Japanese flavoured, brightly coloured and slightly bonkers. But as with most Platinum titles, also unlikely to reach a wider audience. But maybe 101 will have wonderful luck.
The earth is under attack, and you play the leader of a rather bizarre group of combatants; the strangest collection of superheroes you'll ever meet. You, plus the one hundred saviours that range from full-time heroes to civilians given powers and recruited for a limited time, make up the Wonderful 101. Your foes are equally strange, and prove Platinum know how to make great enemies. Godzilla-like dragons, armoured mechas.... there's plenty of fun cannon fodder to fight.
Like Pikmin 3, you control a single leader of the superhero squad which gradually grows as you recruit through each level.
Mixed between the converted populace are certain heroes with special abilities, and so with a shaped swipe on the GamePad touch screen, you can transform your massed heroes into a oversized fist, sword or the like to battle enemies, and in certain areas you'll need to form bridges and ladders to travel to the next section.
Missions are fairly linear, working your way towards the final boss of that stage. Equally the gameplay brings in a fair amount of repetition. There's diversion when the gameplay switches to the GamePad, but unfortunately moments like these are rare across the twelve hours of game time.
Each stage is made up of multiple mini-missions that are scored, offering a chance to replay for high scores. Getting good ratings isn't easy, since the screen is so manic with your troops, enemies and awash with primary colours, it's hard to track what's going on, unlike the studio's definitive work in the action-adventure genre, Bayonetta.
101's got that Platinum flair yet it isn't as finely-tuned. Shame.