(few months late but man was this game hard to track down)
Can a game ride entirely on it's charm and humour? Ask that question to me before I had played The Wonderful 101 and I probably would have said no. Now... I'm not so sure, It's not a perfect game to be certain but very time I found an issue the game would have a witty piece of dialogue or silly visual pun. Though the occasional shift in tone can be jarring.
The game hits the ground running immediately throwing the player into an alien invasion and immediately.
You are tasked with stopping them as you suit up into your CENTINELS to a voice over I would have expected to hear during a cartoon going "Next time on or Previously on" explaining that the suit gives you super human strength, speed and durability. You meet up with your buddy Wonder Blue a valley type who's every second world is "dude, bra,bro or man". Actually this leads nicely into a point I wanted to bring up, and that is that Wonderful 101 doesn't feature characters so much as it does caricatures, with all of them being the physical manifestation of what ever stereotypes typify their ethnicity and nationalities. For example Wonder White is the wonderful one from japan and as such speaks in proverbs with a pronounced japanese accent or Wonder Pink who being from Transylvania was the writers chance to shove as many Castlevania references into as possible, be the girl and one other thing we'll get to later. The invaders are called the G.E.A.T.H.J.E.R.K which stands for and I swear this is true, The Guild of Evil Aliens Terrorizing Humans With Jiga Watt Bombs Energy Beams Ray Guns and Killer Lasers. All this helps too add to the cartoon/comic book like aesthetic and set a generally light heart'd fun and silly tone that genuinely can without any hint of parody make the giant computer that controls earths defenses look like part of the developers logo and you believe it.
The gameplay is functional, with 101's main combat mechanic being to draw different shapes with either the right analog stick or manually with the touch screen on the game-pad. these shapes correspond with the various weapons that you obtain with specific wonderful ones, so a circle will create a giant fist a straight line a sword a wavy line a whip etc. learning the enemies becomes very important to the combat as certain unite morphs as they are called will be more effective against some enemies rather than others. Unfortunately though even though the game gives you a large variety of unite morphs as you progress, the game quickly uses up all the simple shapes meaning they get more finicky to use and sometimes the game will have a hard time distinguishing between shapes so an L shape for the gun and a slightly different L shape for a boomerang. Or you could just not even bother as most enemies in the game can be easily defeated by the sword and fist, meaning that you only pull out the others for specific enemies that need their unite-morph to kill. QTE's also make an appearance but they are common enough and often act as a bridge between gameplay and cutscene which I found nice. they are also worked into combat for a few enemies but the timing to get these is difficult and they don't happen nearly often enough to be justified in there presence.
The game is also simultaneously hard but easy. Now if that last statement made no sense let me explain enemies are unforgiving in how hard they can hit and the game gives no hints as to what unite-morphs are best for fighting them ( hence the constant use of the sword and fist unite-morphs) leaving it up to the player to discover these things, however all that being said, when you die in game you simply restart from exactly the point you died at enemies don't respawn or regenerate health. The only consequence for death then is a penalty to the score you get at the end of the level, This set up works I think because, for the insane people who score hunt will get ample challenge in the harder difficulty and those who, like me couldn't care less for scores can simply play the game.
One last thing before I wrap this review up and i only want to touch on this briefly, if you read back to the first paragraph I said that Wonder Pink was both the writer vessel for Castlevania references, the girl and one other thing. Well that one other thing is to be a sexualized female character granted she isn't the only female character to be sexualized, three out of the four female characters in the game have this happen and let me be perfectly clear that there is nothing wrong with having sexualization in a game...just not this one. It creates a jarring tone shift completely at odds with the rest of the game. Now the Women aren't the only ones having this happen to them at least one of the male characters is being exploited in this manner, but it's not nearly as overt about it.
In the end Wonderful 101 is a charming funny action adventure game with fun game play, decent writing and a difficulty level that is left entirely to the player to decide upon. Platinum could have treated the female leads in the game with more respect. But overall a few finicky controls and some brief misrepresentation of women hardly do enough damage to bring down this game.
If you liked this review you can follow me on twitter @ Jacob Kristos and visit my blog http://kristoscriticisms.blogspot.ca/
Feedback is appreciated
Can a game ride entirely on it's charm and humour? Ask that question to me before I had played The Wonderful 101 and I probably would have said no. Now... I'm not so sure, It's not a perfect game to be certain but very time I found an issue the game would have a witty piece of dialogue or silly visual pun. Though the occasional shift in tone can be jarring.
The game hits the ground running immediately throwing the player into an alien invasion and immediately.
You are tasked with stopping them as you suit up into your CENTINELS to a voice over I would have expected to hear during a cartoon going "Next time on or Previously on" explaining that the suit gives you super human strength, speed and durability. You meet up with your buddy Wonder Blue a valley type who's every second world is "dude, bra,bro or man". Actually this leads nicely into a point I wanted to bring up, and that is that Wonderful 101 doesn't feature characters so much as it does caricatures, with all of them being the physical manifestation of what ever stereotypes typify their ethnicity and nationalities. For example Wonder White is the wonderful one from japan and as such speaks in proverbs with a pronounced japanese accent or Wonder Pink who being from Transylvania was the writers chance to shove as many Castlevania references into as possible, be the girl and one other thing we'll get to later. The invaders are called the G.E.A.T.H.J.E.R.K which stands for and I swear this is true, The Guild of Evil Aliens Terrorizing Humans With Jiga Watt Bombs Energy Beams Ray Guns and Killer Lasers. All this helps too add to the cartoon/comic book like aesthetic and set a generally light heart'd fun and silly tone that genuinely can without any hint of parody make the giant computer that controls earths defenses look like part of the developers logo and you believe it.
The gameplay is functional, with 101's main combat mechanic being to draw different shapes with either the right analog stick or manually with the touch screen on the game-pad. these shapes correspond with the various weapons that you obtain with specific wonderful ones, so a circle will create a giant fist a straight line a sword a wavy line a whip etc. learning the enemies becomes very important to the combat as certain unite morphs as they are called will be more effective against some enemies rather than others. Unfortunately though even though the game gives you a large variety of unite morphs as you progress, the game quickly uses up all the simple shapes meaning they get more finicky to use and sometimes the game will have a hard time distinguishing between shapes so an L shape for the gun and a slightly different L shape for a boomerang. Or you could just not even bother as most enemies in the game can be easily defeated by the sword and fist, meaning that you only pull out the others for specific enemies that need their unite-morph to kill. QTE's also make an appearance but they are common enough and often act as a bridge between gameplay and cutscene which I found nice. they are also worked into combat for a few enemies but the timing to get these is difficult and they don't happen nearly often enough to be justified in there presence.
The game is also simultaneously hard but easy. Now if that last statement made no sense let me explain enemies are unforgiving in how hard they can hit and the game gives no hints as to what unite-morphs are best for fighting them ( hence the constant use of the sword and fist unite-morphs) leaving it up to the player to discover these things, however all that being said, when you die in game you simply restart from exactly the point you died at enemies don't respawn or regenerate health. The only consequence for death then is a penalty to the score you get at the end of the level, This set up works I think because, for the insane people who score hunt will get ample challenge in the harder difficulty and those who, like me couldn't care less for scores can simply play the game.
One last thing before I wrap this review up and i only want to touch on this briefly, if you read back to the first paragraph I said that Wonder Pink was both the writer vessel for Castlevania references, the girl and one other thing. Well that one other thing is to be a sexualized female character granted she isn't the only female character to be sexualized, three out of the four female characters in the game have this happen and let me be perfectly clear that there is nothing wrong with having sexualization in a game...just not this one. It creates a jarring tone shift completely at odds with the rest of the game. Now the Women aren't the only ones having this happen to them at least one of the male characters is being exploited in this manner, but it's not nearly as overt about it.
In the end Wonderful 101 is a charming funny action adventure game with fun game play, decent writing and a difficulty level that is left entirely to the player to decide upon. Platinum could have treated the female leads in the game with more respect. But overall a few finicky controls and some brief misrepresentation of women hardly do enough damage to bring down this game.
If you liked this review you can follow me on twitter @ Jacob Kristos and visit my blog http://kristoscriticisms.blogspot.ca/
Feedback is appreciated