Sunday, May 18, 2014

Early Impressions of The Wonderful 101


I'm just about a third of the way through The Wonderful 101's main campaign and I figured this would be a good point to stop and give some impressions, because DAMN, this is one unique game.


First off, the theme song that plays during the prologue is fantastic. It's kinda tough to hear the lyrics while you're focused on saving school children and fighting aliens, and I haven't looked them up online yet, but I clearly heard the line "Fiiighting for the status quoooo," and somehow that made me giggle out loud. The rest of the game hasn't quite lived up to the humor I got out of that theme song, but the script does have it's moments.

Collecting heroes is a lot of fun. And dare I say it?... It reminds me of Pokemon a little bit. I'm referring to the original Red and Blue for the Game Boy, back when the world of Pokemon was fresh and you didn't yet have every Pokemon's stats memorized. Come to think of it, there was a good two to three year stretch of my life when I could easily name all of the original 151 Pokemon, and I probably thought I'd remember them forever. I wonder how many of them I could still name... Anyway, my point is, I'm having fun finding all the heroes and seeing how their identities reflect the city they're from. I think the closest one to me is Wonder-Cheerleader from Berkeley (no Wonder-Hippie?), and did you all notice how Las Vegas is now called Vegas Island? Sort of a fun little hint of backstory there.

One complaint I can sympathize with a bit is the relatively small variety of enemies. I'm not even sure that's the right way to put it- it's just that those little spaceman-looking aliens show up a lot. New enemies are being introduced all the time though, so this didn't bother me too much. Plus, in a strange way, wouldn't it have looked really lazy if the texture artists had simply applied different colored skins to that one alien henchman model? There's something amateurish about taking the same model, changing its color and calling it a new character. Glad the developers didn't go that route.

The game's difficulty also needs addressing. I'm wondering how everyone else did on their first play through in terms of the game's ranking system, because my personal collection of those red "consolation" prizes would make Leo DiCaprio jealous. The game itself isn't difficult to get through, but if you want to earn even a bronze or silver trophy (let alone gold, platinum and pure platinum) you'll have to put in some practice. At first I wasn't sold on this system. Beating levels and advancing through the story is no sweat because when you die- and you die a lot- the game respawns you at the exact spot where you died, so you get a brand new bar of health whereas all of your enemies retain the damage that you already inflicted on them. On top of that, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there's a limit to how many times you can respawn.

So, what's the catch? Like I mentioned, earning a high ranking is difficult because the game is SUPER stingy in it's grading. No matter how experienced you are with video games, Wonderful 101 will consistently be the Mr. Feeny to your inner Cory Matthews. As a result, you don't really feel like you've truly beaten a level when the game gives you such a shit score for doing so, but I grew to appreciate it as I kept playing because the gameplay gets more and more fun as you start to develop your own tactics, learn enemy attack patterns, master your favorite Unite Morphs, and stuff like that. And I also have to admit, in a video game culture like ours that seems to be trending toward less challenging (or even mindless) games, it's refreshing to play one that makes you feel proud for earning a bronze medal.

Let's see, what else? Most of the alien names are stupid, unless there's some sort of joke that's going right over my head. A lot of them seem like combinations of random syllables, and most of them are awkward to pronounce.

Finally, I don't remember what the word is for people who have an interest in maps and cartography, but I'd consider myself one of them. It's such a minor detail in Wonderful 101, but that map in the background of the menu screen, with all the massive craters and rearranged geography resulting from humanity's wars against the Geathjerk aliens (see what I'm saying about the stupid names?), is a nice touch. I just love it when a game finds subtle ways to bring you into it's world and cleverly feed you bits of backstory like this.

Those are my major thoughts on the game so far. I'm really enjoying it and I'll be sure to update with any new impressions I get from the final two-thirds of the main story. Cheers!

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