HOW WONDERFUL 101 MAKES GOD OF WAR FEEL SMALL

Updated: Jun 29, 2020

In video game’s obsession to create behemoth bosses, we have ignored the game that’s already perfected it.

The recently remastered Wonderful 101 has put a spotlight back into one of the most under apricated games of Last generation and playing it again has been… well, wonderful. It’s an amazing love letter to video games by Hideki Kamiya with the platinum polish that elevates the combat to godly levels. But this game has got me doing something I never usually do, get hype for a ginormous boss battle.

The giant bosses of WOW 101 (Wonderful 101) are a highlight of the game. Nothing feels better that your petit platoon working together with all their skills to take down the far stronger ten-thousand-ton titan. But as many fans of the Hack n Slash genre can attest, the spectacle of a ginormous boss battle usually comes with a variety of hiccups that takes away from the gameplay. So, what are these problems? And what magic has WOW 101 spun to make the bosses work so well?

The Problem With Fighting Kaiju

As said before, the scale of giant bosses and gameplay of spectacle fighters have not always gone hand in hand. Even goliaths of the genre like Devil May Cry struggle in making their own goliaths. The 300-meter saviour from Devil May Cry 4 may stand tall for scale but falls short when compared to most other mainline DMC (Devil May Cry) bosses (well… that aren’t from DMC 2 anyway). Even the excellent Devil May Cry 5 commonly has Gilgamesh noted, its biggest baddie in the game, as one of its least fun bosses.

Amazing to see? Yes! Fun to play? Not even close

But the more important franchise to look at for examples of giant bosses in video games is without a doubt the God of War series… Oh ok, its Shadows of The Colossus, but stay with me here, I’m making a point! From day 1 God of War was about killing the mythical pantheon of ancient Greece, so surely, they must have some great examples of giant bosses? While the spectacle is no doubt amazing, GoW (God of War) is perhaps the perfect case study for my disdain with fighting big bosses and contains the method of fighting giant bosses that this industry seems to love.

The primary method of battle is having the player stand on a platform while the camera is centred on the boss. This is perhaps the most common way of doing giant bosses and it makes complete sense unless you wanted a boss fight where you bite at its ankle the entire time. From this point, the enemy will throw slow attacks at you until a certain criterion is filled E.G. Leaving the arm on the platform while you climb up it, guiding a punch into some spikes to hurt the enemy, or even hitting the enemy enough times till you stagger them. After this, you're given time to whale on them, followed by a snazzy cutscene that shows your character pulling off a flabbergasting feat.

Just a few examples of the bosses that use this style

So, what’s wrong with this style of boss fight? Well primarily because it does not usually allow you to use the gameplay skills you have been utilizing to get to this point. Its primarily a waiting game until certain criteria is filled, and then watching a cutscene do all the heavy lifting and that can feel pretty demotivating. One of the obvious advantages of the medium of video games is the ability to be in the action yourself by controlling the hero, whereas a lot of these bosses most spectacular moments instead happen in a QuickTime event with limited player input. As amazing a spectacle it is to hall the Hydras Heads into the mast of a ship, seeing it once is not going have the same effect on replay that human-sized enemies like Zeus give.

The same can for how you trigger these QuickTime events. While there is fun in figuring out how you could possibly damage the enemy before you, once you’ve figured it out, nothing really much is going to change about the boss once you go back to fight it. The Kraken boss fight will always have the same puzzle regardless of difficulty. Whereas fighting normal enemies in-game will have vastly different strategies and aggression depending on the difficulty you pick.

Now all of this is justifiable. Truth be told its hard to have small character fight against such a large enemy normally, and if the reason we want to see David smite the giant is for spectacle, so why not put all the focus on creating big flashy quick time events that awe and amaze? Well, both are possible! You can have your wonder cake and it too! And there’s no better game that shows this than…

The Wonderful 101

To look at how the Wonderful 101 gets it oh so right we need only take a look at the first boss in the game, GAH-GOOJIN. Right off the bat, we get a stellar opening that shows the giant robot ripping the street from under your feet out of nowhere! And the best part? It's playable! The spectacle of what’s happening is not only being used to give you an exciting thing to look at but also giving you a platforming section to play as well.

We follow up by climbing on top of the enemy’s arm and punch conveniently placed glowing weak spots on its arm (I told you this game was the most video-gamey video game!). Don’t worry, I’m not saying that’s the impressive bit… No, the amazing thing about this boss is how you react to the attacks. At first, the enemy will wind up to squash you with his fist. Now your first reaction might be to dodge the attack, but then your mind races back to encounters you’ve had with enemies before and you remember the Wonder Jello move that allows you the bounce back slam attacks. You then use Wonder Jello against the furious fist falling your way and bam! We boisterously bounce back the enemy’s attack.

This is what I was talking about! Not only was it an amazing spectacle to see the own enemy hit itself, but it was something you did by using gameplay! You used experience from other enemies and turned it to your advantage. They have found a way to do something even DMC has struggled with: blending gameplay and spectacle together! This is further cemented by the giant laser you can deflect with a sword, just like you have been doing with other enemies in the game. This formula is even played with in harder difficulties and the boss Introduces feints. This giant boss is a test of the skills that you have amassed in the game.

I don’t want to give too much else away, because figuring out how to use each of the Wonderful 101’s attack to their most beneficial and feel like you using a team is 101 per cent of the fun, but I can assure you other giant bosses.

Now don’t get me wrong, you can parry giant enemy attacks in GoW, but at most the enemy stands there unphased from your parry. GoW in all its years of existence hasn’t found a way to make gameplay the spectacle in these bosses, whereas Wonderful 101 has found a way to blend together these two things to create something truly interesting.

Conclusion:

I hope we can get to see more games use the style Wonderful 101 does when crafting Ludicrous Leviathan’s and their ferrous feuds. For a long time, giants boss battles have been more about flashy visuals then using gameplay to win. But until we see that faithful day we know there one game we can go to that provides the greatest giant boos battles and that game is… Shadows of the colossus, but Wonderful 101 remains a close second!!!

Check out the video version of the article for a little extra.