Bayonetta

Here is a common scenario that aspiring electronic video gamers can look forward to upon booting up Bayonetta. The player, a leather-clad witch of abnormal height, will leap across the screen doing battle with angelic monsters. You will fire guns strapped to your arms and legs and batter enemies with giant fists and legs manifested from your hair. Your hair also doubles as the material for your clothing, so the more elaborate your attacks, the more skin is revealed. You can also spank your enemies to death or finish them off in a bondage guillotine where you kick their bottoms before the blade offs their bigger head. The enemies then explode into a series of rings taken right out of a famous Sega game. All of this is happening while a J-pop rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon” tings in the background. And you can transform into a panther. 
 

Bayonetta is awfully reminiscent of No More Heroes in that it feels like the director of the project was shamelessly incorporating all of his personal interests in one fantasy project aimed to appease himself. The perpetrator here is Hideki Kamiya (who’s worked on Devil May Cry, Okami, Viewtiful Joe and some Resident Evil games, all of which are referenced in Bayonetta at one way or another) and the man has some interesting tastes. Besides having an IPod with songs from the Wondergirls and Nat King Cole, he seems to enjoy BDSM, Sega arcade games, nonsensical anime storytelling, The Divine Comedy, tall women, Paganism, anything that can remotely be fetishized, character archetypes and bullets galore. And this game is so brazen about all of its excessive hobbies that it becomes rather comical. 
 
In fact, “excess” is a good way to describe every facet of Bayonetta. The combat is excessive. You have such a large list of moves that randomly pressing combinations of the different attack buttons will always yield something flashy. And nearly every move can be chained with bullet fire from one of your appendages. It moves in a pace similar to Devil May Cry’s, but with more of a loose feeling (innuendo may have been intended.) You get the sense that you are largely in control of your movements and can freely air-combo any poor sap that makes the mistake of lifting two or more feet off the ground. A well-timed dodge will enable Bullet…I mean Witch Time, which slows down everyone but you, and grants the chance to turn the tables in a sticky situation. Between levels, you can enter a store and spend those Sonic rings on an excessively large selection of moves, items and upgrades that you may or may not ever use. But their presence reminds you that this game is the Anti-Limbo, defiant of anything remotely considered minimalist.
 
The more discipline you dole out, the more a special meter fills, which enables you to execute special attacks, often inspired on medieval execution, Looney Tunes and extreme S&M tactics. Some of them are just incredible, like how Bayonetta will whip out a 20-foot chainsaw against a small flying enemy, and then wield the chainsaw as a usable weapon against other foes for a short period. Bosses are especially wonderful. Most of them are giant monstrosities that talk down on you like they’re the Creator of the Heavens. You’ll then get the chance to systematically break them down and torture them into submission, often using some kind of giant monster spawned from your hairdo. These put Bayonetta at her most nekkid-est.
 

As an aside, I wouldn’t call the game sexy by any stretch of the imagination. The game is so lost in a catacomb beneath the uncanny valley to be considered arousing, and it makes me all the more appreciative that Bayonetta’s unholy parts are always conveniently concealed. Seriously, there are Pokemon cartoons with more legitimate sex appeal than this game. Rather, the game’s love of sexuality is more of a comedic tool, a unique form of humourous self-indulgence. Perhaps the people that’ll enjoy this game the most are women who aren’t scared by sex-culture. These women might be in their 30s and enjoy taking wealthy businessmen into their basements on the weekends. Businessmen like Hideki Kamiya, perhaps.
 
This is very much an “all action, all the time” ordeal. Puzzles are never more complex than finding intuitive ways to destroy a magical wall with your knuckles. New enemies frequently debut, complete with biblical introductions. You’ll learn soon that the moment a new enemy makes a dramatic cutscene entrance to mash the dodge button immediately, for they waste no time drawing first blood. Even the final sequence goes through a few teases before letting the player settle down and watch the ending. And then there’s a dance sequence at the end.
 
Like Domination, the game hits its high notes when you are the one on top. Destroying legions upon legions of angel-cronies, smashing bosses into submission, changing into wild animals while cheery music plays. The most interesting characters in the entire game may in fact be the day-to-day generic enemies that you face. All based on a different section of heaven from The Divine Comedy (and Bayonetta may do a better job referencing it than the Dante’s Inferno game), these elaborate angels of death are wonderfully used as petty cannon fodder. You beat them up your minute-to-minute playing, Bayonetta slaughters hundreds of them in the cutscenes, you’ll shoot them down in vehicle sections (loosely based on Sega games like Afterburner), you’ll gun them down in a shooting gallery mini-game between levels, some even join Bayonetta in the post-game dance-off. These are the ultimate henchmen, the game’s version of zombies, and their pain is the world’s pleasure.
 

Likewise, the game falters when it asks the player to zip up and play slave to the storytelling. There are several cutscenes that vary in length, from “longer than usual” to “god damn I thought this was an action game.” A lot of these are serious cutscenes revealing a very deliberately complex plot. There is a secret war between heaven and hell. There is a secret war between two sacred orders. Bayonetta has a female rival that she duels with a lot. There’s a weakling male figure that both loathes and desires to reproduce with Bayonetta (a projection of Kamiya?). There’s a mobster cronie and a tough-talking black dude. There’s a little girl that looks an awful lot like Bayonetta. There are a lot of elaborate, Devil May Cry-style cutscenes of the characters having incredible fights that you the player would like to be participating in. There are quick-time events with unforgivingly small windows of time before you fail. It’s a whole lot of mindless tripe that isn’t particularly well told, and the deathly serious tone often betrays the game’s upbeat rhythm. Of course, maybe it’s my personality type that holds me back. Maybe one of those wealthy businessmen will enjoy the cutscenes and hate the rest of the game.
 
I got to play Bayonetta a little later than most, after I’ve played the other two major action titles in Dante’s Inferno and God of War 3. And I’m glad I did, because I can now laugh and say Bayonetta smokes both of them. (Figuratively, not figuratively in the sexual sense.) Both of those games feel trapped in a rut, showing off their best tricks early while pandering to the same male cathartic revenge fantasy that too many games appeal too. Bayonetta is all about fantasies, including revenge and empowerment, but it’s at least honest about it. This kind of gutsy comedy and full-bore action makes it one of my favorites of 2010 so far.
 
4 stars