There's not really any game like Wonderful 101. When it works, the combat can be really fun and satisfying. Though there are a lot of times when it doesn't as the game tends to throw new and one-off mechanics at you without decently explaining how any of it works. So it's best to first look at a guide before playing the game. The game just works better when replaying it as a result as well.

The plot isn't really all that interesting, but it continually ups the stakes in a way that's a lot of fun. It's probably got the most ridiculous self-indulgent over the top stuff I've seen happen in a video game. The characters and dialogue are often obnoxious though.

No tuve la suerte de jugarlo en su tiempo, pero ahora que esta versión ha llegado a mis manos no puedo decir nada mas que ¡WOW!

No solo posee una de las curvas de aprendizaje más difíciles y satisfactorias que he experimentado en un videojuego, la historia es una montaña rusa de momentos épicos, hilarantes y OVER THE TOP!

Una joya de la originalidad y el desafío que quizás no veamos en otros videojuegos.

RED: ¡TEAM, UNITED UP!
YO: ¡ROGER!

I had fun with it, and it's a unique and interesting action game, but it definitely doesn't match up to other Platinum games, at least for me. The writing and dialogue was fun and the boss fights were pretty great (the combat as a whole is great once you get used to it and it begins to click) but there were some segments I found very annoying (for example, button mashing. I'm not usually one to complain about button mashing since I like the Naruto games but this game's was annoying as hell and took away from my enjoyment of the game overall, as well as some parts of some levels where I literally had no idea where to go/what to do next since the game didn't really make it clear). Still, not by any means a bad game- As I mentioned, its combat is really awesome once you get used to it.

Way back in like 2014 or whenever this shit came out, back when I was a dumbass, I fucking hated this game.


I was a big Kamiya fan and an even bigger Platinum games fan. I was also a loser without an actual next gen console that was stuck with the literal ball and chain that was the Wii U and it's fisher price add on. So, naturally, there was a lot riding on this game. It had to justify the purchase of this abomination along with having a legendary prestige to live up to.


Every time I tried to play it, I could barely make it past the 5th chapter. I thought the artstyle was obnoxious the gimmicks came at you too quickly and too overwhelmingly to get a grip on, which lead to a lot of flow breaking deaths. Fucking minigames up the ass from the second level onward trying to meet Nintendo's mandated quota for justifying their painful lump of a controller. A philosophy that plagued almost every game on the hardware, but hurt doubly this time with a dense combat system that I wanted to just.


The actual, moment to moment combat had potential but had the same problem of stacking too much bullshit on me at once, with the mere act of switching weapons being it's own submechanic, for starters. Constantly managing that while moving your guys out of danger and handling the puzzle-box tier enemy design was always too overwhelming for me.


Just about the only saving grace for me was the over the top setpieces and even those were bogged down by some of the most obnoxious characters I had ever seen in a game.


But since Platinum to me is the video game developer equivalent of that relative you feel obligated to help out no matter how badly they fuck their lives up, I chipped in on this remaster. I didn't expect it to change my mind, but I figure the better this does, the more secure Kamiya would be in his next project.


Anyway, forget all of the bullshit I said above, it was dead fucking wrong. I was wrong. The Wonderful 101 isn't just a great game, it's one of the finest action games ever made. It's one of the cleanest, effortless executions of a completely new concept I've ever seen.


Almost every choice it makes is bound to rub new players the wrong way because it's a game completely unconcerned with impressing you. It's a game that makes the best decisions for itself without any regard for conventional design or the outside world of gossipers and wanna be critics thinks. It's a game passionate about the art of old school, arcadey game making. The type of craftsmenship that makes you want to pick it up again and again.


Let's start with that fucking camera. It blows my mind, in an era where accessibility and ease of play is paramount, that this game's camera is overlooked to the extent that it is. This is the only 3D action game I've played this generation where there is absolutely no guesswork in terms of who's on the field and what they're doing. Other games will just let their shitty lock on systems fly, decrease the aggro of the enemies that aren't in the frame(a mechanic that's easy for players to exploit once they know it's there), or implement some gaudy, immersion breaking hot glue UI solution like a flashing arrow, because just animating a good tell is a lost art I guess.


The only thing you lose in trade of this is the sense of immersion a low camera provides, but hey, that's great too, because FINALLY, we have another developer that's focused on a game playing well instead of using immersion as an excuse for lazy or lackluster design. Even if no other action game picks this up, we have at least one game that tried it.


And that weapon swapping shit I just complained about? Fucking genius. Now every command is a calculated risk instead of an easy button press away because you have to consider the positioning of the enemies when you draw your morph. Do you draw something big for the damage and risk your work being interrupted? Can you draw the more complex morphs from multiple angles in the heat of a bad situation? It's a system that feeds back into the old school principles of snap decision making and positioning that makes action games engaging. It looked at a snappy, tried and true system and saw a way to insert more meaningful gameplay in. This was inherently a risk, but the team was so confident in the idea they risked the entire gameflow on it, and it paid off.


And the enemy design, good lord the enemy design! So many action games now have too many enemies that are just fodder, but TW101, from the first level onwards, is constantly introducing regular fucking enemies that emulate the ebb and flow of a good boss battle. Start on the defensive, work your way in, exploit whatever clearly defined weakness they have, and then launch them and cuhrazy combo them to your heart's content after you've toppled them and gave yourself an open lane. Almost every enemy in this game went from "god this shit is fucking annoying" to something I could throw on it's back within seconds of it being on screen. No impenetrable armor. No bullshit that teleports/dodges away from you the entire time.


The enemy design pairs with the simplicity of the weapons to make a lot of strengths or weaknesses either immediately apparent or something you'll slap yourself on the forehead for not figuring out without bogging the game down with more tutorials than it needs.


Bosses? Take the multiphase design of the enemies and crank it all the way up to these gigantic behemoths that have millions of tiny nuances to make what seem like slow, spectacle ridden nightmares possible to optimize and exploit and no damage with ease. They're not all winners, but by the end of the second playthrough I hardly minded most of them.


Oh and those minigames I complained about? Those "distractions?" The gamepad intensive ones are still shitty of course, as expected, but so many of these turn out to actually be nuanced enough to become breezy or even enjoyable on repeat playthroughs. There was a lot of care trying to make this an extremely varied experience and not just a bunch of combat rooms.


And that's the catch: "repeat playthroughs." The Wonderful 101 is not the game for someone who wants to fire and forget their way through as many experiences as possible on some kind of coveted race to get a good boy sticker on a backlog sheet. It's the type of game that gets better with every subsequent playthrough, with the knowledge you've accumulated leading to new discoveries that lap onto the next playthrough and then the next. It's a quality all good action games have, but TW101 executes better than most.


Part of this is because of how little filler there actually is when you get down to it. Those laughable graphics I was just complaining about were a calculated risk that ultimately allowed the game to be content packed in a genre where most run out of steam 2/3s of the way in. It might seem to be a baffling risk to take for a first party release on a dying console, but to me, the Wonderful 101 is ultimately most concerned with making the best game. Not the most impressive trailer. First impressions are one thing, but the weeks, months, and years after a game's release are where it's true value becomes evident, and TW101 has stayed in my rotation since it's rerelease.


Kamiya was right to sacrifice Nintendo's support and widen the potential audience of the game because, personally, I don't think a game like this was going to resonate with the always online Console fanboy type. They're always looking for the next Nintendo Direct or big showcase, always talking about the next Smash characters, always chest beating about what the next big exclusive is going to be. They're always looking for something new to fuel their discourse, but they're never stopping to appreciate what's out there beyond maybe the big releases, if those releases are lucky. How many Nintendo fans did you see bragging about Bayonetta 2 vs it's abmyssal first run sales? Why balk at the obvious benefits of a PC release if you truly care about this game when it's now archived forever and the flexibility of mods can improve it more? The restricted reach of an exclusive should be an obvious downside to those who really love a game because they should want more people to enjoy it. Instead, fanboyism looks at all of these carefully crafted pieces of art as fuel for their discourse fire. Something to be mindlessly devored and discarded instead of savored.


Kamiya's only mistake was that he made a game for himself and the people of his ilk. That small audience that loves action games for their depth, complexity, and replayability. The type of person that can sit and play an arcade game over and over squeezing every ounce of nuance out of it's systems. Blowing an exclusive deal on such an oddball like this is going to be a mistake to most, but I'm glad that someone out there thought the things I like about games were worth fully indulging in.


Do I think every action game should have these mechanics?, hell no, but considering the fact that we're starving for unique mechanics in just about every genre right now? Clap it up. Give these kings a metal for trying and largely succeeding with the highest of high concepts.


What do I think of The Wonderful 101 Remastered? I love it. It's fucking wonderful and the haters can suck my wonder DICK.

Every time a difficult game is released, the argument resurfaces whether game reviewers need to demonstrate a baseline level of competence before their article is considered “valid”. The argument for this is that competency in a game demonstrates understanding, and understanding is a requirement for conveying knowledge. However, I don’t think things are so simple. Games can catch someone’s eye for a variety of reasons, so it’s important to include the different experiences for someone with preexisting competency and someone without it. This gap between the expert-level breakdown and the novice experience might be widest for action games made by Platinum, The Wonderful 101 being the prime example.

Even before players get their hands on the basics of combat, they’ll notice that they’re being rated after every encounter based on the completion time, combo level, and damage taken. This is a useful feature for expert players, who want to get the highest rank they can on the mission overall. However, for new players, seeing "consolation prize" or bronze ranks after every fight is incredibly demoralizing, and they have no way of knowing that these evaluations are even biased against them. Like most Platinum games, important moves are relegated to the shop, but players have no way of knowing how useful these skills will actually be unless they’ve played comparable action games, or have encountered enemies that are already balanced around their use. Even moreso, the utility of some of these moves goes almost entirely unexplained, with the most famous example being the game’s block ability, Unite Guts. The description is as follows: “A Unite Morph materialized from a soul. Time with an incoming attack to bounce the attack back”. The way this is phrased suggests that it functions as a parry, but this is untrue. Not only are some attacks unblockable, but the timing doesn’t matter, and what differentiates blockable attacks from unblockable ones is that they’re “blunt” instead of “stabbing”. Nowhere is this explained, and the information passes mostly through word-of-mouth by the experts, who insist that this didn’t need in-game explanation because the blob of jello the team forms would offer no resistance to a blade. While this defense immediately falls apart when you consider how much resistance jello affords to a “blunt” hammer, the question to be asked is why this isn’t just explained in the game. Depth is created by complex decision making, not coyness about the functionality of core mechanics, and this is a problem that extends to many of the game's core systems and skills. Forcing players to take hits they don’t understand, and be criticized with poor rankings, just creates a hostile mood which isn’t conducive to the excitement these games live or die on.

The whole “turning into jello” thing may have thrown some people for a loop, so to back up, The Wonderful 101’s combat doesn’t have you control one character, but the titular hundred-and-one at the same time. You form a crowd of little heroes, who unite up into different weapons with their own specialties. This is accomplished by drawing shapes with the right analog stick, like a circle for a fist, a line for a blade, and so on. It’s a system that works pretty well, but the fact that you may have anticipated that clause reveals the problem. When it comes to recognizing drawn shapes, the question isn’t “if” the system will ever mess up, it’s “how often”. And truly, it works 95% of the time, but that means that one in twenty attempted morphs will fail. Guns are mistaken as whips, gliders as fists, bombs as hammers, and while novel mechanics do deserve some leeway, one must remember that this is an action game that will gleefully make fun of you for any mistake with a low rank. Not only that, but after an unintended morph, your morphing energy depletes anyway, leaving you in a worse state than you were before. However, this is another criticism that expert players will dismantle by saying they’ve played enough to where it works 99% of the time, and that drawing skills are part of the game. They can also point out how having to draw quickly and use energy efficiently is a valid mechanic, to which I at least partly agree. The reason I don’t like it is because of how nebulous of a skill this is, only developing as a result of errors new players had no way of anticipating. It’s a fun system when you already understand it, but again, making mechanics hard for new players to even experiment with is not equivalent to depth, and The Wonderful 101’s combat will behave more as a finicky barrier to entry rather than the exciting possibility space it should be.

This is the point where fans would point out that the director himself considers the first playthrough to function as a tutorial, and that he anticipated people would initially find the controls finicky and the skills opaque, but this is exactly my point. Is The Wonderful 101 actually that much more complex than other action games? Is the drawing system really as reliable as it could be? Would it be impossible to explain the basics of its mechanics on the first playthrough? The answer to all questions is “no”, so I have to question why this excuse is considered so bulletproof among action fans. I myself agree that one of the major joys of action games is in the discovery, but there’s a difference between giving players a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals while letting them discover the possibilities on their own, and simply failing to explain the basics and criticizing players for not knowing them already.

To wrap up this review, which is possibly the rantiest I’ve ever posted, I would like to note a couple things. Firstly, that I don’t intend to give the impression that this game is just terrible. There’s a reason why it has such a cult following, the people who really understand it can have a great time. It’s also not that anyone who isn’t an action game fan shouldn’t play this, but they will probably feel like they’re being repeatedly slapped in the face for trying to do so. It's to the point where even games analysts who praise the game's perfection and the importance of discovery will, somewhat hypocritically, post hour-long tutorials on how new players could even begin to enjoy themselves. As for myself, I had barely played any action games before my first try at The Wonderful 101, and quit about 70% of the way through for exactly this reason. By the time I went back and completed the HD version on PC, I had beaten the following action games:

Devil May Cry 1/2/3/4/5, Bayonetta 1/2, God Hand, Metal Gear Rising, P.N. 03, Nier Automata, Killer is Dead, Nioh, Viewtiful Joe, Vanquish, and Sekiro

… and even then, with more action game experience than 95% of players would ever have, The Wonderful 101 still felt insultingly obtuse at times. We, as the people who enjoy action games, shouldn’t just accept this sort of mediocrity because it’s the kind that resonates with us. Saying that the first sixteen-hour-long playthrough is supposed to be a frustrating tutorial, and that people should just git gud, kills interest in the genre and hurts everyone. And if The Wonderful 101 is trying to teach us anything, it’s that we’re stronger when we work together.

You ever played a game that unapologetically reflects the person who created it? That's The Wonderful 101 for you.

The Wonderful 101 is like if Hideki Kamiya gifted himself a birthday present, and for that reason, it's why I feel this game was naturally going to sway a lot of people off from it. I mean really, how do you market this kind of game? It's like a big melting pot of action game ideas from Kamiya work fit straight into a game about controlling a crowd of superheroes you collect to fight giant aliens or mechs. Casually looking at gameplay of it, you'd think it was just a Nintendo-published Pikmin clone but with more sensory overload.

Now imagine actually booting up the game and playing it for yourself. My first hour of this game was a nightmare of fiddling with controls and testing buttons while the game assaulted me with neon HUD elements and tutorial prompts, as the game also is presenting you new gameplay ideas such as new characters with their own weapons you got to draw, and not even 10 minutes in you start unlocking new moves for them and leveling up your health or your battery gauge that's used to determine how much you can use the Wonder-Liner. Despite how much tutorialization it throws at the player, the game doesn't give you the dodge or block at the start of the game which means you have to buy these very important moves from the shop. Granted these are cheap to buy, but it's also baffling they didn't just give you these from the start. Kamiya and his team shove a lot of stuff at the player from the start with barely any breathing room to really take it all in, so I can't exactly say TW101 has a very graceful start to its premise.

But man, I was so wrong lol.

It didn't take long for the game's combat to really click with me once all the tutorial prompts got out of the way. I was surprised to see how many elements Kamiya took from his old games and managed to make it work as well as it does. You got the juggling combo system from DMC and Bayonetta, Ukemi from Viewtiful Joe, Witch Time from Bayonetta, and most notably, the drawing system from Okami but transformed into the main gimmick of this game.

Rather than a traditional weapon switching system, TW101 asks the player to draw the weapon (preferably on the analog stick) to get the desired weapon. The bigger they draw the shape, the bigger their weapon will be, which will be slower but deal more damage, compared to a smaller one that will be faster but deal less damage, but also take up less battery gauge... you see the depth here offered already by this system? The biggest skill mastery is not only learning to draw these shapes (which the game is very intelligent at knowing since they are all distinct from one another) but you also have to know which weapon is useful for each situation, as some enemies will have certain strategies that are more effective for each weapon. But then you learn how to open up enemies with each weapon, and you learn that you can use your team, or Wonder Green's gun, to stun the enemy and then put them in a juggle state.

Juggling is really when the game turned into something special for me because pulling out certain weapons to keep the opponent in the air for a long time is when the drawing system becomes outright impressive. You never feel like you are going to do the same combo in this game. They are creative spectacles of skill mastery because of the flexibility offered by the game's freeform weapon drawing system. Masters of the game's drawing system can outright demolish a giant mech with their 100 man team, and it's probably the most stylish combo system I've ever seen. Not only for the fact a team of superheroes comboing an alien dragon mech is fucking rad, but it also asks more from the player while doing so, creating a combat system that's all-around more rewarding to master.

All the little niceties the game throws to the player too also make TW101 a very welcoming experience. As mentioned before, a lot of Kamiya mechanics from his older games return here, but there's also a lot more. You have very tightly designed enemy encounters that Kamiya is known for, along with gameplay systems Kamiya has explained he likes that return, with surprisingly good and fair boss fights all guided by probably the funniest video game I've ever played. I really vibed with what Kamiya was putting on offer here. The game oozes with passion all the way through and the more I played of it, the more and more I really appreciate every bit of it. It just kept getting better and better. Even the climax of the game was like 12 endings on top of each other. It's like if Kamiya took all of his favorite toys and smashed them together, which really highlights the toy-box like wonderment the game offers here.

My main critique though is because this is a Kamiya passion project, it also features probably my least favorite Kamiya trope often and that is introducing new gameplay elements from old arcade games. There's a punch-out mini-game, an isometric 3D shooter, some side-scrolling space shooters, and of course, the fucking space harrier level Kamiya just loves to put in. None of these are poorly designed mind you, but it wrestles time away from the main combat I ended up craving the most from TW101, and I really hope Kamiya's next project isn't as egregious with these as this game featured.

But despite that, going into TW101 was a very pleasant experience, especially given that I was already a fair fan of Kamiya's old projects. But this is elevated to a whole new level. Kamiya sought out creating a game that he wanted to play the most, and there aren't many creators out there that have the balls to do that. Clover Studio, the studio he worked at before Platnium Games, was a studio designed to create wild and new ideas, but none of those games ever found their audience outside of Okami, causing their eventual shut down. The Wonderful 101 is kind of like a Clover Studio game. A very ambitious action game designed solely to introduce a brand new experience unlike anything else. It wasn't designed for everyone in mind, but only for those who would appreciate these mechanics in mind... like a Kamiya fan. Maybe that's all it needed to be in the end. As for me, I say you should stick with it. It's pretty wonderful! ba dum tiss

The combat is still a blast for the most part and it's really fun to bust up enemies with the fist and sword. Unfortunately there's not a lot of use for the other weapons besides the enemies specifically designed for them but I suppose that's not too different from most action games. The only such case that annoys me is the spike enemies that require use of the whip because they are boring and tedious to deal with every time. Some encounters can end up with way too much flashy junk onscreen at one time and that can make avoiding enemy attacks and hearing audio cues more difficult than it should be. Using unite guts to counter and unite spring to dodge feels really good but some attacks that feel like they should be blockable with unite guts just aren't for some reason and that trial-and-error process can be annoying. The camera is generally fine but sometimes it's hard to have a good balance where you're not either too zoomed out to keep track of your character and enemy telegraphs or too zoomed in to keep the enemies onscreen. While TW101 tends to do a good job keeping the gameplay fresh with variety, Kamiya's obsession with blending genres is at its worst and the various shmup sections and parts where you control the virgin victory kinda suck. The punchout parts were still awesome, however. The story, aside from Luka being a brat, is great with a bunch of likable characters, fun interactions and some of the best voice acting in the industry. Wonder Red in particular is a fantastic main character who's really fun to follow. The cutscenes can be a bit long-winded sometimes but the overall package is an absolute joy to experience even a second time. The QTE sequences are also very exciting and do a good job punctuating the end of each chapter. The remaster itself is done well enough but they clearly didn't bother updating a lot of the assets and the models/textures that already looked pretty bad on the wii u look worse when blown up to a higher resolution. Kinda iffy about some of the music changes as well. I'm just glad it's not trapped on the wii u anymore. I'm sure this mostly sounds negative but it's still a fantastic game.

What an absolute joy this game is. Just wish it had a proper practice room or something.

The Wonderful 101 is worth every bit of frustration you might feel getting used to its combat. Once it clicks, and it doesn't stop at that initial click either, the Wonderful 101 becomes something truly special. It just takes some time. In the director's own words, the first playthrough should be treated as a tutorial.
If you don't mind sacrificing personal satisfaction in favour of speeding up the learning process, look up Saurian's video tutorials on youtube. They're very good.

I'd recommend getting it on PC if you can. Performance on the Switch was pretty rough in my experience.

Also holy shit is the climax of the campaign amazing. Worth the play for that alone.

One of the coolest games I've ever had the pleasure of playing - there are miniscule issues that drag down the experience, such as the slightly finnicky nature of the drawing mechanic, as well as rapid gameplay changes - but the overall package is immensely fun. The story is extremely entertaining, the characters lovable, the combat system involved, and the overall presentation is an absolute blast. It isn't for everyone, but for the people who resonate with it, they'll be given one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences around. A must-play that I'm glad can finally get the attention it deserves.

Kamiya's magnum opus. A dissimilation of action game design into something both original and a culmination of where Kamiya had taken action games.

Unlike other action games like Bayonetta which garner depth through a small number of weapons and a large number of combo chains; each with subtle variations and nuances, The Wonderful 101 creates depth through a small number of universal combos and a large number of weapons. With each weapon tied to the players skill at using the wonder liner tying the very act of weapon switching into the core gameplay loop. Considerations like team size and the unite gauge also offer other layers of depth. Enemies are also far less numerous, but far more aggressive and complex then those found in other action games creating a more struggle based rather then combo based dynamic. Enemies have a complex relationship with the players moveset with some attacks being blockable, some counterable by certain weapons, and some just dodgeable. But all attacks can be counter by a precise hero counter input, which creates risk versus reward. Juggling and combos is a victory lap reserved for when the player successfully stuns an enemy. The two unlockable hard modes also shake up the gameplay enough to make repeat playthroughs rewarding.

The Wonderful 101's greatest flaw then is it's overreliance on gimmick sections. Almost every level has at least with the exception of some bosses and some final levels. Kamiya clearly wanted to craft a massive love letter to games and includes sections from games as diverse as mr. driller, to punch out, and even to space harrier. Some of the sections are even quite clever like a shoot em up section where the play must run over buttons to control the ship, while also fighting enemies. But sadly most sections range from good but pointless, like the punch out boss fights, to the utterly terrible, like some an underwater isometric shooter with hit boxes too big and a one hit kill laser dodge where the player must maneuver a slippery boomerang through small gaps. This focus on gimmicks greatly diminishes the high score chasing replicability of the game by tying the players final rank to something outside of combat. A player may be able to get perfect platinums on combat but be unable to see that reflected in the final score due to a poorly designed gimmick segment. The gimmick heavy focus also deflates a lot of the real challenge from the final climatic chapter.

On a lesser note The Wonderful 101 also runs into the issue of upgrades that many action games face. Locking higher level skills behind a level or money cap may give newer players something to strive for and stop the game from being too overwhelming, but it also can lock key gameplay features behind arbitrary walls. One of the key changes in the remaster is the decrease in cost of the block and dodge in the shop to ensure new players can buy it after the prologue. This is a welcome change but also begs the question of why these moves aren't enabled by default. A similar issue comes up with the hero time ability. The base dodge offers the player no offensive advantage, and with the level of aggression of enemies, a very small window to attack. In contrast the base block damages and stuns any countered enemies making it the far more useful option; with its only caveat being that certain attacks cannot be blocked while everything can be dodged. By the late game (and especially in hard mode) many enemies have a move set that consists entirely of unblockable attacks, which requires the use of the dodge. In order to gain the upper hand the player must either rely on the occasional weapon specific counter, have hero time equipped to create a combo window, or purchase the general use hero counter. This again begs the question why hero time wasn't a default move as it would place the block and dodge on equal footing. Most egregious, however, is how combo moves are locked behind each weapons level. Key moves like stinger, cyclone, and juggling are locked behind weapon use which creates an odd paradox. Un leveled weapons are far less useful as they lack combos but to unlock combos the player must use inferior weapons. There is no excuse for atleast stinger and rising being equipped by default. Ultimately in the game's defense it is easy to unlock every move and purchase every upgrade in one playthrough making this a mootpoint on harder difficulty levels.

In the story department The Wonderful 101 does a wonderful job combining the childish fun of eastern and western superheroes in a way which makes The Wonderful 101 one of the best superhero games despite the lack of a license. The characters are all charming and fun with just enough depth to make them interesting. The story doesn't really have anything to say about superheroes (despite what the final twist would have you believe), as the theme song crones "fighting for the status quo", but it doesn't need to. It carries itself through charm and fun alone.

The Wonderful 101 is game out of step with a gaming landscape which holds pandering, live service, and skinner box content dear. The Wonderful 101 is like a classic arcade game where you keep replaying it to get a higher and higher level of competence rather then just seeing higher and higher numbers. The Wonderful 101 is genius, enjoyable, addictive, frustrating, flawed, and most of all fun. And I wouldn't have it any other way

You know, I can almost envision a reality where this game received the notoriety it so clearly deserved, and it wouldn't take much strain to imagine. Given the time period in which the game launched, it had everything it needed to click with anyone who laid eyes on it: a bright and colorful cast of characters that felt ripped right out of the system they were made for, a story of super heroes fighting off an alien invasion during an era where The Avengers were exploding in popularity, quirky gameplay mechanics you'd come to expect from a company like Platinum Games, an all star team of action game designers who had the experience and passion needed to bring this crazy concept to life and flourish, the works. With Hideki Kamiya at the helm, there was no chance this game could possibly fail, regardless of the system it was launching on.

So what went wrong?

Clearly something didn’t click with people despite Platinum’s best efforts. There are many reasons this could be the case (unorthodox control scheme, confused marketing, niche appeal of the action genre, etc.) but it would be difficult to pin down one specific thing that turned people away.

In my eyes however, what matters most is not that the game lacked something to wrangle in the highest number of potential customers, but that the game did not restrain itself in what it sought out to do.

Let me set the scene for you: June 2020, one of the worst years in recent history and it refuses to let up. Due to the recent shutdown of my job given the status of the world at that time, I had devoted a lot of my free time to playing games, as many others in my position likely do as well. Everything in my life is starting to drag, and I can tell nothing will get better any time soon. However, there is a momentary glimmer of joy coming my way. The Wonderful 101 recently had an incredibly successful kickstarter, and having heard many positive things about the game, I decided to give it a blind shot. Many of my favorite games were action games, so while Platinum didn’t have a perfect track record in my experience, I was interested in trying something I knew so little about. Even if it was disappointing, it probably had some interesting elements to dig into.

I didn’t expect my expectations to be shattered like they were after finishing the game.

I’ve never played a game before that appealed to all my sensibilities like The Wonderful 101 does, and even after nearly 200 hours of play, I’m still picking up on new things to love that I never noticed before. I won’t bore you with the semantics, but every element of the game is emblematic of everything I love about the medium. The story felt cartoonish and stupid in all the best ways, the gameplay presented incredibly distinct systems to set it apart from other action games while tackling problems about the genre in interesting ways I had never considered before, and the whole experience was uncompromising in it’s vision in a truly inspiring way.

In many ways, The Wonderful 101 made me feel like a kid again and ignited a passion for life in my heart at a point where everything felt so aimless and dark. As this global pandemic slows down and eventually fades into nothingness, I’ll be sure to leave a lot of things from this era in the past, but this game is sure to stick with me for years to come.

Regardless of how you may feel about the final product, what can’t be denied is that The Wonderful 101 is everything it wanted to be and didn’t settle for less. And for the time period when it came into my life, that’s all I needed it to be.