[Game Review] Bayonetta

Bayonetta, a game by Platinum games and SEGA, is one of very few high profile titles published by the people that gave the world Sonic and the Dreamcast. The title is, at first glance, a game styled highly like the Devil May Cry series of games, a style which that series had made its own. This was no coincidence however as the game was headed by Hideki Kamiya, the man behind the DMC games. It therefore comes into question whether this game is an evolution on DMC or merely a rehash, calling Bayonetta and her gun-toting world in place of Dante and his.


The story of Bayonetta is at the very best odd but can often delve into the downright mental and will often leave you more puzzled then gripped. You play as Bayonetta, the last of the Umbra-Witches awoken after a 500 year slumber who travels to Vigrid, a fictional European town. In an effort to grab the ‘eyes of the world’ and regain the memory you lost during your sleep at the bottom of a lake, you team up with Danny DeVito lookalike Enzo, and Rodin, a tattooed member of hell.

Told through campy nonsensical cut scenes, playable flashbacks and stylized filmstrips, the story fails for the most part to grab any sort of interest and is relegated to be more of a (rather long) segue between fight scenes. It’s not aided by the poorly written and often cliché dialogue and the entire story scenes which seem to have given up on lip sync or any form of animation, further disconnecting you from the story.

The game is not primarily about the story though, it’s about the ridiculous over-the-top action and great fights, all of which Bayonetta has in abundance. You’ve three main attacks at your disposal, shooting, hands (think punching, swords, axes .... brass instruments) and a kicking attack, the three of which chain together incredibly well alongside a jump button, as would be expected from a third person action game. It may sound shallow but there’s far more to it - witch time - Bayonetta’s version of bullet-time. You activate this by dodging an attack at the latest possible opportunity. Doing so earns you a few seconds of slow-motion action at which point you can really wail on your enemies. Combos can be finished off with finishing moves that are almost as ludicrous as the story itself with 50ft stilettos or fists, made entirely of the hair that is also acting as your one piece body-suit, being fairly common.

Whilst the gameplay is fun, it wouldn’t be as fun without a decent set of enemies. Bayonetta’s enemies, in keeping with the heaven-hell theme that underpins the story, are angels, each of which are introduced with which of the 9 celestial spheres of heaven they hail from. Very few of the angels you fight are anthropoid with as much variance as stone cherub faces with wings and flaming spinning wheels to name just a few.

The bosses in the game are huge, often occupying most of the area or being far too large to flight on the same ground as you, and more often than not, you’ll see these bosses repeated as standard enemies later on in the game.

You would be wrong in thinking that the game could get stagnant; you can buy more moves, weapons and items with halos (golden rings, very sonic) or pick up the weapons of angels you have felled, all of which add more flavor and depth to the combat. I had fears of the combat system eventually growing and becoming overwhelming like it so often can in games, but even as the game progressed the action felt as instinctive as it had from the beginning.

Graphically, the game is nothing special, that is not to say it’s a bad looking game but the oh so plastic characters that are prominent in most every Japanese game have been done better elsewhere. The environments are nice looking, but not astoundingly so. The game feels relatively empty, because the citizens of Vigrid are rendered invisible through witch magic, leaving you alone with your enemies and maybe the odd cat or pigeons for most of the time.

The games music is another thing that ties in with the story, in that it is simply absurd, the j-pop styling’s eventually grow old and with the first song being a Japanese interpretation of fly me to the moon, you can instantly tell this will be an odd musical experience.

Whilst the graphics were adequate and the sound was different, but down to taste, it cannot be denied that the game performs poorly on the PS3. The frame rate stutters often, dropping frames more commonly than one would hope of a game this far into the current generation’s lifecycle. The slightest of hiccups every now and then would be acceptable, but it seems to happen all over the place and this must be the first time I’ve had to wait for a game to load a pause menu, it’s distracting and instantly catapults you from the game experience.

Bayonetta is a good game, that’s for sure, with the sum of all its parts being much more than you would expect when analyzing each part separately. The gameplay is great, leaving you with the feeling that the other parts of the game are holding it back more than the gameplay holding the game up. The game is playable, but coming from playing games like the buttery smooth Uncharted 2, you feel incredibly disappointed