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The original Bayonetta is one of the best action games ever made, and it easily stands alongside genre classics, such as God Hand, Devil May Cry 3, and Ninja Gaiden Black. It features explosive action, and tests your combo prowess against every divine creature in the good book. Despite Bayonetta's poor PlayStation 3 performance, this PC port is excellent. It delivers the action at a rock-solid frame rate and a range of uncommon resolutions, which makes this version the definitive angel-slaying experience. If you're itching to replay Bayonetta, or if you missed the game entirely, consider this $19.99 PC game an essential purchase.
After a lengthy but bombastic opening, you are introduced to the titular Bayonetta, a sexy, leggy, and ferociously powerful witch in league with hell. She's tasked with killing angels to keep her demonic minions appeased, but Bayonetta doesn't remember much about her past. A suspicious tip sets her off on a journey to the divine city of Vigrid, where she can learn more about herself and her mysterious past. To be frank, the plot is a cheesy vehicle for the gameplay: it combines goofy time travel elements, slapstick humor, and lots of camp to tell its story. Bayonetta is essentially a parody of Devil May Cry, which is especially apparent when you consider that Platinum Games' Hideki Kamiya directed both titles. All you need to know is that there are some angels in need of a good beating, and Bayonetta is perfectly suited for the task.
Bayonetta marries free-form action with combo-heavy combat, while also injecting unique finisher attacks, rewarding evasion, and context-sensitive techniques. Your most basic offense involves punches and kicks, which you combine to string combos. There is a beefy list of combos to learn, and these combos vary greatly based on what weapons you have equipped on your hands and feet. Combos generally have unique effects at the end of the attack string, be it launching targets, knocking them down, or batting them away. As a result, it's worth learning how to pull off combos to be the best angel murderer you can be.
In addition to her bread and butter combos, Bayonetta learns special attacks that can be injected into combos on the fly, much like Devil May Cry's combat system. Pressing kick immediately after a jump rockets Bayonetta and her target into the air, for example, while double-tapping forward during an attack makes her lunge. Inserting these moves, and others like them, into your assault results in a very fluid and satisfying combat experience.Of course, Bayonetta's signature ability is Witch Time, which is essentially a perfect dodge. By evading at the right time, you avoid damage and momentarily slow down the enemies around you, giving you precious seconds to dish out damage without resistance. Bayonetta's unique execution system also encourages liberal use of Witch Time. You build up magic as you fight, represented by orbs under your health gauge. When this gauge is full, you can perform a Torture Attack on your targets, which severely cripples them if it doesn't kill them outright. Taking damage depletes this gauge, however, so it is in your best interest to evade properly to retain as much magic as possible.
Black Magic
Bayonetta features a scoring system that ranks your fighting ability, and rewards you with a medal based on your overall performance during each skirmish. Stone is the worst medal, while Pure Platinum is the best medal. In order to earn a high score, you must quickly defeat enemies, take as little damage as possible, and make liberal use of combo finishers, Witch Time, and Torture Attacks to boost your point multiplier as high as possible during the fight. Even a simple engagement against cannon fodder enemies can be a demanding ordeal if you aim for a high score, so players hoping to challenge themselves will find tremendous replay value. My only gripe with the system is the lack of a retry option: if you make too many mistakes during a fight, the only options are to accept a low score, or reload a checkpoint and retry from there?assuming the game hasn't already auto-saved the rank. This is a minor issue, but it is one I would love to see addressed if the series gets another sequel.
Another minor issue I have with Bayonetta is the use of Quick Time Events (QTE) and instant-death traps during missions, which can absolutely destroy your mission ranking your first time through the game. Many chapters feature awkward platforming sections that use quick-time events to make progress, or murderous pitfall sequences that kill you regardless of how much health you have. Not all platforming is lethal, mind you, so it can be surprising and frustrating to learn that the jumping puzzle you failed cost you a life, when the puzzle before that did not Because these sequences never change, once you familiarize yourself with them you can avoid a stupid death fairly easily, but it can be jarring to fall to these in a game that demands combat prowess, rather than jumping skill or QTE attentiveness.
Bayonetta mixes in a few alternative sections to keep the gameplay fresh, though some of these portions fall flat. The best mini-game is the Angel Attack shooting gallery that appears between story acts. The gameplay is as simple as it sounds: angels fly across the screen, and you shoot them to earn points These points can be spent on consumable items or temporary buffs in the next mission. On the other hand, the motorcycle and space shooter chapters, inspired by Sega's own Out Run/Hang-On and After Burner/Space Harrier, respectively, are tedious to play through. These sections go on for much too long and radically depart from the action combat norm, forcing you to learn an entirely different set of actions for their portion of the game. You can skip the Angel Attack mini-game if you so choose: that's not the case with the motorcycle or space shooter sections, which are smack in the middle of story acts. These sections prove troublesome when I've tried to get a platinum rank for each act. These few gameplay twists are minor nitpicks at best, but I believe the game would have been better without them.
The original Bayonetta is one of the best action games ever made, and it easily stands alongside genre classics, such as God Hand, Devil May Cry 3, and Ninja Gaiden Black. It features explosive action, and tests your combo prowess against every divine creature in the good book. Despite Bayonetta's poor PlayStation 3 performance, this PC port is excellent. It delivers the action at a rock-solid frame rate and a range of uncommon resolutions, which makes this version the definitive angel-slaying experience. If you're itching to replay Bayonetta, or if you missed the game entirely, consider this $19.99 PC game an essential purchase.
After a lengthy but bombastic opening, you are introduced to the titular Bayonetta, a sexy, leggy, and ferociously powerful witch in league with hell. She's tasked with killing angels to keep her demonic minions appeased, but Bayonetta doesn't remember much about her past. A suspicious tip sets her off on a journey to the divine city of Vigrid, where she can learn more about herself and her mysterious past. To be frank, the plot is a cheesy vehicle for the gameplay: it combines goofy time travel elements, slapstick humor, and lots of camp to tell its story. Bayonetta is essentially a parody of Devil May Cry, which is especially apparent when you consider that Platinum Games' Hideki Kamiya directed both titles. All you need to know is that there are some angels in need of a good beating, and Bayonetta is perfectly suited for the task.
Bayonetta marries free-form action with combo-heavy combat, while also injecting unique finisher attacks, rewarding evasion, and context-sensitive techniques. Your most basic offense involves punches and kicks, which you combine to string combos. There is a beefy list of combos to learn, and these combos vary greatly based on what weapons you have equipped on your hands and feet. Combos generally have unique effects at the end of the attack string, be it launching targets, knocking them down, or batting them away. As a result, it's worth learning how to pull off combos to be the best angel murderer you can be.
In addition to her bread and butter combos, Bayonetta learns special attacks that can be injected into combos on the fly, much like Devil May Cry's combat system. Pressing kick immediately after a jump rockets Bayonetta and her target into the air, for example, while double-tapping forward during an attack makes her lunge. Inserting these moves, and others like them, into your assault results in a very fluid and satisfying combat experience.Of course, Bayonetta's signature ability is Witch Time, which is essentially a perfect dodge. By evading at the right time, you avoid damage and momentarily slow down the enemies around you, giving you precious seconds to dish out damage without resistance. Bayonetta's unique execution system also encourages liberal use of Witch Time. You build up magic as you fight, represented by orbs under your health gauge. When this gauge is full, you can perform a Torture Attack on your targets, which severely cripples them if it doesn't kill them outright. Taking damage depletes this gauge, however, so it is in your best interest to evade properly to retain as much magic as possible.
Black Magic
Bayonetta features a scoring system that ranks your fighting ability, and rewards you with a medal based on your overall performance during each skirmish. Stone is the worst medal, while Pure Platinum is the best medal. In order to earn a high score, you must quickly defeat enemies, take as little damage as possible, and make liberal use of combo finishers, Witch Time, and Torture Attacks to boost your point multiplier as high as possible during the fight. Even a simple engagement against cannon fodder enemies can be a demanding ordeal if you aim for a high score, so players hoping to challenge themselves will find tremendous replay value. My only gripe with the system is the lack of a retry option: if you make too many mistakes during a fight, the only options are to accept a low score, or reload a checkpoint and retry from there?assuming the game hasn't already auto-saved the rank. This is a minor issue, but it is one I would love to see addressed if the series gets another sequel.
Another minor issue I have with Bayonetta is the use of Quick Time Events (QTE) and instant-death traps during missions, which can absolutely destroy your mission ranking your first time through the game. Many chapters feature awkward platforming sections that use quick-time events to make progress, or murderous pitfall sequences that kill you regardless of how much health you have. Not all platforming is lethal, mind you, so it can be surprising and frustrating to learn that the jumping puzzle you failed cost you a life, when the puzzle before that did not Because these sequences never change, once you familiarize yourself with them you can avoid a stupid death fairly easily, but it can be jarring to fall to these in a game that demands combat prowess, rather than jumping skill or QTE attentiveness.
Bayonetta mixes in a few alternative sections to keep the gameplay fresh, though some of these portions fall flat. The best mini-game is the Angel Attack shooting gallery that appears between story acts. The gameplay is as simple as it sounds: angels fly across the screen, and you shoot them to earn points These points can be spent on consumable items or temporary buffs in the next mission. On the other hand, the motorcycle and space shooter chapters, inspired by Sega's own Out Run/Hang-On and After Burner/Space Harrier, respectively, are tedious to play through. These sections go on for much too long and radically depart from the action combat norm, forcing you to learn an entirely different set of actions for their portion of the game. You can skip the Angel Attack mini-game if you so choose: that's not the case with the motorcycle or space shooter sections, which are smack in the middle of story acts. These sections prove troublesome when I've tried to get a platinum rank for each act. These few gameplay twists are minor nitpicks at best, but I believe the game would have been better without them.
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