Wonderful 101

I'll preface this review with a statement of: I'm not quite sure if it warrants four or five stars as a game overall, but I went for five because, at the end of my gameplay session, when I asked myself if I had fun, the answer was a resounding: Yes! But, the game has some faults and short comings. So let's get those out of the way right away (some are opinion, others are technical limitations): Faults: * Brevity: The game ran me around 12 hours for the first play through. There is a plethora of other content and even good reason to play hard mode once over, but the meat of the game: the jokes, the plot, the awesome spectacles, etc., were in that glorious first 12 hour run. They’ll not be nearly as memorable the second time through and, due to life, work, and whatnot, a second play through may never even materialize. (For the 20$ as it is now though, it’s well worth it.) * FPS: Certain sections suffer from terrible frame rate drops as clutter fills the screen. This is a technical limitation on the WiiU but also simply a fault of development putting all that clutter on the screen. The majority of the game is smooth but when that drop hits, it will hit hard. * Loading: Sometimes very long but the game will load up an entire level + cutscenes/dialogue/transitions in that single load time. You won’t experience mid-level loading (with some exceptions) but all the same it can get annoying to sit around and have to wait for the level to start. That said, the minute or so loading time is helped along by a good training room to practice in and the levels are usually decently long to warrant it. Double Time Fault or Plus (depending on your preferences): * Obscurity of detail: You’re going to have to experiment and learn how foes work in the game blindly, for the most part. There’s very, very little hand-holding and even abilities as they are learned aren’t given the button combo for how to do them without looking it up in the menu. Enemies will appear in all sorts of varieties one after another and they have very unique mechanics and ways of dealing with them which are all left for you to figure out. The same extends to secrets, and even level navigation and puzzles. * Comedy: Its 100% Saturday Morning Superheroes taken to the extremes. The jokes may get a good laugh out of you, or they may fall flat. I can’t say it’s a positive or not for the general public, but for me they certainly were! * Pink and Luca: They were, for me, both grating and annoying characters in an otherwise great cast, which is a shame. They are standard archetypes (which I won’t spoil) so some people will not find them as annoying or tiresome as I did, others may even like them. * Breaks from Core: The game has a lot of sequences that move away from the standard core gameplay. Piloting sections, bullethell sections, punch-out sections, solo mission sections, giant ***** (go play it and find out) sections, and on and on the list goes. Every level, if I remember, had a distinct break from core gameplay… even some of the bosses. For me, this was a great breathe of freshness, for others it may seem like too sharp a discontinuity in gameplay. Plus: * Gameplay: It really is a great action game with an almost perfect balance of challenge, ingenuity, and fun. There’s no one and only one way to encounters, they all have a variety of paths and options to winning. Go play it. * Variety (of everything): From your common mook to bosses, there is no shortage of genius variety in what makes up the game. It’s very reminiscent of the olden days of games when enemies weren’t all generic brown soldiers shooting brown bullets out of brown guns at brown protagonists on a brown background. There’s a large pool of common enemies and the bosses (as I said before) are all unique. The game is also filled with wonderful environments, colors, and level designs. There is no shortage of variety. * Difficulty: (See gameplay and obscurity) The game does not hold your hand, and the difficulty will not wait for you as harder and harder enemies drop as you progress. The bosses are no push-overs and punish failure quite severely. * Music: I can give no shortage of praise to how wonderful the music in this game is and how well it is put to use in setting the atmosphere (read: getting you pumped) as climactic moments arise. Once you beat the game, it’s unlocked much to joy of your ears to simply listen to it… turning the WiiU gamepad into the largest MP3 player I own. * Go play it. I’ll often times ask myself, at the end of a gameplay session of a game (or when I ultimately finish the game) if I’d like to play some more but something (bed time, dinner, work, or whatever) just makes me unable to continue. At no time with this game was the answer “Nah”, I really didn’t get bored of it and once it was done I was left feeling pretty fulfilled with the whole experience. No sequel hook (blasted sin of game development) made the story feel whole, the characters were fun to witness as they grew and developed relationships or simply hilarious on-screen chemistry. Great game, great time, maybe a little short maybe not, if you have a WiiU, I’d say buy it and give it is due 12-16 hours. You won’t regret it.

A friend recommended this game to me so I got it, especially since it was only about twenty dollars. This game is quite fun, though it is more difficult than other games you may be used to like Zelda or Mario. The amount of collectibles in this game is huge and it will take quite awhile to get everything. There are multiple categories of collectibles too, such as Wonderful Files and GEATHJERK files which give additional info on the Wonderful Ones and all of the enemies in the game. There are also wonderful figurines to find. There are over 100 of them the get. Some you get in higher difficulty modes too. There are also usually 5 platinum coins hidden in each level. If you get all of them in a level, you get a bonus item like a food item. Food items can be used to heal yourself. I finished the game the other day, so at this point I've completed my first full play through. I love this game! Bosses die quite spectacularly, so its always quite satisfying when you defeat them. The game play at first may look a bit like Pikmin, but I can assure you this game is not a Pikmin clone. It is its own unique game for sure. You have Unite Morphs that your team can form into, such as Unite Hand, Unite Sword, and Unite Gun among many others. You and your team battle the invading aliens known as the GEATHJERK to save the Earth from those who would destroy it. The story is quite good and there is plenty of humor sprinkled in the cut scenes too. So the game doesn't try to be serious all the time. The music is great too and really conveys the tension during epic battles. Also, this game has 5 difficulty levels. At first only very easy, easy, and normal are available. But beating normal unlocks Hard mode, and beating that unlocks 101% mode which is pretty much very hard mode. Hard mode and 101% mode have limited continues as well. So this game has plenty of challenge in it too. The game also features a Wonderful Missions mode that has missions you can play in local coop. There are three missions available at first, with three more you can unlock by beating the first three. In this mode, you and a friend split the team in half, each leading half the team. You can both use Unite Morphs and as in story mode, you fight GEATHJERK enemies. These levels are shorter than the story mode levels but still quite enjoyable. A word of warning though, if you try to beat these before you're at least half-way through story mode, it will be more frustrating because this mode will not teach you how to use the different Unite Morphs. As you progress in story mode, you get new Unite Morphs and learn what you can do with them. This information is very helpful in coop mode. Some enemies will be much harder to defeat without that knowledge. Sadly, this game has been overlooked, but it is a great gem indeed and I'd greatly recommend it to any Wii U owner who thinks they might like it! It is truly unfortunate that such a great game has been overlooked as much as this one has. So give it a shot, you'll be glad you did!

Amazing game. Very different from most games today in a good way. Lots of fun

Wonderful one is fresh and fun worth the price tag ! This will be a staple in any WiiU collection

I had high hopes for this game ad in many ways it fulfilled my hopes and in other ways like gameplay, it fell very short.

Quite different than anything I've played. Controls may be a little different at first but once you get a handle on it its a lot of fun! Great game for your WiiU collection.

This is one of the top 5 Nintendo games out there. Great graphics, and although controls can be challenging at times, it can be done! The only game I have completely finished this year!