Wonderful 101 first Review: "ample justification for Nintendo's eccentric hardware"

Full review from The Guardian:

If Pikmin 3, Nintendo's great summer hope for its beleaguered Wii U console, has you directing a herd of miniature helpers, The Wonderful 101, the company's leftfield, summer sleeper-hit-in-waiting, puts you in control of an angry mob. In both games you sweep through the landscape as a hustling cluster of bodies. In both games you use this crowd's wisdom and strength to create pathways to your objectives, and to eliminate the foes and obstacles in your way.

But only in The Wonderful 101 can you, with a delicate swipe of the finger, arrange your swarm into a giant pink spiked whip used to tear the armour from your opponents, or a pea green handgun used to launch your minions as a kind of fleshy ammunition, or even a Soviet hammer that pounds the concrete in a thick Russian accent. If Pikmin 3 is the Gardener's World of ponderous strategy games, The Wonderful 101 is police helicopter footage of a sweltering Los Angeles riot.

The premise and styling is as wild-eyed as anything to come from Platinum Games, the most boisterous of Japan's contemporary video-game developers. The titular 101 is a group of topflight superheroes plucked from each of the world's nations. Each individual has his or her own unique styling and ability, but this is a game about the power of co-operation, not individual might. The swarm might be composed of individuals, but it must act as a single entity. Using either the Wii U pad's touchscreen or one of its stiff analogue sticks, you can shepherd your mob into esoteric tools and weapons by tracing shapes. The larger the shape you draw, the greater the number of superheroes who add their bodies to its formation.

Platinum's talent for the set piece is brought to the fore by way of the game's chosen style, that of the 'Tokusatsu' – the genre of special effect-heavy Japanese TV shows and films that include Godzilla and Kamen Rider. In this way, play is routinely interrupted for an outrageous and delightfully inventive gameplay intermission as you, for example, fire giant baseballs into an alien's face on a baseball field, or use your mob to tickle a 50-foot robot's underarm, or morph into a giant hang-glider and tear through the whipping wind collecting upgrade tokens.

It's in these moments that Platinum displays a mastery of the Wii U hardware hitherto unseen, even in Nintendo's homegrown titles. One especially memorable section has you controlling a giant spacecraft on the television screen by marshalling the 101 onto directional pressure pads in a cockpit that's rendered on the Wii U pad's screen. If this weren't enough to juggle, you must simultaneously battle enemies in both the cockpit on the pad and in the skies on the TV screen. It is a genuinely novel gameplay invention and gives a true taste of the Wii U's untapped potential and promise.

But all of this unbridled creativity comes at the cost of some refinement. The scrappiness of the action extends upwards and outwards throughout the entire game, which struggles to marshal its ambitions and ideas into a perfectly coherent whole. An alchemy system allows you to create new items from collected pieces of fruit, although its workings are left unexplained; each of the 101 you collect can be levelled up individually, although its unclear what benefits this brings to the whole. New moves and attacks unlock seemingly at random and the means of exposing the game's intermittent in-situ bonus levels is opaque.

Finally, the game's tall difficulty belies its accessible aesthetic: make no mistake, this is a far more demanding proposition than its Pikmin cousin. And yet, these are the hallmarks that make Platinum's output some of the most exciting work in contemporary video games: scruffy invention in a playpen that allows for player mastery. In the midst of this riot of ideas and unrefined energy we can perceive some of the Wii U system's idiosyncratic wonder. It may not be a game to sell a system, but The Wonderful 101 provides ample justification for Nintendo's eccentric hardware.

gamingeek said:

edgecrusher said:

Looks like the Gamecube version.

No man, seriously I was watching in on the big HDTV via Wii U shop and when the camera went in close it looked pretty insane to me. Amazing how such an old game with some better colours, proper AA and better lighting looks better than most of the new games of today. It's such a shame HD hasn't been used for more than realism. Now that Nintendo is in HD, everything they do, all their cartoon characters like Animal Crossing, Mario and Zelda in HD with the effects and DOF make such a difference. It almost looks perfect, like their perfect realisation of their style.

Which is why I wanted them to do this back in 2006....all those Wii games could have looked like this. Now I'll have to buy all the HD editions.

Found this on Youtube for those who don't have a Wii U but are interested. Shows a few minutes of the world and characters in HD.

Japan Hardware sales (previous week)

• 3DS - 75.687 (54.975)
• Vita - 17.702 (19.866)
• PS3 - 11.743 (11.900)
• Wii U - 10.038 (11.373)
• PSP - 6.314 (6.024)
• Wii - 1.327 (1.442)
• Xbox 360 - 288 (31
• Total - 123.099 (105.89

Is it fair to say 3DS has Japan nailed down?

gamingeek said:

4 vader

Soon you'll be on a tandem sonic cycle with Vader.

edgecrusher said:

I'm excited for the Xbox One for ONE reason; So I can buy an XBone controller to use on my PC. That pad is sweet.

Educate me here.  I thought MS stopped seling the 360 controller with dongle?  I got one from a site that had a backlog, somewhere in Asia.

I think if MS sells a Xbone controller with PC dongle they are kinda undercutting their console sales and propping up Steam.  Trust me, I'm all for that, I love my 360 controller on PC, but I get the impression that MS has given up promoting Windows as a gaming platform and ceded that to other to do.

Also: GG, your Pikmin3 looks vasly superior to mine.  I'm usually stressing too much to squeeze the most out of my time to just relax, sit back and take in the scenery.

after rading this I really want to replay Saints Row 2 and 3.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ji6sz/we_are_jim_and_scott_from_the_volition_team_the/

This Steamworld 3DS Game is getting good reviews.

North America - This week's digital downloads and screens (Aug 8th):

Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS™
Mario & Luigi™: Dream Team – Mario™ and Luigi™ embark on the adventure of their dreams in a hilarious action RPG that combines the real world with the wild landscapes of Luigi’s imagination. In Luigi’s dreams, anything is possible – legions of Luigis morph into forms like a bouncy tower or a wrecking ball. You can even poke a sleeping Luigi to alter events in his dream world. Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is available Aug. 11.

Nintendo eShop on Wii U™
DuckTales: Remastered – DuckTales: Remastered is a beautiful reimagining of one of the most cherished 8-bit titles of all time. Embark on an authentic Disney adventure, as Scrooge McDuck and his three nephews travel to exotic locations throughout the world in their quest to retrieve the five legendary treasures. The game is available Aug. 13.

Spin the Bottle: Bumpie's Party – Turn off your TV, get your friends.

Virtual Console™ on Wii U
Romance of the Three Kingdoms™ IV Wall of Fire – It's the Second Han Dynasty and China is on the verge of collapse. Infighting among the court families and the emergence of powerful warlords dominate the landscape. The struggle for power has brought an era known as the Three Kingdoms. As a ruler during these difficult times, it's up to you to unify a country torn apart by rebellion.

Nintendo eShop Sale
escapeVektor™ – The award-winning and critically acclaimed escapeVektor is on sale for 50 percent off starting today through 9 a.m. PT Aug. 22 in the Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS. Grab this fast-paced, retro-styled arcade game and help Vektor escape the evil CPU.

Also new this week:
• Smash Bowling 3D (Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS)
• SteamWorld Dig (Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS)
• Tangram Style (Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS)