Jan

Bayonetta: Review

By admin

What do you get when you mix Dante, Kratos and Viewtiful Joe…You get Bayonetta! This is hands down one of the greatest action games you will EVER play. Most people will tell you that director Hideki Kamiya bit hard from games like “God of War” or “Devil May Cry” and in many respects they would be right but this game is better.

Bayonetta moves with a level of grace and sexuality Kratos could never attain (without becoming the first gay action game star) the dodge mechanic is sooo well executed that it makes the dodge in “God of War” feel antiquated and gauche. I know “God of War 3″ is dropping soon but damn…they might need to push it back a couple months to step up Kratos’s dodge game or he’s gonna be playing second fiddle to the sexy gun slingin’ witch.

When most people think about style in an action game “Devil May Cry” is the setter…until now. Bayonetta shits all over Dante. When Dante can slow motion windmill (break dance) with 4 guns at the same time, stop in the middle of the fight, pose, then take a picture, he can challenge Bayonetta but until then he’s like an old MCM sweat suit…amusing to remember but something you’d never be caught dead in now.

Now let me take a minute from jocking this awesome game and give you some details…although it’s irrelevant, at this point, you really should be running to buy the game now. The story is basic enough, upholding the balance between good and evil…whatever….who cares about story in an action game. It’s there to push you forward into more action and it serves its purpose well enough.

As far as enemies go you are fighting against angelic minions working overtime to finish off the “last” of the Umbra Witches. The creatures you fight vary in size and shape from small spherical flying baby heads, to human sized bird people with wings, to the more massive, giant muscle bound baby monsters…and finally the HUGE building sized monsters who make up the majority of boss battles.

With all the crazy monsters in the game you need a way to dispatch them…right? Well I want whatever it was they were smoking when they came up with their attacks and weapons for Bayonetta. You can carry a total of 4 weapons at a time, one in each hand and two on your feet. Weapons range from guns, swords, ice skates, whips and a whole host of other off the wall stuff. Additionally you can take the weapons from felled enemies for even more brutal attacks for a limited time). Bayonetta can also “torture” her enemies by filling up her magic meter. doing this will unlock a whole bunch of cans of whop ass on whatever monster is in your way…iron maidens, guillotine’s, giant spiked wheels and chain saws are all at your disposal when unleashing torture moves. On top of all this Bayonetta sports a deeeep move list that changes with whatever weapons she is carrying, it might sound daunting but most weapons have combos and moves that carry over, so you won’t be completely lost when switching weapons.

With all the shit going on in the game you would think it gets confusing…but it rarely does. The action is handled so well that you’re never confused on where you or your enemies are at. Much of the controlled chaos in the game can be attributed to the “Witch Time Effect”. You pull this move off by timing when you dodge an attack…do it right and you instantly go into a state where you are moving so fast everything else around you moves in slow motion. It only lasts for a few seconds but since you can do it at will (no powering up any gauges) it becomes one of the most important techniques in the game.

Everything isn’t all peaches and cream though. There are a couple of blemishes to this otherwise awesome game. What the hell is up with the cut scenes? The developers budget must have been spent entirely on refining the gameplay because there is no production value in the majority of cut scenes. Most of the cut scenes are present in the semi-static film strip style where the characters are still with the camera moving around to give some sense of motion. There not all like that but enough of them are to become pretty annoying. They spent so much time making Bayonetta overly sexy she needs to be animated at all times…none of this still frame crap! Also, the story telling is VERY Japanese…that’s not necessarily a bad thing (In my opinion it helps add to the games charm & personality) but some people may get turned off by it.

Aside from those two blemishes this is as close to the perfect action game as any of us will play for a while. Tons of stylish action, awesome weapons and abilities, rock solid gameplay and the coolest female character to ever grace a videogame make Bayonetta a must by for anyone even remotely interested in action games.

If we had an editor’s choice award this game would get it…but hey we aren’t even getting free games yet so stfu lol.

(Oh…so you can’t say I didn’t warn you…the PS3 version is very inferior to the 360. So much so that it would get an 8.5 out of 10 If we were basing our review on that version. If you have the choice get it for the 360)

Rating: (9.5/10)