The Wonderful One: After School Hero

Got this for free as part of being a Kickstarter backer and I got bored of it in 20 minutes. I definitely wouldn't pay $10 for it.

Much better schmups than this exist. Visually, it is cluttered. The art director clearly is not good at 2D games. Gameplay has little depth to it. It is not bad, but why would you play it? Go check out Rive, or Layer Section.

why?

This was apparently a kickstarter goal that came for backers of the Wonderful 101 Remaster and is now sold separately. Honestly it shows that this isn’t a fully-fledged standalone or -spinoff game. But for what it is it offers some solid run & gun gameplay with dual stick shooting mechanics. The four levels - all consisting of two stages plus one boss stage - can be finished in around two hours. The game is not hard because you get so many lives and continues per level that going game over is almost impossible. But highscores and online rankings are the true endgame, so who really wants to get into this has a solid challenge ahead. The level and encounter design gets repetitive rather quickly because there aren’t many enemy types. The boss fights are mostly more annoying than fun because of the huge amount of bullets they suck up. But the core gameplay is fast, snappy and satisfying enough to be fun over the short course of the game. Unfortunately the stages and overall graphics are quite ugly and don’t transfer the cool feeling of the original. The only thing that reminds of the original are the cutscenes with the witty dialogue and idiotic story. Unlike Wonderful 101 The Wonde…

The Wonderful One: After School Hero needs to pay better attention in class. [h1]Story[/h1] Exceedingly simple and uninteresting, After School Hero tells a very short tale about a young boy named Luka who spends his days after school training to join the Centinels, an organization dedicated to protecting Earth. Luka spends his time in a special virtual reality simulator to hone his skills under the guidance of a robot called P-Star. There is a bit more going on than that, but only a bit. An antagonist is introduced halfway through who never says a single word the entire game. There isn't an ounce of even vaguely worthwhile narrative to follow here. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] The Wonderful One is a side scrolling twin stick shooter with a few simple core mechanics and nothing more. Luka has access to a straight shot laser, a short range scatter gun, and a medium range bouncing hot as well as a dash attack. Destroying enemies will create scrap parts which can be collected to fill a rewards meter. This meter dolls out extra lives, as well as temporary invincibility/damage buff tokens, and tickets that can be used to activate single use screen wide attacks with a few different ef…

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