Hairy women are hot.
| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 3 | 9.40 |
| Overall | 9.40 |
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I am convinced that Hideki Kamiya doesn't know how to make a bad game. He has made excellent title after excellent title and each are different from the last. This is really the first time he revists a style of game he has done before, in this case the style of game he created that has been copied by nearly all action games, the Devil May Cry type of action game. He comes back to this genre to show everyone who is king and to show off some new tricks. It will always be debatable which action game is the greatest but this game instantly enters the discussion which should tell you how great this title is. Unsurprisingly, Bayonetta is a lot more DMC like than it is Ninja Gaiden like. The structure of the game is similar to DMC, the game flows from one chapter to the next, grading your progress all the way through. You may revisit any chapter you previously completed at any time. The chapters in this game are split into verses, each verse is basically a battle and each of these gets graded individually as well. Most chapters have hidden verses that the player will have to seach to find, many times these lead to portals called the Alfheim. Each Alfheim has a battle with some sort of requirement like kill all enemies only using a limited amount of attacks. Those are not the only hidden things in the chapters, they are full of secrets like birds you need to capture, weapon pieces, health upgrades and more. So while it is a pretty straight forward action game there is plenty to look around for. The combat system is the star of the show and like DMC it is a very stylish, fast paced combat style. DMC is all about offense, there wasn't even a dodge button until DMC3 and even that was just an optional move you could learn. The focus in Bayonetta is still offense which is now complimented with an evade button that becomes crucial to the entire combat system. Enemies are relentless, they come at you in hordes of 4 or 5 at once. Many times you are being attacked by enemies at all sides all at once. To avoid being hit you use the evade button which makes you invincible for a tiny moment. If you time it just right so that you evade the attack right as it is about to hit you, you enter witch time which slows down all the enemies. Witch time is where you can do massive damage but be warned as in later difficulties you lose this ability. To stay alive you need to be constantly attacking. The game has a simple set of combos to learn, they all come from a combination of punch and kick attacks. Most combos are simple strings like punch, punch, kick, punch. Some combos have you pause for a moment before inputting the next attack, for instance punch, pause, punch, is a different attack than punch, punch. Every single attack can be held down for maximum damage. Say you have a gun as your hand weapon and you do a punch, kick, punch attack, if you hold down the button before moving to the next you can extend the life of the attack. Instead of pressing punch, kick, punch quickly, press punch and hold it down and Bayonetta will punch and continously shoot for a while, then press kick and hold that down, and so on. It results in the same combo but each attack in that combo is maxed out for damage. Say you were using a sword, instead of shooting you would enter a charge attack state so that when you release the button you would do a more powerful attack. At the end of most combos is a weave attack, this attack summons a giant fist or foot of hair to do massive damage on the enemy. This will be how Bayonetta will do the most damage on enemies, you must learn to use the weave attacks or you will get slaughtered. Now the question becomes, how does one get to the end of a combo if enemies are constantly attacking you, wouldn't you need to be dodging all the time. Yes you would and that is how this game will change action games. This game has a system called combo offset, basically when you dodge if you hold down the button of the last attack you performed that combo will resume as soon as you are out of your dodge animation. Take punch, kick, punch as an example. Say I press punch, kick and an enemy is about to hit me, so I hold down that kick button and press dodge, as soon as I come out of dodge I press punch to execute the weave attack. If I did not hold down kick while dodging I just would have performed a regular punch after the dodge which would be the start of a new combo. Basically this system allows you to be dodging and never have to lose a combo. Doing combos not only results in weave attacks but it raises your magic bar. Once the bar is full you can perform a torture attack which are all those cool finishing moves you have probably seen in the videos. You may also pick up enemy weapons, many of these have wildly different moves than any of your weapons. Speaking of your weapons, you have a nice mix of firearms and melee weapons. To keep things simple the weapons share almost all the same combos, there are maybe 3 or 4 different combos per weapon type. This keeps things simple to learn, no need to worry about memorizing long dial a combo button strings. I wish there was more weapon variety and moves that felt different, DMC offers a better selection of weaponry I say. The combat system can be debated, many love this new system, for me it was a bit to methodical. You were almost forced to be calm and input buttons at a controlled pace. When I play DMC I usually just go wild on the controller, that game requires you to constantly be attacking, moving, jumping. Doing that in this game will get you killed. I found it hard to be calmly pressing buttons as 5 enemies are trying to kill me at once. The action sometimes gets way too chaotic. Eventually like in DMC everything clicks and you can enter a sort of zen state where nothing can touch you, I still can't get there in Bayonetta. It is a hard game to master. One area where I can say this game is flat out better than DMC is in outrageous over the top action. The action is visually amazing as you will see so much cool stuff that you might as well leave your jaw permanently on the floor. New gameplay elements come into play in nearly every chapter, some chapters are a mini game like moments which mimic classic Sega arcade games (included with classic Sega music). Bayonetta goes from one wild situation to another, it starts simple like battling a giant two headed dragon monster (with an upside down baby face for a chest) inside a chuch that has been ripped from the ground by the dragon, you hop out into the air, the dragon launches the church at you, and you catch it and throw it back. Later it gets a lot more crazy. Oh and in certain moments you can walk on walls, which results in Mario Galaxy platforming moments, yes there is platforming. Not only that some boss fights have you fighting on walls, upside down on ceilings, running around a missle as it is launched at a building. Did I mention you can transform into the wolf from Okami (complete with flower trail as it runs), yup. This game is FREAKING INSANE, you have not seen anything like it. In a game this wild the boss fights obviously must be amazing and thankfully they are. They are huge, often times towering over Bayonetta like a building. They sort of fall into a pattern thought, since they are so big it isn't the sort of one on one, skill based fights you get from many of the bosses in DMC. Most of the major bosses have you dodging their attacks and slowly hitting them at opportune moments, eventually leading to a moment where the boss is vulnerable and you can execute some super power attack. There is a recurring boss called Jeanne which has all the same attacks you do, this is basically the games Vergil (Dante's evil brother in DMC3), giving that more skill based boss fight, I just wish there were more. The bosses are visually amazing to behold but I have fought better in other action games. Bayonetta is difficult but very forgiving, in fact you will probably never get stuck. There are checkpoints everywhere, after ever verse, sometimes in the middle of hard verses. There are no penalties for dying outside of messing up your score. Every time you start from the last checkpoint you regain all your health, this kind of makes the item system pointless as why use a health item when dying gets you a fresh start. Boss fights have many checkpoints, so it is possible to battle a boss to the halfway point, die, and restart with full health while the boss retains it's half point damage. It is great to have a checkpoint system like this so that all players can finish the game but I feel the multiple difficulty levels should be enough. At higher difficulties they should have removed some checkpoints, or given us the option to turn them off. I got through the hardest mode with no real issue, sure I died a lot but so what. That is different from DMC where the hardest modes are simply nearly impossible to complete. This is not a game where you need to master it to complete it, mastering it is optional and thankfully you will be rewarded for it in the form of many many many unlockables. There are pros and cons to the system, I hope it can be tweaked for the next game. The only other complaint I would have from a gameplay point of view is that there is a tiny bit of backtracking. Well it isn't really backtracking as it is reusing old areas in new ways, still it kind of sucks to go through the same locations. This was a problem in DMC4 though I will say it is handled way better in Bayonetta . Is it that hard to make different environments for a game that lasts 10+ hours. It's a minor issue, it kind of stood out cause the game is so polished from a gameplay point of view, it was weird that levels would sort of repeat. Bayonetta does have a story but I am not so sure that is a good thing. It might have been better if they left it out. It's bad, it's just bad, it makes DMC's story look good. Plus it is very heavy on the cutscenes early on, I felt like I was playing a MGS game. The first hour was painful, thankfully it gets into its action groove quickly. Much has been said about the PS3 port being a horrible version, this is not so. The game is completely in tact and the gameplay never suffers. Sure it doesn't move as smoothly as the 360 version and it looks uglier. That isn't much an issue. The big issue is the loading times which were horrendous. Thankfully those have been fixed by a patch. Overall it is not the most beautiful game, but it does amazing things with the engine it has. The music is extremely memorable cause it is flat out different than anything you hear in games. Bayonetta instantly enters the discussion of best straight up action game ever. The players taste will determine their favorite, I know many like the Ninja Gaiden style, I personally still prefer DMC's action, and many others have chosen Bayonetta as their queen of action. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer, all that says is that Bayonetta is in the upper echelons of the action genre. If you like action games you must play Bayonetta, it is as simple as that. |
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Posted by Dvader Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:09:07
Recently Spotted:
*crickets*
simple...
set...
of...
combos...???
You're kidding, right?
Excellent review. The game is simply amazing. I need to return to it and play on the higher difficulties plus I still have some more of the Alfheim gates to do.
I need this game.
So I've never played DMC. What is the difference between Ninja Gaiden action and DMC action?
The one thing this game has going (for me) is that I hear that it doesn't have ball crushing difficulty.