Bayonetta

Bayonetta seems like a product of a 13-year-old's unbridled wet dream brought to life in a videogame. The not-quite-correctly-proportional protagonist is hypersexualized to the point where subtext becomes just shy of being text. But underneath all the T&A, there's a frenetic hack and slash game that seems perfectly suited to the environment around it.

In Bayonetta, you play as the titular witch, revived from a 500 year slumber with no recollection of your past. As you progress through the game to regain your memory, you'll battle the various angels of Paradiso and uncover an elaborate scheme to... um, well, I'm not exactly sure the plot is. There's some end-of-the-world kinda stuff going on, though it's never really clear why. The story has a distinctly Japanese feel to it, almost as if a lot of it was lost in translation. But I'm not sure if it really matters because the story just takes time away from the main focus of the game, the combat.

The combat system consists of your usual array of punches and kicks, along with guns (for your hands and feet!) and other weapons that you unlock throughout the game. While you can play the game as a button masher, the beauty of the combat system is its surprising depth. The game rewards you in each chapter for delving deeper into the combat by grading you on each section (or verse... get it? Chapter and verse?) and providing you with more halos (the in-game currency) to spend on upgrading your moves or buying new weapons and accessories.

Though the basic combat is similar to games like Devil May Cry (and why wouldn't it be when Hideki Kamiya directed both?), Bayonetta distinguishes itself through the use of "witch time" and "torture attacks". By dodging attacks at the right moment, you enter "witch time" which temporarily slows the action on the screen to a crawl where you can continue your combos on defenseless enemies. Torture attacks are only available after you've filled up your magic gague and you can inflict massive amounts of damage to enemies by decapitating them with a guillotine or trapping them in an iron maiden and mashing the indicated button or twirling the appropriate analog stick. By defeating an enemy with a torture attack, you can then pick up whatever weapon they were wielding (ranging from swords to flails to horns... the musical instrument, not the horns that go on your head) for more damage dealing options.

Taken together, the combat feels both fresh and familiar at the same time. One of the best additions to Bayonetta that I wish would find it's way into similar games is the ability to practice combos while you wait for a level to load. You get to control Bayonetta and the list of combos is displayed on the right side of the screen. So you can practice all the various moves throughout the game without having to resort with experimentation during the frantic fights in the game.

But what most sets Bayonetta apart from similar games is its character and level design. Though you are fighting through hordes of angels, I can almost guarantee you that you've never seen angels like this before. There are halos and there are wings to be sure, but that's probably where the familiarity ends. Some of the level designs also play with your sense of perspective as they allow you to not only battle with two feet placed firmly on the ground but on the walls and the ceiling as well.

The game isn't perfect though... at least not the version for the PS3 I played through. You'll probably find a lot of references to how inferior the PS3 version is to the Xbox 360 version. But for the most part, if you've never played the 360 version, you probably won't even notice most of the shortcomings. Save for one, the load times. While the loading between levels is tolerable (thanks to the fact that you can practice your moves) the loading within the levels grinds the game to a halt. There's pretty much loading every time you do anything other than walk around and fight. There's loading for when you pick up an item, when you go to your inventory, even when you try to pause the game! Yes, when you try to pause the game, there's a 1 to 2 second load before you can exit out! While I don't have access to the 360 version to see if the same flaws appear in that version, I can't imagine that it could be any worse.

Rating

But here's the catch, I think it's only a "buy" on the Xbox 360. I know that I don't really have a frame of reference to make that determination, but the load times really kill a lot of the momentum that the game meticulously builds. So much so that, I'd recommend you "rent" the PS3 version to see if you can stomach the load times. If you can't, then at least you only spent money on a rental instead of full price for the game. If there's ever a patch for the game that rectifies most of the loading issues, then I'd have no problem giving this a "buy" on either system.

Update 1/28/2010 - The PS3 version of Bayonetta has finally received a patch that allows for an optional install of the game. This alleviates most, if not all, of the loading issues with this version. So, with that, I am officially ammending my rating for the PS3 version to a "buy".

Recommendations