Game REVIEWS

Bayonetta

System: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Publisher: Sega
Category: Action
Available Nowl

As one of the first games of the year, Sega, in collaboration with Devil May Cry developers Platinum Games, released the highly anticipated “Bayonetta” in the United States as their first game of a new year. The game follows a witch, whose power is derived from her hair known as Bayonetta. She has wondered the earth for 20 years with no memory of her past, must kill angels and other divine beings to keep up her deal with the devils so that she will not be dragged into hell. As the game begins, Bayonetta decides to travel to Europe to find her past. Without outside help in understanding character relations, the story of this game will make absolutely no sense until about the halfway point, but overall it is a really nice story.

The playing style for this game is very similar to the Devil May Cry series. The player controls Bayonetta as she runs through each chapter’s stage and kills anything that shows up. This game contains over the top action sequences, like riding on a missile as a form of transportation and shooting down a boss with a big cannon.

One of the greatest things this game offers is the torture attack option as a form of reward. The players will gain magic points for dodging the enemy’s attacks correctly, activating the witch time ability, and performing combos. For every 10 magic points, the players can choose to unleash torture attack on enemies. There are many torture attacks that activate depending on the enemy the players are facing and the position Bayonetta is in with the enemy. For example, using the torture attack in front of the enemy will usually result in kicking them into an Iron Maiden, while unleashing it on their back will end up throwing a giant spike wheel on them. The torture attacks do a large amount of damage and on normal enemies it will instantly kill them on the spot, but when facing mini bosses it will just take out a large portion of their HP.

The witch time ability is another interesting ability in Bayonetta’s arsenal. When an enemy attacks, the players can dodge it by pressing the dodge button. If they perform the dodge at the last possible second it will activate witch time. Witch time slows down time, allowing the players to do a large amount of combos and obtain high points.

The action flows really well in this game. The game is relatively short. On normal difficulty the game only takes 7-10 hours to complete. The game does offer replay values. The collectibles and achievements, not to mention the two possible unlockable difficulties: the hard difficulty, which is rewarded for finishing the game on normal; and the unlimited climax difficulty, which is obtained from finishing the game on hard. On top of that, the game also has extra chapters that can be unlocked by doing certain things in the game, which provides with extra replay value.

The only true downside to this game is the fact that the players have to fight every boss, chapter bosses and mini bosses, multiple times throughout the game. Also this game’s combos are preset; so to the fans of the Devil May Cry series this may be a disappointment, since in Devil May Cry players are free to create any sort of combo they can possibly imagine.

The graphics of this game look spectacular. The actual gameplay graphics is hardly distinguishable with the CGI cut scenes throughout the game. Character design is also remarkable; considering the so call enemies in this game are angelic beings, to make them look like monsters would really take some thought and hard work. On the Xbox 360 systems this game flows really well. Loading time on the 360 is relatively short. However, on the PlayStation 3 version of the game, because it was a port, the loading time between maps can be as long as 30 seconds. The flow on the PS3 is also annoying. At some points throughout the game everything would randomly slow down, because it needs to load something, which messes with the game flow.

The music of this game is pretty nice, but considering the game uses “Fly Me to the Moon” a billion times throughout the game, it gets quite annoying after the first 5 chapters. Other then that, it has some great sound tracks. All it really lacks is the number of songs the game actually features.

Overall this is a great game for people who like the action adventure genre. With the over the top action sequences and the angel killing, this game is the perfect thing to de-stress with. Not to mention it offers good songs, although constantly repeated, to listen to and relax with.

** Written by Benson Chen