Bayonetta

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Fantastic main character Bayonetta is like some 8 foot tall super woman with a slightly too small head and way too long legs. Strangely, if you look at her, she looks good but if you really take time to loooook at her, you can see that she's proportioned like some kinda alien amazon woman. Still, she's awesome. She's very certain of herself and her sex appeal and she flaunts it every opportunity she gets. Most of her combos and special moves end with her in some crazy ass stripper pose or w/her licking her lips or something else just awesomely sexist. The weird thing is, somehow she's oversexualized while never seeming to be exploited sexually since she seems very aware of it and to be doing it on purpose. It's like, Lara Croft is just a sex object and it's almost a negative to her character because of it, while Bayonetta knows that she's a sex object and just throws it into your face willingly. It's great.
Combat is exciting, responsive and fun The first time I played Devil May Cry, it was awesome. . . for about an hour or two. After that, I got bored of knocking enemies into the air and juggling them with my guns then slashing around a bit. The first time I messed up some angels in this game, it was badass, and continued to be badass through the entire game. You start with 4 guns. Two in your hands, and 2 attached to the stiletto heels you have on your feet. So you punch while shooting, and kick while shooting and all kinds of other madness. There's a move where you start doing breakdancing windmills on the floor all while shooting from your feet for a good 5 to 10 seconds then finish with some kinda lying down on your elbow freeze. Now, that'd be crazy on it's own, but you actually start to unlock new weapons like swords and flaming claws and ice skates. . . You can equip them to your hands or your feet, and you can swap them on the fly with two preset weapon configurations. So I'll punch shoot someone a few times, then switch to a blade and slash them for a while then finish with flaming feet. Delicious madness! And to make it even crazier, every weapon combonation seems to yeild different button combonations that give you different moves. There's like a billion moves and combos! Combat is just fantastic fun.
Witch time makes defense as awesome and important as offense So if you dodge an enemy attack just before it hits you, you go into what is effectively bullet time in the Matrix. Everyone slows down, and you just go to town on peoples faces. This little mechanic makes it so that you pay extra attention to what you're doing defensively as well as offensively because that witch time is crucial to being able to do well in fights.
It's so damn Japanese Man, there is nothing in this game that doesn't just scream "I'm a crazy ass fucking Japanese game!". Seriously, the shit you see during the cutscenes and even in game, is just ridiculous. I have a strong love for the developers who made this game and a lot of it has to do with their ability to just be ridiculous with their shit. Take this description of the game for example. At one point in the game, you're flying around inside a piece of church that's stuck on the head of one of the bosses who happens to be a double headed dragon with a giant upside down human face in between the heads. You beat the shit out of him by using guns on your hands and feet then really bust him up with demonic weaves, which is your hair taking the form of some kinda demon that comes out of a portal from hell. . . yea, wtf goddamn crazy awesomeness.
Great loading screen The loading screen is pretty much a training mode in any fighting game. There's a list of combos that goes down the right hand side of your screen and it tells you how many times you've used each combo so if you see one with low numbers, you can try it out and implement it into your arsenal of moves. I found myself using a lot more variety in my attacks because of the combos I learned while loading the game and trying them out actually made me not notice any load times in the game at all since I was busy bettering my combative abilities during loads. Fantastic, should be in every game with a fighting engine.
Game references other games and doesn't take itself too seriously I really dug the humor in this game. Platinum games being an ex capcom game took a fare share of jabs at Capcom games like Resident Evil and their previous work at the company as well like Okami, Veiwtiful Joe and even God Hand. They also have a lot of insider stuff aimed at Sega (their publisher) and their games as Platinum like Mad World. It's there for people who are looking and it's just a wink wink that's very appreciated. Also, the sense of humor in this game is again, very Japanese and pretty dang funny imo.

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The story was a little whack Yea, I didn't really follow the story too well but I still enjoyed the cut scenes. There was a lot of optional reading that may or may not have explained what the hell was going on in the game, but I don't have time to just sit around and read what amounts to a small book worth of text. Without the reading, the game makes almost no sense at all. . . After having beaten the thing, I still don't understand what the fuck was going on.
The music in the game sorta fit but I wasn't really into The music was decent enough, but nothing stand out. For as crazy as the rest of the game was, I was hoping that the music would be awesome, but I was let down. I'll compare it to God Hand. The music in that game was fantastic, this game. . . good, but not great.
The item system was a little funky It took me a while to figure out how to create items, and even when I did, I rarely used it since I didn't come by the recipie items very frequently. I think this entire section of the game could have been removed and I wouldn't have even noticed. Also, of the items that I did make and buy, I tended to only use the health ones. I don't think I used any other item the entire time I played the game.
The end of chapter minigame was okay You get a short FPS style minigame at the end of every chapter that I found to be pretty weak. You get points for hitting these enemies that are flying around and then you use those points to buy items or exchange them for game currency. The weird thing was, it'd be cheaper to turn all your winnings into currency, and then buy the items in the shop rather than buy them from the minigame's reward screen. By the end of the game, I was basically getting headshots with every shot I had and making enough to buy two items with leftover which was fine, but I wish the game evolved a bit as you went along. The game is exactly the same the last chapter, as it is after the first. A lost opportunity here.

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On some characters, the witch time didn't seem to work I mentioned above how awesome the witch time was, so it's that much more terrible that a lot of attacks by two specific enemies in the game couldn't be witch timed. Just weird that the game isn't consistent and there's no logical reason why it doesn't work with these two enemies. . . it just doesn't. Weird.
Capcom style recycling of bosses You fight the same bosses, multiple times in this game. Like, 3 or 4 times each. Do not want.
All the unlocking Now, I can understand the idea behind unlocking items and purchasing accessories, but I'm just not the type of person that can play through the same game multiple times. I guess if I had a ton of time, I'd actually enjoy playing thru multiple times and unlocking stuff but as is, I didn't get to even see more than half the weapons, and only had the currency to unlock like 3 accessories out of maybe 10+. It sucks to not be able to experience all the content a game has to offer because it wants you to replay the game over and over. To top it off, I feel even less inclined to do so because of the repeating boss fights. Meh.

This game was very enjoyable and I highly recommend it even though it's butt swirl crazy. It pushes forward the action fighting genre about as much as the original Devil May Cry did when that game came out. It'll be a while before anything can top this game in it's field and when it does, oh man is that game gonna be good. Very good stuff and I continue to look forward to anything Platinum Games puts out.

4.5/5