The Wonderful 101 (2013)

A fun, original, and completely mental experience.

The Wonderful 101 is a truly unique game, you control a large group of of heroes made up of ‘wonderful ones’ and random civilians you’ve recruited on the way aiming to defend the world from a brilliantly named alien race called the ‘Geathjerk’ (it’s not the most serious of games). This group is led by the character you’re controlling at the time. The main wonderful ones are a chap called Wonder Red and his 6 main assistants, Wonder Blue, Wonder Yellow etc. The main premise of the game is creating what are called ‘unite morphs’ which are where your team build certain weapons using themselves (it’s as mental as it sounds). There are 7 main unite morphs with each of the main characters having one. These include wonder hand (Wonder Red’s move), wonder sword (Wonder Blue’s move) and wonder whip (Wonder Pink’s move) among others. The unite morphs can be made bigger and more powerful the bigger your team currently is. These unite morphs are used to defeat the various alien enemies along the way in unique ways with the most effective method generally being to use a variety of them. For example there is one type of enemy where you first have to use the unite whip numerous times to pull off his impenetrable spiky armour before using the unite hand to punch him out of existence once his armour is down. There are also unite morphs to buy that evade and reflect enemies’ attacks. The main core of the gameplay involves battling a variety of ridiculously named and ever more creative enemies using a combination of these unite morphs. There are also more platformy sections and some puzzles here and there.

All in all the gameplay is absolutely great. It takes an hour or two to really get into the insaneness of it all and figure out just what the hell is going on but once you do and you start mastering combos it’s so much fun the initial learning period is completely worth it. Unite morphs can be summoned by drawing on the gamepad or by using the right analogue stick. Different shapes lead to different morphs. I generally found that the common complaint that the game doesn’t recognise your drawings is unfounded, I had this problem only a handful of times throughout the game. I generally found drawing with the right analogue stick worked better as it fit more seamlessly into the combat than taking your hand out of its normal position to draw something on the touchscreen. A couple of the morphs are more easily drawn on the screen though so a combination of the two methods is what worked best for me. Once you really get the hang of it seamlessly switching between different morphs to destroy your enemy as quickly as possible using a variety of combos is ridiculously satisfying and for the high score junkies among you you’ll enjoy the great depth the game has on this front. More combos equals more points! Basically the battling is straight up awesome. The platforming less so but it’s more than adequate. Your team isn’t always that responsive when jumping around on platforms but it doesn’t really detract from the game at all.

The only real complaint I have with the gameplay is that some of the gamepad sections feel a little cramped but these are generally few and far between and a couple of the gamepad sections work brilliantly. I particularly liked one where on the gamepad you see your team inside a spaceship where you can walk on different buttons to control it and on the main screen you see the outside of the ship and the obstacles you’re trying to avoid. This worked really well with your eyes frantically switching between the gamepad and TV to keep your ship alive.

The difficulty of the game has also got a lot of attention. I played through on easy as advised by Nintendo Life (there are also very easy and normal) and found this to be a good difficulty level to start with. I wasn’t getting many medals or good trophies for my performances but when you die you can basically carry on where you left off which means the game never gets frustrating. Dying simply lowers your score. Towards the end of the game when I was really getting the hang of things I found easy a little too easy but you can simply change the difficulty as you go along so this is not a problem. Once you get the hang of it this game isn’t anywhere near as difficult as people are making out, it’s that initial few hours to really get to grips with the gameplay that gives you the false impression that this game is insanely difficult.

Visually this game is great too, while the characters aren’t particularly detailed this suits the game’s comic book style and the enemies and unite morphs generally look striking and great. The cutscenes are also pretty spectacular, a real display of what the Wii U can do. The menu has a cool retro vibe which again really fits in with the style of the game.

On the audio front the game’s score is suitably OTT and the voice acting is great (and hilarious). The story is pretty straightforward and cheesy but it’s meant to be and it’s in the great team of characters and how they interact with each other that the entertainment comes. I laughed out loud plenty of times and the epic cutscenes and their humour really suck you into the game. This is without doubt one of the very funniest games I’ve played.

There’s also a multiplayer mode which is worth mentioning. Although I haven’t played a lot of this it’s certainly a neat addition and means you can co-operate to take down various of the game’s inventively named bad-guys.

Content wise there is plenty too, the game will take you a solid 15-20 hours to complete depending on how bothered you are about collecting everything and there’s tons of replay value if you’re the type to keep trying to beat your high scores. There’s so much to collect too that one run through will almost certainly not be enough if you’re looking to 100% this behemoth.

Overall this is a brilliant game. It’s creative, original, and genuinely hilarious. There really isn’t another game like it on any other console out there. Sure it has it’s flaws but the many positive points and sheer amount of fun this game is to play make these very easy to overlook. If you own a Wii U, I’d say this is an essential purchase. It’s one of those games I’ll never forget, for all the right reasons.