Review: Bayonetta

Bayonetta is a third person action game developed by Platinum Games and published by Sega. It was made for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, though apparently the PlayStation 3 version has severe loading problems.

Bayonetta fighting a massive angel with the end result of a combo attack.

Bayonetta is a witch who, twenty years ago, woke up at the bottom of a lake with no memories of her past and a strange jewel around her neck. One day she gets a tip that a similar jewel that might explain her past has been located in the European town of Vigrid. Unfortunately for her, as a witch with ties to Hell, the forces of Heaven will stop at nothing to kill her, not that she minds killing angels.

Bayonetta is broken up into several levels throughout Vigrid. Bayonetta will go through a level, only to be periodically stopped by a force field that will not go away until Bayonetta has killed all the angels in the area, using hand to hand combat, weapons obtained by a demonic arms dealer, and monsters that she summons with her own hair. This happens several times until Bayonetta reaches the end of the level.

Combat is the biggest part of the game, and it is where most of the problems with the game lie. They are small problems, but there are so many of them that when they add up it makes the combat more irritating than fun.

First there is defense. The only way for the player to block any attacks is with the dodge button, which makesBayonetta cartwheel a few feet out of the way. If the player presses the dodge button at the last second, time will stop and Bayonetta can get several attacks in while the enemies are frozen. The problem is that while dodging is effective when Bayonetta is fighting one enemy, it is incredibly difficult to dodge when there are several enemies attacking at once, especially if not all of the enemies are on screen, which happens often.

Then there is the magic meter. When Bayonetta dodges an attack, and occasionally when Bayonetta attacks and enemy, her magic meter will fill up. Once that has filled up enough Bayonetta can execute a “Torture Attack”, a powerful attack on one enemy. These attacks are important since they do a lot of damage to an enemy, unlike Bayonetta’s regular attacks which chip away at an enemy’s health in tiny bits. However, whenever an enemy hits Bayonetta the magic meter is reduced significantly. Given the aforementioned difficulty of following enemies, this will happen a lot. It is like the developers forgot that the human eye can only follow so many things at once.

These problems would not be so annoying if it were not for the grading system. After every fight the game will give the player a rank based on how well they did. The system takes into account how much damage Bayonetta caused and how long the fight lasts, which is fair. But it also factors in how much damage Bayonetta takes. Then at the end of the level it takes in of the fight rankings, plus how many times the player used an item or died, and gives a composite ranking, which will usually be really low. Given how difficult any attack is, and since the player will probably be using several items just to stay alive, this is incredibly unfair.

The levels that take place in town are interesting, but the levels that take place in the mountains are dull. And the heaven levels are merely sunnier versions of older levels.

The story is told through exposition and flashbacks. Every so often Bayonetta will remember some of her past or someone will explain the plot to her. But these flashbacks usually only obliquely hint at what is going on until the very end, which makes it hard to follow the story.

The game has a lot of gratuitous sexual innuendo, with Bayonetta strutting around like she is on a catwalk in her skintight suit, and everything she says is a double entendre. But it is done in such an over the top manner that it is more funny than sexy, so it is hard to imagine anyone finding it offensive. Still, anyone who plays this game should have a healthy tolerance of sexy women.

Cut scenes are really impressive. Usually they have Bayonetta performing some jaw-dropping acrobatics while throwing off some one-liners.

Bayonetta is a game that tries too hard to be challenging, and only ends up feeling unfair. It is funny, and sometimes the game can look really impressive, but the game itself is a frustrating mess.