down and that ten-second counter appears above their head, you need to stand near – but not over – their prone body and manually throw hearts at them, hoping one lands in the correct spot. Even if it wasn’t so poorly explained, it’s still a baffling design choice, adding needless complexity to an essential mechanic which, in any other game, operates with the tap of a button.

Having said that, the weaknesses of Scott Pilgrim EX are only what reduce it from a pure 10/10 to a still impressive 9/10 vegan gelatos. The whole time we were around it, we had a fantastic time. It almost felt like we were on drugs. Not that we do drugs. Unless you do drugs, in which case we do them all the time. All of them.

***
Final score: 9/10 vegan gelatos.

Visit the official website for Scott Pilgrim EX here.

Check out Bryan Lee O’Malley’s official prequel comic, Scott Pilgrim: Dawn of Metal Scott, here.

The post Scott Pilgrim EX (PS4/5) Review: Oh, Canada appeared first on Toronto Guardian.