You can play The Wonderful 101 on the normal difficulty level and have a stressful experience but you’ll surely get that exciting thrill. You get the screen-like experience of an action-packed comic book that forces your senses to go into excitement mode. The style and storytelling of The Wonderful 101 is particularly interesting and is based on the core of a superheroes theme.
Action and superhero games have evolved over the years with the improvement of gadgets and screens. First released in 2013, The Wonderful 101 was made for Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC. The game has evolved over the years to the Remastered version which was released recently and has smoother performance, faster load times, and some smart additions. With this, you have an easier learning curve. Though there aren’t many changes to the visual aspect of the Remastered version – except for few tweaks – it still brings on a refreshing experience in the action category of games. The Wonderful 101 is such a rare breed of action games coming from its developer, Platinum Games.
You would find in the game great characters, fantastic music and action-packed battles that would get your adrenaline pumping. Placed in your hands to control are a group of tiny heroes known as The Wonderful 101. You can employ your right stick to make simple symbols that would allow you to change the shape of your mob into the shape of a weapon. Drawing a straight line gets to turn the mob into a sword; a circle will make a fist; a curvy line transforms them into a whip and an L-shape, a gun. One great thing about the game is the ability of those weapons to interact with the world and enemies.
As you go along in the game you’ll begin to learn how to use each weapon via a visual language. For example, when there’s a circular bomb on the ground, you’ll need a gun to suck it up and shoot it out; seeing a beam requires you to use a sword to reflect it and when there are spikes, simply apply the whip. There are some enemies that require some strategic pondering, but many are just pure cannon fodder meant to boost your score or keep your combo going.
You may have to deal with some routine in the mechanical department. Swiping between a single target/ranged/crowd control morph is fun at first but could get occasional and tiring over time especially in times when you don’t have new toys to play with. Also, you won’t have a precise feel drawing lines around citizens to ‘collect’ them. And the crafting system is just average. There are times when the menu-based hangups obstruct what you’re playing and you may have to endure that.
It is designed with great styles and everything you see in Remastered is a result of the previous version undergoing brightening and sharpening to make things look better. But this is not without a few occasions of slow down. Once you get you to hand on understanding The Wonderful 101, it becomes more interesting. It is really wonderful.