Just a quick update this time. I’ve started playing Bayonetta after waiting a long time for the price to drop to bargain levels, and so far I’m loving it. They’ve got the presentation and humour this style of game deserves down to a tee, and the gameplay is silky-smooth.
The eponymous Bayonetta
I won’t bore you with the story (kick-ass witch wakes up in a coffin in a lake, tris to find out WTF is going on and kills a stupid number of angels in elaborate and gruesome ways), cos this one is all about the action. On first impression you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s just another Devil May Cry clone, and to be honest, after a few hours you might still think the same, but it’s done so well it doesn’t matter. Kicks and punches form the combos, with the addition of four(!) guns, one attached to each limb. Every combo can be cancelled into another, which means the combo count regularly goes into silly numbers, and it all looks gorgeous at the same time, ticking along at an impressive frame-rate.
A couple of angels get a taste of 'Scarborough Fair', the name of this gun-set
What I still can’t get my head around when I’m playing it, is that this is a Sega game. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not speaking ill of Sega (god knows I poured enough time into Outrun 2/C2C), but Bayonetta feels every bit like a Capcom game, right through to its core. I remember thinking ‘Hang on… this is the music from OutRun, how did they get away with that?!’ before realising that it was a Sega game and therefore their music to use in the first place. The whole game feels like a blatant rip-off of Devil May Cry (with the tongue-in-cheek feeling from God Hand), but I think it’d be unfair to call it a rip-off; it’s much more like a homage.
The lighting and atmosphere are subtle and brilliant
I haven’t come across anything I dislike about the game yet; the graphics and sound are great, it’s well-acted, the gameplay is so tight and the presentation is awesome. Whether or not I finish it is up for debate, as I famously tend to fall short of completion in most games, but for the time being I’m loving it. Oh, and most importantly, it’s dirt cheap! £12.98 in Game at the moment, and I had £2.50 on my Game card to spend. Just a shade over a tenner for a game that recently got 10/10 in Edge is an absolute steal.