Bayonetta

Review from Jae - Tuesday, 12 January 2010 @ 5:12am

If you live on the internet you may have already read some high profile reviews claiming this game is top notch. I’m willing to bet that most of those reviewers are either virgins, under the age of 18, watch too much tentacle porn or all of the above.

Bayonetta comes from Platinum Games, a development team that includes Hideki Kamiya, the director from Devil May Cry, Okami and Viewtiful Joe. Unlike those games Bayonetta is jam packed with enough sexual innuendo and undertones to make a 14 year old boy explode in his pants. I lost count of how many crotch shots there were by the fourth cut scene but rest assured there were plenty. Funnily enough Bayonetta’s breasts don’t jiggle like aeroplane jelly, which would’ve been the icing on a perverted cake. The game tends to lend its focus more on the legs and underpants region. You even get a scene where an enemy, aptly named Joy, spreads her legs and runs her finger up her %#$@. Yes it’s true! I bet you all want to play this now just to see that scene.
The setting of Bayonetta is in a European region called Vigrid. The world is on the brink of imbalance as the forces of light, dark and chaos are no longer even. Bayonetta, the sultry lead femme fatal, is on the side of darkness as the last Umbra Witch in existence. Then you have Lumen Sages, the enemy, who fight for the side of light. The game doesn’t depict your side as being evil because you fight for darkness, it more so promotes that balance needs to be in order for the world to exist. Bayonetta’s main mission is to recover her lost past as she has no memories of what happened over the past 500 years. Yet another memory loss plot that we’ve seen done in stories time and time again, except this time with more girly bits.

I can't believe it's not butter

The closest cousin to Bayonetta would be Devil May Cry as the game play, audio keys and visuals are all similar. While we’re on the subject of sound you will want to pull your ears out when in the middle of intense fights. The J-Pop soundtrack is not made for the sane. This is coming from a guy that likes most J-Pop in gaming. Visually the game is stunning with vibrant colours and overly obscure designs for enemies. Imagine an upside down head with wings and two snake dragons protruding from its temples. I’m not sure what kind of imagination you have to have to think up a design like that but it’s probably the same imagination that likes close up crotch shots and shiny plump bums. The highlight of the game is climax moves. I can’t type that word without giggling like a little school girl. The climax move is the ultimate move that is used at the end of every main boss fight. It’s simple to pull off and a pleasure to watch. Each type of boss has a different climax end that usually ends in them being engulfed by the darkness. Think of it as videogame’s version of the money shot.

Controls are reliant on three buttons, one to use your hand weapons, one to use your high heel revolvers (which by the way are going to be the new craze in fashion this season) and one to dodge. So the mechanic in fighting enemies is to shoot, dodge, combo attack and finish off with a special darkness attack. You’ll easily find combos that you enjoy using the most and will most likely stick to those throughout most of the game. There is no problem with that but it would’ve been better if you were encouraged to mix it up a bit instead of a repetitive button combo. Thankfully load screens come with refreshers on combos that you may not have pulled off before. You can also pick up weapons dropped by dead enemies that usually pack a punch but disintegrate after a short time.

Something about old men and hot women

The large scale boss fights are similar to God of War, in the sense that they are proportionately larger than your character and that once you find a pattern it’s pretty clear what you have to do to win. Your biggest challenge is then to dodge every attack that comes your way. I just can’t get over the difficulty of this game. Perhaps I’m just really bad at playing games, that could be a possibility, but when playing Bayonetta on normal difficulty I die an endless number of times. If you die 5 or more times you get a bad overall rating for a level. For your first play through each boss will pound you at least once. It takes a few goes to get the hang of things but you can easily enter the realm of frustration especially if you have to repeat a boss fight over 5 times. I was stuck on one boss for over 10 tries because as soon as I entered battle it would reduce my health by more than a third within half a second. This goes to the replayability of the game, with you wanting to repeat a playthrough to get a quicker time and unlock more weapons. In the season that we’re in right now, a game has to pull out all the stops to make me want to play it again and again. The incentives here, whilst attractive, are dependent on your likelihood of going through it again. So for me, I’d play it once and shelve it although I don’t really want to put this on the shelf with the other games in case it gives the rest of them herpes.

Can I get one serve of crotch with my can of whoop ass?

If you watch and listen closely you will get some references to previous Capcom games. For example when you visit Rodin, your one stop shop man, he says “What are you buying” and claims that it sounds familiar to a game he’s played before. Resident Evil 4 fans will understand the reference there. There is a mini game at the end of each level that is like a simple on-screen shooter. If you get 30 points or above you can get a lollipop, the game’s version of health and status packs. There are also some small quick time events during cut scenes that, in my opinion, can make or break a game. In this case they break them faster that you can say vertical axe wound. It’s a real pity that Platinum Games haven’t learnt from other action games. A QTE should never punish you with the loss of a life. It deters from the experience and makes you want to hurt loved ones.

There are many collectibles in Bayonetta. A game that tells a large portion of its narrative through collectible books and voiced still shots is a cop out. Stories should be well told throughout a game and comprehensive to your average gamer. I’m not saying the story here was complicated but it just felt a bit too jolted. You meet a guy, you meet a girl, fight some scantily clad god like creature then spread your butt cheeks. It all falls into the ‘over the top’ context of Bayonetta but when other elements, such as a frustrating difficulty and the most annoying J-Pop song in the world, get into the mix you feel lost. There is too much in Bayonetta that doesn’t quite hit the G spot.

Pros

A game full of sexual undertones that will leave you wet.
Climax moves are visually appealing.

Cons

Level of difficulty makes you want to kill things in real life.
J-Pop soundtrack will make you want to kill the nearest Oriental.
Quick Time Events, more like Quick Fail Events.