Platinum Games’ Bayonetta has the mysterious ability to often make you forget what you are actually doing on screen. This is not a bad thing. During the course of the game you’ll be so focused on the intricacies of the action happening all around you that you’ll simply forget you’re fighting tentacles with cherubic baby faces on the end of them. You’ll forget that you’re using a giant fist made of hair to punch an upside down head with dragons for arms. And you might even forget a David Bowie lookalike is trying to kill you with the power of peacock feathers and giant space satellites.
One would think what I’ve said is exaggeration. Hyperbole manipulated into just the right sentence structure to make this game seem more awesome and ridiculous than it actually is. But none of this stuff is a lie. I mean, just look at this:
A giant robot cat shark with leg faces. And you fight it while surfing. Then you kill it with the aid of a giant fire breathing spider made of your own hair.
The bombastic “who cares if this makes sense as long as it’s fun” attitude is the same thing applied to Platinum Games’ (formerly known as Clover Studios) God Hand for the Playstation 2. Even though Bayonetta is directed by Hideki Kamiya, most famously known for his work on the Devil May Cry series, it seems that his time spent with his Platinum Games colleague and director of God Hand, Shinji Mikami, has rubbed off. Like God Hand, Bayonetta actively avoids making much sense, and at the same time puts an incredible amount of depth into the particulars of the combat and the visual creativity of the characters. The problem is that Bayonetta is still constricted by the bloated and neverending nature of the contemporary Japanese video game narrative, and because of this frustrating fact the game is most of the time very good, but never great.
For instance the combat is incredibly satisfying, funny, and gorgeous. From the simplest of actions, like dodging an enemy at just the right second and activating the slow motion “Witch Time”, to the more detailed scenarios, like executing ridiculous “Torture Attacks” that involve everything from iron maidens to giant owls, one can tell that the game’s strengths lie almost exclusively within the combat. Along with all the moves one can buy, there are quite a few weapons that change up your fighting (and they can be switched out in various slots, as Bayonetta has guns not only in her hands but also on her feet). Along with that are also a plethora of power-ups. Everything to do with the fighting has been refined right down to the very molecules of the game, and it’s hard to imagine people not enjoying it at least most of the time. Even when the game gets frustrating it’s still fun in that hair-pulling “I’m gonna get that giant baby face next time” sort of way. The only time gameplay gets kind of annoying is in the clunky racing and classic video game homage sequences. However, these few bits are never enough to stop you from enjoying the crazy and in depth combat.
But when it comes to anything that does not involve combat, or the visual assortment of characters that one fights while in combat, the game becomes a drooling rambling mad man whose lack of charm and sense is only ignored because he’s really good at shiving other crazy dudes for sandwiches.
I’ve played the game nearly twice over, and even if I was able to bear the cutscenes and stop motion comic book interludes between all the heavenly monster stomping, I don’t think I would still really know what’s going on. The game suffers from what I call the Kojima Effect, where people talk about something, then explain it, then explain why they explained it, and then talk about why Kant explained it, and by this point your brain is in your lap trying to crawl to the console to turn it off and make it all stop.
From what I could gather Bayonetta is a witch and she’s killing some angels to get their halos which passes for cash in this world. Also, she’s the last of her witch race? But there is another witch race, too? I think David Bowie at the end is the last of that race, but he talks nearly for 20 minutes straight and I left to go make some soup so I don’t know. David Bowie is also trying to raise some sort of Cosmic God Lady from the grave, and he needs some eyes that aren’t actually eyes to wake it up. Oh, and also your soul/past is represented in the form of a little kid and it comes out of your body and pretends you’re its mother or something.
Basically the game takes the long way around to say “hey yo punch these aliens in the face and use their halos to buy magic lollipops”.
The characters themselves and their personalities are equally ridiculous, sharing the same “what the…” nature of the fight scenes and mixing it with the intolerable annoyance factor of the cinematics. For the beginning (and very end) of the game the developers decided they wanted to torture you, so they pair you off with a fat Italian stereotype that looks and sounds exactly like Joe Pesci and never stops talking. Add to this the random black devil guy who sells you guns because that’s what black people do, and you either have the most amazingly retarded recreation of Lethal Weapon 2, or a big gooey bowl of generic anime action characters that smells like headaches and Michael Bay.
Bayonetta herself is no better. Imagine you walk into your parents room and find your little brother wearing your mother’s bra and one of her dresses while he prances around pretending to be a “sexy lady” and talking in a British woman’s voice that he probably heard in a James Bond movie. That is exactly how Bayonetta acts almost the entire time. Her sexuality is ramped up to such ridiculous heights that it goes light years past being lewd and becomes nothing short of hilarious. When she fights with any object that is pole shaped, she can plant it into the ground and dance around it like a stripper. In the opening sequence, when her nun costume is slashed off to reveal her hairsuit, she moans with each slash, as if being murdered by bloodthirsty angels are something that commits her to orgasm every time it happens.
I think you’ll quickly find that very little of this story and character stuff actually matters in the game (and thank your deity that you can skip all the cinematics as well, because you will eventually). Most often you’ll be far too eager to get to the next big action set piece, and they do indeed get bigger as the game goes on. Not once did I ever think the last encounter or boss fight was more ridiculous than the one I was currently doing. Think a surfing battle with a catshark is crazy? Wait until you’re riding a motorcycle up the side of a rocket that is shooting into space and also being controlled by wizard David Bowie who’s about to resurrect a god who has a vagina and giant feathers made of faces.
If that don’t make you want to get it I can’t do a thing for you, son.
