I am of two minds about Platinum Game’s Bayonetta. On one hand I can’t believe how a videogame with so many forehead slapping design choices aced both Edge and Famitsu. The oddities associated (and lambasted) in Japanese game design are widely prevalent; a lengthy narrative presented as essential yet constructed of absolute nonsense, autosaves that force the player to either watch a cut scene or engage in some trivial skirmish before a boss battle, a user interface that’s as cumbersome as it is unintuitive, and ancillary gameplay sections that are terribly constructed and have nothing to do with the combat engine. Bayonetta has a litany of head scratchers, and could have infinitely benefited from Ryan Payton- on-MGS4-esque oversight to force modern design choices down the throats of otherwise out of touch Japanese developers.
That being said, I am overwhelmingly glad the brass at Sega allowed all of that to actually make it through to the retail release. Bayonetta, more so than any other videogame in recent memory (save maybe Noby Noby Boy), is the fulfilled vision of a sole entity. It is a product unaffected by focus group research, marketing interference, or publisher oversight. Hideki Kamiya made the game he wanted to make, and, in the process, authenticated his work with an incredible sense of purity. With Bayonetta, you’re actually playing the game someone set out to make. Regardless of minor failings in its execution, it’s a singular vision free of the stench of outside interference.
And, at least in terms of the combat engine, the end result is currently the pinnacle of the genre. Bayonetta herself, from a pure player-control standpoint, handles input better and moves with more fluidity than any other action game character thus far. The ability to instantly cancel out of any combo at any time is a godsend to the genre, and the versatility behind her vast move set is just as impressive. Factor in an array of weapons, equipment combinations, accessories, and bonus items and you’re left with combat mechanics faster than Kratos, less restrictive than Dante, and more cohesive than Ryu. I never, ever got discouraged when I played Bayonetta; trial and error isn’t a penalty, it’s an opportunity to learn more and build my skill set. The game really isn’t even that punishing – the difficulty builds perfectly and insures you’re only as good as your last battle. Repeating bosses is an unfortunate holdover from the Capcom days, but presenting similar foes with slightly different techniques or speeds is, at worst, a serviceable way for Platinum to squeeze every bit of content possible out of their assets.
Living my fantasy for me, fellow editor Steve Schardein was around when Bayonetta was doing pictures at E3 2009
While I sort of regret not skipping over the cut scenes entirely, I can’t help but think what the narrative could have been with a little more clarity. Bayonetta’s journalist friend Luka is lame and I couldn’t care less about Cereza possibly being a time displaced version of Bayonetta’s younger self, but the angel-fighting aspects could have been really cool. It wasn’t until Sapienta that I actually gained an appreciation for the art direction. A bunch of rogue angels on the loose trying to resurrect a fallen creator is actually an intriguing concept, and such intricately designed creatures (each displaying vague shades of human features) could have made for a dazzling story. Instead we’re left with utter nonsense, and anyone who tries to justify it as anything of substance or consequence (see IGN) has swallowed the purple kool aid. That shit’s meaningless.
But, at the same time, the batshit insane narrative, from a purely visual standpoint, is one of Bayonetta’s greatest strengths. I did a lot of insanely crazy shit over the course of the 12-15 hours it took me to plow through it on normal. I killed a boss by cutting off the tentacles emerging from its 10 story mouth, I save Luka by ensuring a missile picked him up after he was thrown out a window (after I road that same missile roughly 40 miles), I surfed an angel down a pile of lava, and I found it necessary to summon a giant chainsaw and cut through these seraph bat things. Finally, I watched a church (or some shit) turn into a rocket ship, blast off into outer space, and then give way to a space deity that used Bayonetta and Balder for its eyes. The whole game has a giant WTF stamped over every scene. Every single level you’re doing things that should be physically impossible, but none of those discrepancies seems to matter. It’s not a game where cohesion or logic has anything to do with the context. All that shit is happening because a bunch of guys thought it would be awesome
The only way the whole thing could have possible been even more ridiculous was to layer a 10 foot amazon stripper on through every facet, and that’s what they god damn did. Bayonetta sheds her clothes to execute her more impressive attacks, walks like a model in high heels when you fire her gun, uses a giant staff as a stripper pole, constantly has a sucker in her mouth, and is laced with more sexual innuendo than The Ambiguously Gay Duo. Her hypersexualization reached its climactic peak after the credits where, for whatever reason, I was rewarded with a sultry pole dance and corresponding music video. And it’s so over the top it’s almost impossible to be offended by it. She’s intentionally exploitive, and the game goes out of its way several times over to ram that point home. It’s not that they don’t make games like this anymore, but more like no one’s ever made a game like that, ever. Such an unapologetic take on game design deserves to be commended, if not revered for its blatant disregard for moral high ground. Or, at the very least, sixty of your American dollars for the pleasure of playing it.
