Wonderful 101

[TWOxACROSS]

So have people been keeping up with this game at all?

I like the little DMC nod there with "Stylish Players."​

It came out recently, but it's sorta falling by the wayside. It's essentially a Pikmin-style game but with the depth and complexity of something like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, and of course, it's made by Platinum Games.

From what it sounds like from some, the game is probably pretty damn cool, but it's so user-unfriendly at teaching people how to play the game that it's leaving a lot of reviewers with a sour taste in their mouth. Apparently it does like, absolutely nothing to help the player, like, not even tutorials or something, and the deceptive child-like charm probably isn't helping it either, because if anybody isn't gonna get the complexity of a DMC-type game, it's probably gonna be kids.

I wonder if maybe Platinum wanted to sorta go back to the time when they wanted the player to have fun with it, and find all that depth on their own. It might be too much to ask these days, just by virtue of the complexity of game mechanics being so much greater.

It does look really fun, though. I wonder what it is about Platinum and making games that fall into a cult classic status so easily :ermm:

 

[Shin Muramasa]

Hey, just as you made this post, Siliconera's Robert Ward wrote this article: "The Wonderful 101: Brings Back The Discovery Of The NES Era".

Ward points out his experiences with the game and how "passive" the game is to players. This one paragraph basically summarizes everything about The Wonderful 101's gameplay:

In that sense, The Wonderful 101 takes a passive sense to teaching the player what does and does not work, and it does so primarily through trial and error, through memorization and familiarity, but most importantly, through experimentation. It’s an old system, and one I think this current generation is distant from. It’s the lack of handholding, though, that makes it so special. The game knows you’re a smart person. It respects you as a player, and although it seems unfair at times, it gives you everything you need to be successful.

Personally, after watching gameplay of it, the game's not something I'd like. I don't really play RTS games and I don't really play isometric games. That said, I think The Wonderful 101 is an interesting idea, a great tribute to tokusatsu and Power Rangers shows, and it's "difficulty" as something fresh in a sea of modern gaming - modern games have a lot of safety nets compared to past games. Animations that are smooth and quick allow players to get away with certain things they couldn't in the past. Lock-on systems are vastly improved along with controls, hit-boxes, intuitive UIs, etc. Those are some things that just are there as games evolve, but many games do have lower difficulty floors than in the past. Many games have tutorials that explain the mechanics and help players get an overall feel of gameplay. Some games even hold the players' hand throughout the game and that's annoying, personally.