(Read the original review on my blog)
I should probably be asleep right now, but I'm fresh off of completing Bayonetta, an over-the-top (thats understating it) action game from developer Platinum Games and publisher Sega. No way am I going to be able to sleep peacefully unless I get all my words down right now.
To say that Bayonetta is ridiculous would do the game a great injustice. I think incredible might be a more suitable term here. See, at first I found the action to be frantic and overwhelming and easy to lose focus of, but after a while I adjusted to the Matrix-like insanity on-screen (Motorcycle-riding on walls? Check.) and I began adapting to the game's unique style. Battles pass quickly with great ferocity, eventually developing a rhythm with combos that becomes quite enjoyable and never loses that quality of play throughout the game.
Normally I would shy away from a game such as this, because it's creator also helmed the Devil May Cry series of games. Those games were so punishing and brutal, I hardly made it past the first few levels on the lowest difficulty before giving up in frustration. I know for a fact that I absolutely suck at those kinds of action games, damn them to hell. However, Bayonetta strikes a stunning balance between fun and challenge, and it does it in such a way that I constantly found myself wanting to advance further to see what monsters lay ahead.
Speaking of monsters, the bosses are by far the biggest I have ever seen in a game. Period. Most of them don't even fit on screen, and require you to scale them, picking them apart piece by piece and then finishing them off with Infernal Demons (spawned from Bayonetta's long, flowing one-piece suit of hair), which are impressive to say the least.
As for the group of people who say "pay no attention to the story, it's complete garbage" and "skip all the cutscenes", why on earth would you say such things? I found the story and characters to be quite interesting. Sure, everything was foggy in the beginning, but as details emerged later in the game and the stakes got higher (and more convoluted), I became enthralled with the mythos of Bayonetta's universe and misfit cast of characters. There aren't even that many to keep up with (Bayonetta, Jeanne, Rodin, Enzo, Luka and Cereza are pretty much it) and only Bayonetta and Jeanne are of any real importance. The rest are there for comedic relief, of which there is plenty.
Also, if you skip the cutscenes, you'll miss a lot of the game's genuinely inspired sense of humor. I laughed out loud at many points in the game, always forgetting that the game doesn't take itself very seriously, which is a good thing in my opinion. There was a moment near the end of the game where the credits began to role at a very inconvenient time, and I was pissed. I was thinking, You've got to be kidding me! You're seriously going to leave me hanging like this?! Fuck you, game! I can't believe you would do this to m- ...but then a boot slammed the credits off the screen and the story continued, to my ecstatic joy.
The thing that really got me about about Bayonetta was how often it surprised me. I was always travelling to places I never expected to go, doing things I never thought I could do, and experiencing things I never imagined before in my wildest dreams. It is a game with a (Japanese) heart the size of a planet, with personality and style to match. It's filled to the brim with sexual undertones, which can be distracting at times, but I never found it offensive or demeaning to women in any direct way. You could almost view it as a celebration of female sexuality while satirizing Japan's misogynistic nature. I'm kind of sad to return it to Blockbuster (yeah, I'm cheap, so what?), but my five days are almost up and I don't want to deal with late fees.
