A wonderful, The Wonderful 101 Nintendo Direct recap

Last night we were treated to a Nintendo Direct focusing on the upcoming Wii U game, The Wonderful 101. Footage of the game was brought to you from Hideki Kamiya himself… DIRECTLY! The presentation went over the unique mechanics of the game, and finished with a trailer showing the story and some footage of the game in action.

The premise of the game is that the player controls members of the elite force known as The Wonderful 100 (the extra 1 in the title is the player!), who transform into heroes by using Wonder Energy. The planet is being invaded by Geathjerk invaders, so the group must assemble and save the world. You start off with a small number of members, but find other characters scattered throughout the levels. You can also rescue civilians in distress by drawing a circle around them on the GamePad’s touch screen, and temporarily turn them into heroes to boost your numbers.

You’re going to want to build up a team quickly, as power comes in numbers. You can use your heroes to attack enemies, or throw them at enemies so they’ll cling on and hold them in place. You can also use the unique Unite Morph abilities to merge your heroes together into gigantic weapons. By drawing a shape on the GamePad, you can make all sorts of different items for use in combat and puzzles. Some of the examples shown were drawing a circle to make the Unite Punch, a right-angle shape to make the Unite Gun, and a wavy line to make the Unite Whip. Each morph has its own set of unlockable skills, and they get bigger and stronger the more heroes are used to make them.

You can also use the Unite Morphs to solve puzzles in the levels. Traversal across the levels requires you to perform actions such as building ladders and bridges out of your heroes to overcome obstacles, as well as some more exciting forms like a hang glider used to sail across large gaps. More forms will be unlockable than those shown, by purchasing them from the Wonder Mart- it’s a supermarket only for heroes! You collect O-Parts by defeating enemies, which can be used to buy new Unite Morphs, as well as power-ups and healing items.

Kamiya then went on to discuss the replayability of the game. Each stage is divided into smaller missions, which rank you on your performance. Completing stages quickly while taking little damage will give you a better ranking, up to a Pure Platinum rank. In order to get this rank you’ll need to make use of all the abilities at your disposal. Kamiya took this chance to showcase the complexities of the game’s combat. You can activate up to 5 Unite Morphs at once, using different pools of your current team, which looked hectic and colourful on screen, as you’d expect from a Platinum game. Each morph has unlockable skills, which you can combo together, as well as with skills of other morphs. Kamiya said a good strategy is to use some of your heroes to cling to enemies and hold them down, giving you time to draw lots of Unite Morphs on the GamePad. Kamiya’s favourite combo is Sword + Gun + Hammer.
Kamiya encouraged viewers to go with their gut and buy the game if it appealed to them, and also said to follow him on Twitter (@pg_kamiya) for the latest news. The Direct then concluded with a long trailer that gave an extensive look at the game. It showed a lot of the quirky characters, like Wonder Green, an obese French boy/man, and Wonder Yellow, a socially awkward Russian solder.

Some story elements were hinted at, like some form of intense rivalry between Wonder Red and Wonder Blue, and some sort of evil counterpart to The Wonderful 100 who could use Unite Morphs against you in battle. It looks like an awful lot of fun, it’s a shame that Nintendo took this long to show it off in-depth to a wider audience. The good news is that a demo should be available on the Australian eShop by the time you read this, giving you a chance to try it out before it launches on Wii U August 24th (which is before the US get it, yay!).