So I just got done with my first (of MANY) playthroughs of Bayonetta, and I’d like to take a moment to give my impressions of the game.

Now, this isn’t a full review, since Dave already reviewed it. This is just a quick post to say what I thoughts on the game, and I’ll make it as short as I can.

Read on!

Looks and sounds
The graphics are realy nice. Technically not the best out there, of course, but the style more than makes up for that. Everything is really well designed. Various visual effects give a very nice feeling to everything. What steals the show though is the incredibly smooth character animations. Every attack looks great and believable, the reactions to getting attacked or enemies getting attacked rarely feels out of place. Frankly the whole visual design of the game is awesome and weird. Great stuff. Sexual imagery? Yeah, there’s tons of it in the game. And it’s fucking hilarious because they’re constantly using it in a comedic overexaggerated manner, which I thought was pretty badass.

Sound-wise, the soundtrack is really good. Other than a few exceptions, there’s something really… strange about Bayonetta’s soundtrack… It actually sounds like video game music. Instead of doing like most games do nowadays and sounding like their soundtrack is straight out of the Lord of the Rings movies, here it actually sounds like music for a game. Otherwise, good believable voice acting, I have no problem with any of it in the game.

Story
The characters are all great. This is an example of a really good cast in an action game. Here the characters all have a nice personality, interesting backstories, and the main character is a badass who spouts one-liners all the time. What more do you need? The story itself is quite interesting, but they never dwell too deep into anything, and they don’t really explain anything to the player so you can take everything at face value, which makes the story more interesting to watch than the average game. Sure, you CAN get explanations for everything if you want, since there’s a lot of in-game documentation you can find through the story. It CAN be deep, but only if you want it to.

Fighting
Fighting in this game definitely has that Devil May Cry feel to it, but it really feels like its own thing in the end. You have 2 main attack buttons, for punches and kicks, and you can keep your combos going with your gun. Holding an attack button will unleash that particular weapon’s charge attack. You can pretty much play the game however you want, since you can equip most weapons to either feet or hands, and you can make any combo of weapons, and basically create your own combos. You can have 2 sets of weapons, so you can switch between weapons on the fly, which is really fun. There’s a HUGE amount of attacks and ways to combo them toghether, making the combat very satisfying. And there’s no attack that doesn’t have a use. There’s also a very good variety of weapons.

The combat itself requires knowing enemy patterns, knowing when to attack and learning the timing to their attacks to know when to dodge. Dodging can be done in 2 ways: RB+jump, or RT (can be used in any direction). Though RT is the suggested method, as it’s more instantaneous and smoother than the other method. Dodging with the right timing brings you into Witch Time, which slows down everything but Bayonetta for a short while, giving you time to either move away from something, or get some extra damage in. It doesn’t work on certain enemies though, so you can’t always rely on it. Witch Time is really fun to use though.

Another element here is Torture Attacks. Those require a full bar of magic power. When you have that, pressing X and Y at the same time near an enemy will launch the attack. After some fast button pressing, or analog stick spinning, you’ll cause massive damage to the enemy in question. Before the game came out, I thought it would cheapen the game, making it too easy. In practice though, I was proven wrong. First, you need a full magic meter. You get that by attacking enemies. If you get hit, you lose a large percentage of your magic meter, and it actually doesn’t fill up really fast. So unless you’re a master at the game, you won’t end up using torture attacks that often. Torture attacks are basically a reward for people who are really good at the game, enabling you to sometimes do massive damage. If you get hit a lot, you can’t use them. I’m glad my worries on this mechanic were put to rest.

Other gameplay elements
The game doesn’t include a lot of exploration. BUT there are still a lot of secrets to be found. Sometimes back-tracking through a stage will trigger new battles, and some items(hearts, pearls and CDs) and portals to challenge rooms are hidden quite well. People who say this game sucks because there’s no exploration… well 1. they suck and 2. there is some, though in a more old-school “you have to check every nook and cranny of each level to find stuff” way..

There’s not a lot of customizing other than being able to set weapons however you like on your hands and feet. Otherwise you can buy techniques from the shop, as well as various items, and eventually costumes. There’s also items to be found that will boost your maximum Health and Magic Meters. But customizing-wise that’s really it.

Things I didn’t like
There’s really not much I didn’t like in the game, but the game has 1 big problem: the use of Quick Time Events. They’re not TOO frequent, and some of them are actually really well implemented in the actual gameplay… But when I’m watching a cinematic, I don’t want to have to do button presses at the same time.

There’s also 2 levels I wasn’t very fond of. The motorcycle and missile stages just weren’t very interesting to me. They’re not too bad, but they lasted way too long.

Yeah, that’s about all I really have to complain about here…

Overall
This game is a must-buy. Not much doubt about it. It doesn’t set new standards to the action genre, but it does keep up very well, and in some cases surpasses some standards set by the excellent Devil May Cry 3. I still have a bit of a preference towards DMC3, but that might just be because I’m more familiar with it. Bayonetta is the best game to the genre since DMC3, and it’s probably gonna take a while until another game surpasses it.

The game features great combat, it’s challenging, the story is great and doesn’t take itself seriously (at times it’s pretty much parodying itself), it looks good and it’s just really fun. The QTEs did annoy me, but, for the most part, they were presented well enough instead of intruding on the experience like most QTEs in games do. This is also a game with huge replayability. Playing on harder difficulties is already nice, and you’ll WANT to replay it right away after the first playthrough. But the main replay value thing is trying to actually become better at the game and getting high grades on every level. And of course unlockables that require beating the game multiple times.

Whether you have a 360 or a PS3, you can’t go wrong with getting this game. If you have both, the 360 version runs a bit better, so it’s the obvious choice between the two.

jobocan Console, Games, impressions, ps3, xbox 360