Bayonetta

Bayonetta is a difficult game to describe, at the same time I can sum it up in a single word: camp. It’s pure, unadulterated camp. It’s outrageously over-the-top absolutely revels in being so. This is a very self-aware game that seems to seek to above all be entertaining and it does this very well.

On top of that it has the best action control scheme yet seen in a game. I’m serious. It’s not a God of War ripoff, it’s everything Devil May Cry 4 should have been except with hot chicks with guns on their shoes and a ludicrous sense of style. So, yeah, it’s pretty rad.

It seems it was more apt than I realized to mention Bayonetta in my discussion about Dante’s Inferno and Darksiders and how, like Hollywood, several games with similar themes keep coming out all at the same time. Although I begin to wonder if Dante’s and Darksiders were both developed as a response to Bayonetta.

Bayonetta also focuses on a heaven and hell theme, even using the terms Paradiso, Inferno and Purgatorio for different levels of reality. However its concepts of demons and angels are refreshingly imaginative and original, yet at the same time I can see so much in the angel designs that derive from actual descriptions of angels in ancient religious writings (namely that they have animal heads, multiple faces, etc.), as well as some that are designed straight after depictions in classical paintings (such as when you see angelic figures that are just heads with wings.) Also they’re your enemies. You’re a demon-summoning, dark magic using witch after all.

The opening of the game does give you an expositive narration about the witches and their downfall, but you get to engage in an action scene the entire time. After that a lot of the cutscenes are actually kind of long, however they are so entertainingly, and often times hilariously, over-the-top, cinematic and oozing with style that you can’t take your eyes from the screen. These scenes are skippable though, which is a good thing as the game’s scoring system and unlockables seem to suggest it’s intended for multiple playthroughs.

I can say without a doubt that the action in this game consists of the most incredible controls I have ever experienced. It’s really something that’s difficult to describe and you just have to feel to believe. Everything is so fast, so fluid, and there are so many different combinations and moves you can preform that the  game stats tell me I’ve yet to do them all. It isn’t a button masher either (at least not on Normal mode), Bayonetta will only flow from one move to the other if you time your button presses correctly and you’re rewarded with Witch Time, a brief spell of slow motion, when you deftly dodge an attack at the last moment. There’s also torture attacks that you can do when you’ve wracked up enough combo points, climax attacks to finish off boss enemies (where Bayonetta gets almost naked and her hair turns into a giant, roaring monster), and you can even pick up the various weapons of vanquished angels and use them against their comrades, and each of these also has their own unique attack animations. There’s so much going on and so much you can do that the battle system never gets old. And it doesn’t feel frantic, you feel in control the entire time and you feel like you’re actually accomplishing something, that you’re doing the wide variety of moves on purpose (and most of the time you are, most  moves have specific button and joystick combinations.)

Really so far the game has been fairly easy, but I think that’s the point. It’s supposed to be fun and you’re supposed to feel like an absolute, unstoppable badass. I have managed to die a few times, though, as healing items are far and few between (and you get points off your final level and chapter scores for using them, the gameplay expects you to time your movements intelligently and not get hit) but the game has a great checkpoint system that gets you back into the action right away and doesn’t waste your time.

The overall style and humor in this game is some weird hybrid of Japanese and American tropes, but granted alot of good can come out of Japanese tributes to American pop culture and media (Silent Hill and Cowboy Bebop come to mind.) It’s kind of like Kill Bill meets The Matrix with a bit of Bebop actually, it’s intentionally over the top and purposefully lampooning exploitation film styles but at the same time is seeped in non-stop action and impossible badassery that teeters perilously on that line between awesome and stupid. The music is pretty great too, full of fast jazz, sensual J-pop and several different versions of the song “Fly Me to the Moon”.

But underneath all of this high-flying so-unabashedly-silly-it’s-just-plain-awesome action there is a deeper story brewing about Bayonetta’s past. At first I was a little miffed to hear she has amnesia (an amnesiac hero? Again?) and really it is more for plot convenience than anything, but it isn’t really focused on much. Bayonetta isn’t brooding and emo about her lost memories, she’s always cool, confident and cheeky, she’s more aloofly curious about her past than anything but she doesn’t seem to be in much of a rush to remember.

Unless it’s something I know I’m really going to want (Sims 3,  Assassin’s Creed 2, Fable 2  etc.) I tend to rent games first and not buy them on day one. Well I bought Bayonetta on day 3 without renting it first. I noticed that almost every website and magazine has given it straight 9’s, that is an unprecedented amount of consistency from the reviewing sphere, don’t you think? It doesn’t happen too often. Well, granted, the clumsy PS3 port has gotten mostly 8’s, but that’s to be expected.

I’d have to say it was a good purchase, it’s so nice to see such a strange game be so high profile, many gamers today only seem interested in me-too first person shooters. No surprise that Bayonetta was developed by Platinum Games, which is made up of former members of Clover the people behind equally strange games like Okami and Viewtiful Joe. Gaming is in desperate need of an injection of variety, and even though they used the old “sex sells” tactic to boost this game to a high profile it’s mostly played for laughs and Bayonetta, in both design and personality, is a very unconventional game heroine.

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