Review: Bayonetta

I feel cheated. This is probably not a good sign. When buying Bayonetta it was between it and Darksiders (we all have a budget after all) and for a good while I’ve been wondering whether I should have bought Darksiders instead. Like a poor break up line, it’s not you Bayonetta, it’s me. You’re just not my kind of woman. It’s the hair really, it kind of freaks me out…

Bayonetta has all the action packed carnage of your favourite fighter game and all the personality of your favourite hentai movie. Its plot (if indeed there is a plot) is so incoherent and difficult to explain that really Bayonetta is best summed up by “Hell witch beats up angels because the devil told me to.” If you want more of a plotline than that, steer well away from this game. If you can live without a coherent story and just enjoy beating the crap out of anything that opposes you, then this game is definitely for you. Bayonetta is a joke, one that I seem to be missing the punchline for. I feel almost like the guy who never got Monty Python, or could never see the funny side of Ricky Gervais (let’s face it, who can?).

Fire bad! Watch out!

Don’t get me wrong, I stick by what I said in my preview. Bayonetta is fun, the voice actor plays her extremely well and deliberate risque scenes aside, she is a rather enjoyable character. By all intents she’ll certainly be remembered in the grand scheme of gaming for a long time! Bayonetta is the epitemy of what this game is about; sleek, sexy, fun, with all the personality of a wooden plank.

The game starts up in a rush and barely stops. After the somewhat long introduction scene for the game you’re pretty much put in her shoes and are left to kick angel butt as you please. The combat is fantastic, there’s no doubt about that. Combos can be pulled off with relative ease and there’s no need to learn overally complex combo procedures in order to do that one move. Completionists will enjoy using the practice mode (available by pressing the back/select button) in the loading screens to learn all the moves, but even the most incompetant of players (yeah that would be me!) can make fast frantic combo attacks before ending in a torture move.

What? What the? F. See me after class.

Climax moves surprisingly do not happen every time there’s combat, so Bayonetta stripping herself nude to unleash her hair is an occurence limited to the boss battles. Speaking of which, the boss battles can be amazing, frustrating and fun all at the same time. The battles have a particular method of winning them and if you follow that you won’t get stomped, chewed or incinerated to death.

Graphically Bayonetta is astounding. Every character, boss and location has been detailed extremely well. Bosses are as powerful as they look, with giant religious based structures, or golden dragons, or a whole plethora of other types of archangel like beings, all fighting in a world that seems to use the Xbox 360 to its full advantage. Bayonetta is as much well detailed as she is well voiced, even if her body defies all laws of physics and biology.

This guy isn't very friendly, but fun to watch.

Music wise it’s a whole different story. A selection of interesting enough cathedral based choir songs are ruined by perpetual J-Pop and what has to be the worst rendition of Fly me to the Moon. The music continues with little to no change this way and it wasn’t long before I switched off the audio. I don’t mind J-Pop as long as it’s worth listening to, and after the 20th rendition of the battle song that follows Bayonetta whenever she gets in a fight, I decided enough was enough.

The general over the top humour and playstyle of this game is really what makes it appealing, but as I say there are times when I’m left wondering how on Earth it was rated so highly. Bayonetta’s polarising nature streams throughout the game. There’s no real point in which Bayonetta will surprise you and show some sort of human touch that won’t involve her jumping into a sexual position a moment later. It’s all about the combat, and even I can admit that there are times when I’ve had good fun in a fight encounter, particularly if its been a difficult one and I really want to kick that angel thing in the face for killing me. It then though proceeds to ramble into a story when it really shouldn’t.

The beginning starts in a cemetery, perhaps mourning the death of plot.

Bayonetta to me fails because it’s trying to hard. The story is so incoherent and muddled that really it isn’t neccessary. The voice acting is poor apart from Bayonetta who is surprisingly lovely. I feel somewhat sorry for the voice actor who is wasted in this game. An easy way I suppose to ignore it would be to just choose skip in the pause screen and go straight to the action. If you can live with the ridicolousness of it all it’s a very good action game, perhaps one of the best for a long time simply because its easy to pick up and enjoy. Get round the story, skip, and enjoy the bosses and you won’t have a problem with the game. If though you can’t stand the risque moves with poor plot development and reason for existence, then Darksiders is probably the better game for you.

Posted by W Main
Categories: Gaming