Plus XP

Well, you heard my opinions on the Bayonetta demo, so maybe you’re wondering – what did I think of it in the end? I did indeed pick up a copy, and I’ve hacked away at it at every opportunity between the other things in my life (which now includes a job, which will explain why I’ve been a bit quieter of late). But now I have finally completed it, and played a little more, and I can bring you my opinion on SEGA’s version of Devil May Cry in full.

If you are a Devil May Cry fan, step right up. Hideki Kamiya - the original creator of Dante’s stylish adventures – is the creator, now working under the banner of Platinum Games, developing Bayonetta alongside SEGA. The game draws definite inspiration from Kamiya’s earlier work, with everything from the gameplay style, enemy designs and HUD all fit for a DMC title. This isn’t a bad thing, though – being an avid DMC fan, I felt right at home. Don’t worry though, the game is like DMC, but it certainly isn’t the same.

The story revolves around a witch named Bayonetta who has amnesia, having awoken from a watery grave with no recollection of her life beforehand. A little clichéd, perhaps, but it works regardless. Hunted by angelic beings who believe she should be destroyed, Bayonetta battles to survive as she tries to piece together her past.

If this guy was in your past, wouldn't you prefer to be ignorant?

Her character is incredibly over-the-top, slutty-posh English dominatrix/witch type thing – and although she did grow on me to a degree, I found her far too unappealing with her obviousness and lack of any sort of serious attitude – she’s almost unforgiving in her posing and sexual innuendos, and while that may ignite flames in the hearts of the odd fifteen year-old, I would have preferred to see a more serious character – perhaps more in the vein of Lara Croft. To me, she sort of fails to be either respectable or particularly attractive (of which Ms Croft manages both), which is a shame. However, this really only shows in the cut scenes, so isn’t a huge problem with the main gameplay.

The cast also features a few other characters, such as Luka - a likeable journalist who is both cool and funny, always trying to track Bayonetta in a quest to find some answers, Rodin the shopkeeper, and a mysterious child named Cereza, who believes Bayonetta to be her mother. I won’t say too much more, however, since I don’t want to spoil the plot. The story itself was alright, however I felt it was very confusing for the most part, and very little of it made sense until the final couple of chapters. I do like the odd plot twist, but often I felt like… ‘So what’s going on?’

The gameplay is very reminiscent of Devil May Cry in the way of controls and combos – the action being very fluid and fast paced, whilst also being quite challenging. However, game feels somewhat more over-the-top than DMC, with a lot of large-scale attacks, most notably the ‘wicked-weave’, which involves Bayonetta summoning a giant boot or fist at the end of a combo attack. The craziness is quite fun, although to begin with it felt a little difficult to know what was going on with so much on the screen.

Yeah, a lot of her attacks leave her temporarily half-naked

Enemies range from small enemies to gigantic bosses, all of them taking the form of angelic-looking demons (or demonic-looking angels, perhaps), and are largely well designed. Your basic angels are the general fodder for beating the living daylights out of, although the ratio seems a lot more tipped toward the harder enemies than DMC, so there’s not always as much time to toy around with stylish manoeuvres. Tougher enemies, such as the claw-wielding ‘Grace’ and ‘Glory’ enemies, as well as the griffon/cannon hybrid ‘Fairness’ angels make the game quite challenging, as it is easy to get torn to pieces if you don’t keep your guard up at all times. This is good if you like a challenge, but it does mean that it leaves little time for playing around at times.

Bayonetta has a fair amount of weapons to unlock, which can be obtained by finding Golden LP’s that are largely hidden in pieces throughout the game. She may equip any combination of two weapons at one time, one assigned to her hands, and another to her feet. Some weapons can be bought twice in order to equip to both weapon slots at once, while one or two can only be equipped to either the hands or feet exclusively – such as the sword she obtains early in the game. The combinations mean that you can mix up Bayonetta’s move sets a little, such as using the sword and shotguns as a combination, or the shotguns and regular handguns as another. There are some interesting weapons in the game, including a few secret ones, but sadly many of the weapons have very ’samey’ combos, meaning that often there’s little distinction between some of the weapons, meaning that a new weapon doesn’t always mean an entirely new experience. There was also the little annoyance of her regular gun being mapped to the Square/X button at all times – it was a shame you couldn’t equip the other guns to this slot, as it would have been nice to replace her standard shot with a shotgun for aerial blasts, and not having to sacrifice her hands slot for that one function. If you don’t like her default gun, that’s an entire button you won’t be using a lot.

Bayonetta has a couple of other tricks up her sleeve – in the form of Witch-Time, and Torture Attacks. Witch-Time is an evasive manoeuvre, which activates automatically upon dodging an enemy attack with good timing. Time slows for a few seconds, allowing you to pull off some heavy hitting combos or move to a more strategic position while you have the chance. When Bayonetta has a full magic gauge, pressing both attack buttons together allow her to perform a Torture attack, which is a more cinematic move involving a short Quick-Time event to rack up damage by mashing a button or spinning an analogue stick to maximise the damage. Special torture attacks known as “Climax” attacks can be activated in the same way when prompted, in order to summon dark entities with boss-specific Torture Attacks that act as finishing blows.

The game also features other Quick-Time Events, which happen during some boss fights and cut scenes, to interact with the cinematic sequences and score a few bonus points – however these QTE’s are often in windows that are far too short, and it’s easy to miss the prompt even when you’re expecting it, which is a little frustrating – especially if you’re going for a good rank, since failing them usually results in instant death.

Bayonetta has a bit of a mix of gameplay – sometimes you can run on walls for some gravity-defying platforming sections at pre-set parts of the game – this power activates when the moon shines on Bayonetta, so naturally this happens at the appropriate times, and allows for a few strange but interesting areas, such as walking up the inside wall of a tower. There are also some levels that involve riding vehicles, such as a motorbike, in a very arcade experience – controlling Bayonetta down high-speed motorways while shooting away, skidding and pulling off jumps is quite satisfying, and the first level to use this element was actually one of the most enjoyable stages in the game.

The game definitely stinks of Devil May Cry, and the team’s history with Capcom, with countless references and in-jokes towards their previous work – Bayonetta often steals lines from the older games, with Dante’s “Flock off, Featherface” and Viewtiful Joe’s ”Henshin-a-go-go, baby!”. Luka also makes references to previous girlfriends – Trish, Claire, Sylvia and Ammy - that’s Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Viewtiful Joe and Okami, all in one line. It’s shameless, but Capcom fan’s like myself will probably like it.

The game has plenty of replay value, with loads to unlock that you couldn’t really do in one play through, and I really like that aspect – there are secret weapons to unlock, a load of alternate outfits, rankings to improve, accessories that alter the gameplay a little (such as replacing witch-time for a counter-bomb, or allowing you to summon a few little devils to fight by your side), as well as a mode or two – and even a couple of characters that I havent gotten around to getting – but it depends how unique they are to whether they’ll be any good.

Overall, the game is something fresh and exciting, and for someone with quite specific needs in the action genre it does rate fairly well in my eyes. However, I don’t think it’s perfect (as some reviews have stated with 40/40 ratings), seeing as I don’t really feel that the weapons and combos are as varied as the could have been (Devil May Cry 3 being the one to beat in that area), and the heroine is a tad irritating and almost unlikable at times – she’s got a way to go if she ever wants to compete with Dante or Kratos, that’s for sure. However, if you like Devil May Cry, want a challenge or an action game with some replay value, pick it up. I’m sure it’ll be a while till we see a Devil May Cry 5 or equivalent, and we don’t even know if it’ll be very good or not.

(Did you see that?! I went a whole article talking about Bayonetta and DMC and didn’t bring up the fact that DMC4 disappointed me with its lack of replay value! …………oh. Damn. Nevermind.)

- Leon