The Wonderful 101 - 10/52

      You know what I love?  Superheroes.  I've always been attracted to the fantastical adventure of costumed heroes and villains duking it out for the fate of the world.  The X-Men in particular were a huge facet of my childhood, being the first movie I can really solidly remember the experience of seeing in theaters (though the first movie I actually remember catching in theaters was the 98 Godzilla, not like forgetting that is really any huge loss) and ever since then I've been hooked on superhero media.  You know what else I love?  Pikmin.  Pikmin is one of my favorite game series of all time easily, creating fast-paced and fun real-time strategy gameplay disguised in a very calm and colorful demeanor.  It's extremely stressful in just all the right ways.  Now, these two things seem very unrelated and probably should be kept very far away from another.  But, what I have for you today, is a game that combines my love of superheroes with my love of Pikmin to make a game that I guarantee nobody asked for and nobody especially remembers that it was made.  But, hey, I talked about Zombie Chopin vs. the World last time, so at this point, why not?  So, strap in, true believers, as we delve into the world of the Wonderful 101.

     The Wonderful 101 puts you into the shoes of Wonder-Red, the newest recruit to the Earth-defending superhero organization, the Wonderful 100.  Despite Wonder Red being the new guy, because he's decked out in red, Power Rangers logic prevails and he is actually the leader of this bunch.  Personally, I would've elected Wonder-Sailor as the leader, as he has a boat on his head, and if you can't trust a man with a boat on his head, then you're probably asked to be the designated driver a lot.  But I digress.  The Wonderful 100's primary focus is protecting the world from being destroyed by the evil forces of the Geathjerk empire, a massive army of insectoid aliens bent on destroying every planet that crosses their path.  And bad news, they're going full-on invasion mode.  It's up to Wonder Red to unite the team, rescue the people, defend the monuments and save the world.  And he will do it all while spouting catchphrases and systematically saying the overly long titles of everyone you encounter in the game which actually never stops being funny.

     From the moment the Wonderful 101 begins, it's clear where it influences lie.  This slides very well into the world of the Silver Age of Comics, the days when Batman was fighting vegetable people and turning into a baby, albeit with a greater sense of irony.  There's a lot of jokes about superhero tropes and when they land, they land hard.  I've mentioned previous Wonder-Red's tendency to spout ridiculously long titles for each of the game's major characters that sound like they come out of a comic book narration box.  And, normally, a recurring joke like that could end up falling flat, especially since he'll sometimes do it multiple times a chapter.  But I found it mostly endearing.  And the other characters have very funny personalities as well that really come to head when the main team is all united.  Wonder-Blue is a very typical straight man who is continuously having none of the team's nonsense.  Wonder-Green is a bad joke-spewing machine that manages to get way more laughs than he probably should.  Wonder-Yellow is an awkward giant whose attempts to be included are just hilarious.  Wonder-White spouts the basic principles of ninjutsu constantly getting them wrong every time.  And I swear Wonder-Pink is one of the funniest characters in any game ever.  It's a sight to behold.  All this and more makes Wonderful 101 insanely charming and very funny, and you'll be smiling your way through most of the game as a result.

     So I've already established where the superhero basis of the game comes from.  But what about the Pikmin basis?  Well, that comes in the gameplay.  Obviously, the Wonderful 100 is a team of one hundred superheroes stationed around the world that band together in a giant mob, like Pikmin, so the comparison is pretty clear there.  But this isn't just dressing.  A lot of how you attack is very akin to strategies present in Pikmin.  Do you mob an opponent to get the kill quickly with the risk of harming your individual members?  Or do you just send them in one at a time to pick off the HP like tiny little superhero mosquitoes?  Now, unlike Pikmin, your individual team members can't die.  The only vulnerable part of the team is your current leader.  But still, there's a surprising amount of real-time strategy elements present in this superhero game.  The combat becomes even more strategic when you factor in the game's primary gameplay mechanic, the Unite Builds.

     Unite Builds are the primary powers of the Wonderful 100.  On their own, the Wonderful Ones' powers don't stretch much farther than increased strength, increased speed, increased durability, etc.  It's the basic 'take everything a normal human can do and then crank it up to 11' approach to superheroes.  Useful for, say, protecting the 100 cities worldwide that the organization is stationed at, not so much for stopping full-blown alien invasions.  This is where the Unite power comes in.  The Wonderful Ones can convert themselves into energy, to be used by the current team leader to build massive energy constructs that serve a variety of purposes, though primarily combat-related.  There are a variety of constructs in the game, though you'll be mostly focusing on the main seven, Hand, Sword, Gun, Whip, Hammer, Claws and Bomb.  The wide variety of builds add a ton to the combat of the game, with a lot of enemies being more susceptible to specific weapons.  The game rewards you with bonuses for switching up your weapons and defeating enemies faster, so it's good to get used to all of the weapons rather than relying on your favorite *cough Unite Whip cough*.

     So far, this game this game may be sounding pretty cool to you, and I'll admit, conceptually it's a pretty cool game.  Interesting gameplay style, fun premise and a lot of good humor.  What's not to love.  For sure, you'll say, I'll pick this up when it inevitably gets remade for the Switch like every other worthwhile WiiU game.  Well, there's just one problem.  The Wonderful 101 is not good.

     Look, I've been sugar-coating it so far.  My time with the Wonderful 101 wasn't the best and by the end, I was mostly being driven by the fact that beating it would mean I could mark it off my backlog and I'd never have to touch it again.  I'll say this when the game focuses on what it does well, giant party-based combat against massive mobs of enemies, it does it very well.  But the game can't keep itself focused, entirely to its detriment.  Or it'll have crazy difficulty spikes for no reason, causing you to just get pounded on by the Jerks.  What starts as a fun, fairly unique game quickly turns into a tedious slog and basically just gets progressively worse from there.  And it all starts with Prince Vorkken.

     Prince Vorkken starts out as a major antagonist in the game, the leader of a band of space pirates that fight very similarly to the Wonderful 100.  He's the classic trope of the evil superhero doppelganger, looking almost exactly like Wonder-Red, save for the purple skin.  You'll battle Vorkken several times over the course of the game and each time it is just the worst possible thing.  Vorkken fights like the Wonderful 100, yes, but he doesn't need time to draw his builds and can auto-block and auto-counter and his builds start out at max power and never decrease like yours do.  Not to mention that Vorkken has access to unique builds which can serve as both offensive and defensive moves.  And, whereas a normal stage gives you a little bit of leeway in terms of what you're able to do without it counting as a death, boss stages don't have that luxury.  Meaning Vorkken doesn't need to drain your health at all.  If he knocks you off the side of the platform you're on while fighting him, you die and have to restart the fight.  Thankfully, bosses keep their health constant even if you use a continue, but that doesn't especially matter when Vorkken can just instantly do the same thing to you next reload.  It wasn't uncommon for me to use anywhere from 3-7 continues on Vorkken, and I was only playing on the standard difficulty.

     Continues and the like are another major issue I have with this game.  See, the Wonderful 101 is a Platinum Studios game.  Not to knock Platinum, they have a pretty good track record overall.  But, the relevance here is that, as a result, the Wonderful 101 is a very rank-based game.  You're rewarded for clearing the stage quickly, defeating enemies efficiently and not using continues or major healing items.  And, by extension, penalized for doing the opposite.  The issue here is that the game wants you to be flawless your first go around and punishes you for not playing perfectly.  The penalties you gain for using even one Continue basically mean that even if you play the rest of the level perfectly, you'll still be lucky to get a Bronze ranking.  The lack of leniency, even in the early levels, is ridiculous.

     Oh, and let's not forget the fact you have to manually draw all your Unite Builds.  And, admittedly, they give you a lot of leniencies to screw up on these.  In fact, it's so lenient in recognizing things as builds that often times it'll just not recognize the right build and give you something just completely different.  Take, for instance, Unite Hand.  You make Unite Hand by drawing a straight line with a semicircle at the top.  Okay, but then later on in the game, you get Unite Hammer, which is a straight line with a complete circle at the top.  These two things are so similar in the game's eyes that you'll inevitably start overdrawing things to get Unite Hammer, which it will most definitely read as Unite Hand the first seven times you try drawing it.  And if you are trying for Unite Bomb, just forget about it.  It's basically Unite Hammer turned upside down, but the game is so lenient it'll sometimes just read this as Unite Hammer anyways.  The worst, though, are actually my two favorite weapons in the game, Unite Whip and Unite Claws.  To make Unite Whip, you draw an 'S' shape.  Easy, standard stuff.  Except, Unite Claws is a 'Z' shape.  The game literally cannot distinguish these two apart 99% of the time and even when it does register you're making Unite Claws, if you try to draw it any bigger from the recognition point to attempt to summon a full power Unite Claws, it'll instantly go into Unite Whip.  You'll end up relying on Unite Sword for almost all the game's combat because Unite Sword is just a line.

     But all of this is not nearly as bad as when the game decides to mix up the core gameplay.  This is where the game truly goes from 'it's not great, but hey, it's enjoyable' to 'I only want to finish this so I never have to look at it again'.  The game frequently has stages where you'll be playing in different styles than the normal somewhat strategic beat 'em up gameplay and save for the two Punch-Out!!-style boss fights, all of these different styles suck.  There's a lot of shoot 'em up stages in particular that, for the most part, have nearly unavoidable obstacles, fire that blends into the background and really jerkish enemy placement.  Not to mention these segments being slow moving and just not very fun.  Also, they put instant death traps in these stages because why not in a game where you're not supposed to use continues or it negatively impacts your rating.  But the worst part is whenever the game has solo stages.  Unite Builds are basically out of the question in these stages since, you know, nobody else is with you, and you end up having to fight dozens of enemies anyways without being able to do the thing the entire game is built around.  And did I mention that, on their own, the Wonderful Ones are pretty much useless in combat, taking multiple hits to kill even the most basic foot soldiers?

     The Wonderful 101 is a mess, plain and simple.  It combines things you love into something weird and kind of cool, only to crush all of that before the game is through.  The saddest part is that, if it had just stuck to what worked, the somewhat strategic isometric beat'em up gameplay, I think it would've actually been a really cool hidden gem on the mostly forgettable WiiU library.  A game that would've inevitably become a major cult classic and been a frequent resident of 'best games you've never played' lists.  As it stands, though, it's pretty bad.  I hope you enjoyed my look at the Wonderful 101 and join us next time as we cover Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.  The whole thing.  See ya.

Ethan's backlog: www.backloggery.com/edzoologist