Thursday, September 23, 2010

Bayonetta (PS3)

Bayonetta, by Platinum Games is a low-impact semi-erotic dance video that someone in marketing figured might sell better as a PS3 action story game. You laugh, but play it through and then come back and tell me I'm wrong.

You play from the perspective of the title character - an impossibly leggy gun-toting dark witch with weapons on every appendage - who blasts her way through a variety of feathery 'angelic' critters and halo'd giants with creepy baby faces. Beset by a healthy dose of random memory loss to provide an excuse for reveal background information at regular intervals, she bounces and blazes through a strictly defined story path.

A hail of bullets rains from Bayonetta throughout combat. Actually, a hail of bullets just rains from Bayonetta all the time. She probably has to pull slugs out of her shower walls. As mentioned before, she's got a gun on each hand and another on each foot and makes constant use of all of them. Prancing through combat with moves that would make a professional contortionist cringe she gyrates and weaves with joyous abandon. The lower the difficulty level the more random bullets are launched, but even on the harder levels she apparently exudes them from her pores or something.

Bayonetta has a zillion combat moves, but learning all of them is largely a waste of time because the difference between a spinning uppercut and a sliding hell jab is basically nil. You can button mash to your heart's content whenever something isn't actively pounding you and be rewarded by a series of increasingly powerful attacks that culminate in a nice combo finish. What does matter is your ability to get out of the way of incoming attacks - either by movement, jumping, or a well timed dodge. Performing such a dodge at the last moment also unlocks "witch time" - a world slowdown so you can pound on stuff some more for free.

Weak enemy monsters have absolutely no chance against Bayonetta at any difficulty level and you can roll your fingers as much as you like until they are all dead. However, Bayonetta is full of boss fights. Some of these are just big tough creatures that you have to fight in a more cautious fashion (dodge occasionally), and some are terrain unto themselves that you will end up climbing, bashing, jumping off of, etc... in sequences a bit reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus. Boss fights also involve following key and control sequences displayed at the bottom of the screen in order to avoid damage, advance past cinematic moments, or (at the end of every fight) cause your clothes to vanish and your hair to turn into a giant demon which them crushes the boss in question. Yes, Bayonetta understands the truly important rule of combat - when you want to really kick ass, its naked time!

Artistically, Bayonetta is fairly pleasant, if a bit heavy on the juvenile fantasy. She's enjoyable to watch fight, bouncing around smoothly with a wide variety of moves in a graceful fashion. They did a good job with the animations and make frequent use of wall walking to add to her field of movement. To add to the video > game quality, the entire game is packed with cut scenes, breaking into one between every fight, and sometimes several times in the middle of those as well. Bayonetta uses these to trade inane banter with whatever large nasty has come to eat her, or the couple people with a vested interest in her future. High marks for the choreographer but the script writer needs a firm talking to.

There's a shop with additional unlockable moves, equipment, temporary boosts, etc... that you will visit between levels. Unfortunately there's also a painfully dull shooting gallery mini-game that comes along at the same time. What's odd is that they actually put a lot of work into providing additional mini-games throughout and then decided to use this particular turd as the one that you play over and over. There's an entire level with a Space Harrier feel to it plus driving and shooting games. Someone spent a lot of effort on making them all, but then felt compelled to use a horrible no-depth 3 target shooting gallery as the between level repeat instead.

The truth is that Bayonetta is mostly about just watching her bounce around and randomly kill stuff in a cinematic fashion. However, to be fair, they really do try hard to mix in a lot of gameplay at the same time. There's clear effort into maintaining a high standard of artwork and many cases of opting for gameplay variety with interesting surfaces to fight on, jumping puzzles, shooting challenges, missile guidance, and more. I love the way they introduce new bosses (boss arrives, looks mean, gets named and framed, then gets on with killing you). They even unlock animal transformations about halfway through and all of a sudden your movement capabilities have been expanded. Its just a bit hard to take too seriously with all the silly dialogue and dance moves.

Don't expect anything deep but you'll have some fun anyways.

Bayonetta
Rating: 7.5