The creator of Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe, Hideki Kamiya, has brought us possibly the most Japanese game ever. You are Bayonetta: an over sexualised, Sarah Palin lookalike witch, set to roam the earth kicking the asses of angels. On the surface, it seems like Devil May Cry with a female character. However throughout my time with the game, I found it a much more accessible – and therefore more enjoyable – experience.However if you’re going into this game wanting great storytelling, you’ll want to divert your attention elsewhere. Throughout my time playing videogames, I’ve come across a lot of bad, nonsensical stories. Bayonetta just takes the biscuit. Even now, having finished the game, I actually have very little idea what went on. All I know is that I had a lot of guns, acrobatic prowess and I enjoyed my time high kicking and air juggling my way through the many eclectic environments of Bayonetta. That’s about it. Rich storytelling, this game does not have. Cutscenes really tended to make little sense, the comic book/anime style panels did very little else but look pretty. However, it makes up for it in other ways.

Having seen what Kamiya had worked on prior to this game, I came in ready to hate it. I hated pretty much everything about Devil May Cry. Viewtiful Joe, I just didn’t get. However his last game was Okami, so I was willing to give Bayonetta a shot and I’m happy I did. Unlike DMC, the combat is extremely fast paced and fluid. I never felt like I was doing something wrong. Constantly chaining attacks and pulling off killer finishing moves with ease is what makes the combat in Bayonetta so good. I’ve not had this much fun wailing on enemies for quite a long time. I actually found Bayonetta a refreshing experience. Especially after all the – admittedly fantastic – story driven games and first person shooters Call Of Duty, I played towards the end of 2009.

Not only was Bayonetta a palette cleanser (of sorts), it was good to see an original protagonist in a game like this. The exceedingly emo-tastic nature of Devil May Cry’s Dante was one of my major sticking points about that whole series. I thought the guy was a giant douche and he just put me off. Bayonetta was a different character and although she isn’t deep, this helps considering the genre. You don’t really need a super deep character, all you need to know is that she can kick ass. It’s also nice to see a strong female in a game like this, even if she is incredibly over sexualised.

This sexualisation also plays into the gameplay, all of Bayonetta’s attacks seem to accentuate her ‘features’. The fact that her clothes can all but disappear during certain combos certainly plays to this. Aside from this accentuation, the gameplay is fun and combos are fairly easy to pull off. I’d go as far to say that Bayonetta is the latest in a string of games designed to make you feel like a bad-ass. You’ve also got the ‘win button’ mode. Playing the game on the easy or very easy difficulty level basically allows you to hit whatever button you want and beat on every enemy in sight. Having played the game like this for a little while, I can see the appeal. I actually found it fun just mashing buttons and pulling insane stuff off (as if I wasn’t doing that anyway). This is obviously aimed for the more casual player but, I have to say, I quite enjoyed it.

The game is fairly aesthetically pleasing, but as it’s a game about witches the art style does have a very dark, gothic theme that reduces the colour palette to black and various tones of grey and brown. This is only broken up with the odd flash of colour here and there, I wasn’t expecting rainbows of colour but it would’ve been nice if the game didn’t look as drab. The environments look nice and the character models animate fairly well. Bayonetta is really the only character you’ll be focused on though, so any slight AI based graphic issues don’t really play much of a part.

In stark contrast to the drab environments, Bayonetta is a sonic achievement. The J-Pop (that’s Japanese pop music for the uninformed) soundtrack is fantastic, but it’s not something you would generally associate with a game like this. Somehow, it works and I actually really enjoyed the music. This is one of the things that marks it as distinctly Japanese, but it wouldn’t surprise me if someone decided to play something a little less light hearted whilst slaying angels.

Despite my obvious liking of Bayonetta, it does have it’s hang ups. Despite it being a pretty graphically impresive game, once the combat gets hectic it can be hard to know where you are and what you’re meant to be attacking. That said, it’s no surprise that any game in this genre has a bad camera. The other main problem comes when the game is loading. I had a long time to think about this as it often took quite a while for me to actually be able to play the game. Load times of this length really are unacceptable in a big budget game nowadays. However, what’s more unacceptable is the fact that it takes upwards of 5 seconds to load the pause menu. When the pause menu has a load time, that’s when you know a game has problems. Complication is also a word that comes to mind playing this game. A lot of what I was doing in terms of upgrading wasn’t really explained and when I found out how to do something it tended to be quite over complicated.

Bayonetta is a good game, but it isn’t really too different from any hack and slash game I’ve played before. If you enjoyed games like Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden then you’ll probably appreciate Bayonetta a lot more than I did. I’m fully willing to admit that this isn’t my favourite of genres, but I’ll also admit that this is a good game. Just don’t go in expecting it to change your mind about the genre.

7.8/10

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