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Devil May Cry was a game I enjoyed back in the day, The controls were definitely something back in the day. Revisiting that game didn’t go in favor of the game, in fact I started hating it. Several years later, the guy who was held responsible for the direction of the game decided to make a new game that kind of follows the same genre.
I wasn’t exactly optimistic about the game, seeing how Japanese games have started to turn out lately from those who self proclaim themselves as the makers of classic titles (see Hironobu Sakaguchi and Mistwalker and his titles that are shamelessly synonymous to his earlier works, Final Fantasy). I was expecting a “more of the same” kind of game, the same things that were good about Devil May Cry (at that point they were worth nothing to me), and the same out dated flaws that are unacceptable to those who are still fans of this genre, boy was I wrong.
Ok so the usual pass that I do that I don’t judge an action game too much for its story, I mean who expects Godfather level story telling out of an everyday Steven Segal movie? Bayonetta’s Story is a different case. No, it’s not a good story, in fact it’s a really really REALLY bad one, it’s so convoluted that it puts Kojima into so much shame. Now I know it suppose to be bad on purpose, but everything has a limit.
To try to explain the story without completely giving it away (and not drive our readers to complete and utter madness), the universe revolves around two factions, the Umbra Witches and Lumen Sages, supposedly these two factions hold the balance of light and darkness, and must never get involved with each other, however, you play Bayonetta, a woman who was conceived from an Umbra Witch and Lumen sage, being the nature of the factions, this had turned both sides into turmoil. Bayonetta is later sealed for 500 years and later wakes up to fight angels and unlock the mysteries of what has happened to her and to the two factions.
Putting the story aside, this is a very fancy looking game, definitely not the greatest looking game out there, but it is very colorful and stylistic. speaking of stylistic, Bayonetta has got to be the most strangely proportioned woman in all of videogame history, her being over sexualized is one thing, but this like asking Lady Gaga to genetically enhance a woman to make her twice as tall and 500% brutally more uber feminine.
Speaking of the oversexualization, that’s pretty much steered me away from the game in the first place, when I saw the trailer where they had her asking “do you want to touch me?” and the camera panning around her crotch 3/4s of the entire trailer, I kinda felt disgusted at how the game treats the player like a perverted 15 year old.
That impression was still lingering throughout the game, slowly though it kinda added to the game a little more, it became more of the game’s “not taking self seriously” personality. I start laughing at the jokes and cameos and the material that the game parodied. Let me put it this way, the battle music is an engrish version of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me To The Moon”, that’s enough to tell you how completely bonkers the game is.
speaking of the music, it’s absolutely superb. Putting how ridiculous the battle music is aside, there is an interesting collection of tunes here, I might consider getting the soundtrack later.
The demo left a very bad impression to me, it was pretty repetitive, it revolved around extremely repetitive button bashing, many things that a lot of hack n slash games suffer from. The full game is still that, but strangely is fun this time around.
So let me explain how the game is played, if you are familiar with the way Devil May Cry is played, the game gives you the option to switch through gun slinging and sword fighting, In Bayonetta however they added an extra melee attack, which consist of kicks as well as punching and shooting. This should have made the game have more depth in termsof the battle system, but the game remains passable by just bashing the same combination over and over again. However, it does leave the door very open for creativity, as there is an impressive array of moves that you can purchase later in game, and no these aren’t just an extra punch or kick these are legitimate extra moves that flesh out Bayonetta’s maneuverability.
As you fight you rack up magic points in your magic bar, magic helps you perform torture moves, these can either finish off your enemies or cause massive damage to them. You do however lose magic points (and a lot of it) if you get damaged. The torture points is pretty much what QTE is during the killing in God of War, if you liked that you might like this.
Bayonetta has another advantage in terms of maneuvers, there’s a little something known a witch time, which is pretty much what anyone who had watched the matrix or played Max Payne would know as “bullet time”, the time of the world around bayonetta stops, giving her the advantage of attacking her opponents off guard.
Pretty much like any Hack ‘n’ Slash game, the bosses are “larger than life” huge, and the game does give a nice variety in the bosses that you fight. World design is great too, if anyon is familiar with the level design in Super Mario Galaxy, you will notice that Bayonetta does have you walking on walls, ceilings etc.
All in all, Bayonetta is much better than I expected it to be, not the greatest game out there, but remains fun. I know many might overlook it for it’s intense Japanese design, but trust me, past that thin skin, this is a game worth checking out.
What we Think: As far as we know, the 360 version is much superior than the PS3 version in terms of color and frame rate, but we recently heard that the PS3 port has had a patch to fix this problem. I came in not expecting to like the game but ended up doing so, great game with a lot of fun and funny moments
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