W101 Kotaku

The Wonderful 101 is a frustrating game, a confusing maelstrom of aliens and superheroes that seems to punish players for all the wrong reasons.

The controls make no sense, the action is disorienting, and the camera is a mess.

And then…

Then…

Somewhere during the first two hours, something clicks. Everything changes. Control schemes that were once incomprehensible suddenly start to feel like natural extensions of your hand. The pitch of combat swings from dissonance to harmony. You find yourself switching powers and weakening enemies and losing yourself to the satisfying, exhausting rhythm of saving the world from space aliens.

Now let’s try that again.

The Wonderful 101 is a delightful game, a high-octane romp through volcanos and stomachs that redefines “over the top” with its increasingly-majestic array of setpieces.

The controls make no sense—until you start finding a rhythm. The action is disorienting—until you realize who’s doing what. The camera is a mess—until… well, okay, the camera is always a mess.

Here’s the shtick: you, as the player, are tasked with running a squad of superheroes called the Wonderful 100. That extra 1 in the title is you. Of course.

As the Wonderful 100, you have to protect the world from an army of marauding aliens named GEATHJERK, using your tokusatsu-inspired avatars to slash and shoot through a variety of prickly beasts—monstrous tanks, shape-shifting pyramids, giant lizard swordsmen. Split up into nine different operations, each composed of two or three sections, The Wonderful 101 often feels like a Saturday morning cartoon, and if you’ve ever woken up early to watch Power Rangers and the like, this will feel like charted territory: the campy dialogue, the funny little flourishes, the miraculously-timed leaps and swings that always end with a costumed crusader taking down a cackling villain.


Still, once you get the hang of The Wonderful 101’s bizarre rules and choices—like, your controller vibrating when you’re on the receiving end of a big hit instead of when you make one—the game is rewarding, satisfying, and ridiculous. It’s a tough game, and you’ll have to spend a lot of time working on muscle memory if you want to master its mechanics, even at the easiest difficulty levels. It takes commitment.

But if you do pick up The Wonderful 101, and if you do put in the time and energy, you'll be rewarded with an insane adventure that, in many ways, is like nothing I've ever played before.