When I first saw videos of this game I couldn’t help but be shocked. You played a voluptuous yet skinny woman who went around beating up creatures by getting more and more naked in order to increase her power. I mean we gamer boys are used to women being used for sex appeal, but this was just beyond a joke! But it’s being made by the guy that did Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe… Where did it all go wrong?
So imagine my glee when I got my pre-order copy so I could tear it to shreds for your amusement… Now imagine my disappointment that it turned out to be pretty damn good!
Now don’t get me wrong, the story is complete wank! Two secret factions, the Umbra Witches and Lumen Sages did… something and are now all extinct with the exception of you, Bayonetta. A woman with a predilection for phallic lollypops and wears nothing but her own hair and a pair of guns strapped to her shoes. Your mission is to remember your past, but Bayonetta herself seems to care about that almost as much as you do and seems to be just out for the giggles of this little adventure.
Where the game itself comes into its own is in everything else. The gameplay fits the character of Bayonetta perfectly by being more about toying with the enemies and mocking them mercilessly. Dodging an enemy attack would put everyone apart from you in slow motion for you to wail on them with impunity for several seconds. If you play well you won’t get hit by a single attack despite the enemies doing their level best to kill the hell out of you.
It’s easy to pick up but very challenging to master, and the game does a masterful job of easing you in to the experience by drip feeding you your moves with mini-tutorials where you can practice your new skills for as long as you want before getting back to the fight, you can also practice any extra moves you want to buy for Bayonetta before paying for them. Why haven’t any games done this before?
The graphics are beautifully detailed, showing an incredible amount of effort went into the levels themselves even when you’re passing by it at seven hundred miles an hour driving a motorbike along the supports of a collapsing bridge. And it flows at a silky sixty frames a second with nary a moment of slowdown even if you’re fighting on a moving missile in the middle of a city (on the 360, the PS3 has several issues, go for the former if you can). This game sets out to assault your senses and by god it will work.
If there is anything to complain about it’s that the game should have maybe trimmed the cutscenes down a little, the amount of sheer exposition in between levels can get rather baffling when all you want to do is electronically cocktease a bunch of angel themed monsters, but it does give you a chance to catch your breath from all the frantic action, maybe if the game stopped wondering if it was supposed to be serious or stupid and just went all out stupid then the game would have been perfect.
All in all, if you’re friends with the Spectacle Fighter Genre with titles like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, God Hand or God of War then this game is definitely worth the price of admission, because in many ways it’s pretty much perfected the formula. If you’ve never played this type of game before, then Bayonetta is a great way to get into the concept since it’s much friendlier than something like Ninja Gaiden which takes glee in killing you. I’ll save discussion of whether it’s offensive to women for the comment section or the forums since I couldn’t really bring myself to have an opinion on the matter, I was too busy having fun!
Ah, I see someone is a Yahtzee fan.
How do you mean?
The “Spectacle Fighter” comment.
Zero Punctuation coined the phrase.
(to the best of my knowledge)
Ah yes. Yeah, I did get the phrase from him. I originally meant to use another phrase instead… but there really isn’t anything that describes it quite so well. Especially in this case, not only are you encouraged to show off, you are rewarded for it!
It’s like Burnout filling your boost meter by driving into oncoming traffic and narrowly dodging cars. The flashier and sillier the moves you use, the more narrow the dodge, the more you taunt the enemies… In this game, you live on a self inflicted knifes edge, encouraging your enemies to attack you more in order to dodge them more. And that makes this so fun, you don’t just complete a level, you complete it and promise yourself to get a perfect platinum medal as well!
If that isn’t a spectacle fighter, I don’t know what is.
All the reviews I’ve read of this say a similar thing to yours – you know you should hate it while you’re playing it, because it’s big, dumb, and obvious… but all the same, you can’t quite stop playing it, because it’s oddly addictive.
I’m curious to play it myself for precisely that reason – especially as I didn’t much like the Devil May Cry games.
If you don’t like it, it’ll be precisely for that last reason. It plays very similar, whilst feeling really different, it’s less about hitting enemies until they fall down than it is about waiting for them to strike and punishing them for being such naughty. naughty boys!
It is to fighting games what Burnout is to racing games, it encourages reckless behaviour and showing off rather than tactics or memorising all your combos.