Bayonetta: Positives
As I watched the end credits for Bayonetta scroll by, I was awash by two emotions. I breathed easily knowing I could finally pack the disc into an envelope and send it back to GameFly, out of sight and out of mind. The second was the sense of pride and joy that I knew came from the developers as they had made this game. Watching the character Bayonetta dance throughout the scenery embodied the spirit of the game in every sense. Pure, unadulterated fun. This is the sort of game the company wanted to make, and with a character that was just as fun as the bombastic gameplay and set pieces she fought across.
Making a game, no matter the quality, is tough work. Even the worst games played were the product of blood, sweat and tears. There is no exact science for making good art. Sure, there are patterns you can pick up and learn to replicate, but that could merely result in something derivative. That doesn’t make it a good product or creation.
This is perhaps the best thing I can say for Bayonetta. As great a product it most certainly is not, it is at the very least a fun game with true craftsmanship put into it. Platinum Games merely lacked the proper design choices and ideas to have made it into a masterpiece.
This game is basically the new Tomb Raider. Fortunately, it’s certainly a maturation. As stated last time the actual character of Bayonetta is more than a male sexual fantasy. Lara Croft is nothing more than what guys like to masturbate to. Yet Bayonetta is a woman through-and-through. She may not have any more depth than Marcus Fenix, but that alone is far and away better than your typical female protagonist. She has desires and goals of some sort, and her sexuality is part of her power rather than being a gift to men.
She can also kick some serious ass. While the combat in Bayonetta is far from being fair and balanced, it is still fun. One of the greatest problems facing newcomers to intense action games is learning and remembering the dodge mechanic. We’ve all been there at some point. All we know is hacking and slashing and it never occurs to us to hit that button to roll out of the way frequently. We’ll see our health whittle down to nothing and think the game is a piece of trash. Not so with Bayonetta, as dodging is a central part of the combat mechanics. By avoiding an attack you can activate what is called “Witch Timeâ€, slowing down your foes and environment as you strike them down.
Avoiding attacks is no longer a mere necessity for survival, it gives the player the upper hand. This keeps it in the player’s mind while granting them opportunities to adapt and finish off foes easily. As the game progresses dodging attacks will become more difficult and require much more precise timing, and there will be others that don’t grant Witch Time at all. However, by using Witch Time earlier in the game the player has now learned to watch out for coming attacks and dodge them, keeping them from getting pulverized (as badly). Of course, even foes that are “immune†to Witch Time will grant Bayonetta a bonus when she dodges.
This is because of an additional mechanic called Torture Attacks, which you can execute after performing well in battle. Bayonetta has a gauge that fills up with each successful dodge, combo and other factors of combat. When it is full the player can go up to a foe of any health and pull off a powerful Torture Attack, sometimes killing them and sometimes wiping a huge percentage of their health bar away. All depends on just how strong that enemy is.
There are many torture attacks that can be pulled off when foes get weak as well, and the better a button-masher the player is the larger a bonus they can get for performing the finishing move. The rewards come in the form of currency that can be spent on learning new moves and combos, purchasing new weapons or a variety of other upgrades that every game seems to require these days.
The combat system may have a few kinks, but it is still well-designed and manages to feed off itself in such a way as to encourage teaching players how to play properly. It is possible to just button mash, but by effectively dodging enemy strikes and executing torture attacks the player gains advantages and bonuses. As such, Bayonetta actually makes a great gateway game into the genre as long as the player is sure to select one of the easier difficulties at the start.
Unfortunately that’s about the best thing the game really does. The boss fights would be creative except it’s become pretty standard to have monstrous beasts to fight in games these days. Wait for the opportune time to strike a clearly labeled weak point, perform quick time event, then move onto phase two of the fight. Once phase two is completed move onto phase three, and then you are done. This is every boss fight of the game.
It certainly tries to vary things up once in a while, such as moments where you are walking on walls and ceilings or having to watch over a child, but Prey did a more interesting job at navigating an environment through different perspectives and Resident Evil 4 was far superior in its escorting missions. All you have are flat-surfaces that behave like any other in the game and a child that you can put down at any time (and whose health regenerates).
The closest the game came to being different was the level you rode a motorcycle and the one where you surfed through the air on a missile, practically turning the game into a rail shooter. In fact, it is levels like these that I’m certain fooled most critics into believing this game is something more than it is. After the game hit store shelves reviews poured onto the ‘Net bringing up how awesome it was to ride a missile. Well, yeah, it would be awesome, except its just a rail shooter. While it’s fun, I can go back and play Star Fox on the Super Nintendo and have even more fun with that. It’s a nice distraction, but it seems as if people were too caught up in what the character was doing rather than the impact it had on gameplay (very little).
Lastly, what really makes Bayonetta shine is the polish. The graphics and environments are massive, well-detailed and experience no frame-rate drops. The menu system is also silky smooth and feels as if it’s a part of the game instead of a whole other program that has to load up and run at the same time. Bugs and glitches are almost nonexistent.
This is a reverse of modern game development. The design is highly flawed, certainly, but the polish is excellent and exemplary. It’s actually a damn shame that the rest of the game couldn’t flow as masterfully and fluidly as the interface itself. The programmers at Platinum Games are masters of their trade, but the designers need to go back and hit the books on good usability (that is, if they could stop trying to cater to the masochistic gamers that view difficulty levels as proof of manliness).
Bayonetta is nothing more than a good game. That’s not a flaw, of course. Being a good game is never a bad thing. Yet it isn’t fantastic and critics ought to learn the difference between fun and masterpiece. Still, if you are into high octane action games that frequently go over the top then Bayonetta is right up there with Ninja Gaiden 2. It’s a definite recommendation if that is the sort of game you are looking for.
Just don’t expect the best game to have ever been gamified.
