“Angel May Cry”. “Witch, Please!”. “Wheel of Torture”. Just a few of the rejected ideas I had made for this post about Bayonetta, but even for a guy with my dumb sense of humor, they all seemed too “high-brow”.
Anyway, after trying my hand at the demo a month ago, I went out and bought the game…probably the only good news to come out of that day. I’ve so far conquered the first level, which is indeed as frantic as I remember it. I still have to get the hang of the “not dying” thing, as I got beaten three times in Chapter 2, in spots where I should have known better. On the bright side, I got my first Platinum award (not a Platinum trophy, though that would be pretty sweet, too) on the tutorial level. Perhaps I ought to spend some more time in the early chapters looking around for secrets before proceeding, though. Easily avoidable death is not something I feel like dealing with this week.
With roughly a month to go before the game’s eventual release, Sega released a demo of its latest frantic hack-and-slasher, Bayonetta, on the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live networks. The demo contains a tutorial to allow players to get used to the controls, as well as the full first level (which can be completed in roughly 10-15 minutes).
You take control of the eponymous heroine, a witch whose suit is a living weapon, and who can shoot bullets from the heels of her shoes. (Now that I have your attention…) The tutorial starts off by showing you how to do basic punches, kicks, and combos. You then learn how to do more advanced combat maneuvers, such as dodging at the last moment to activate Bullet “Witch Time”, allowing you get in a flurry of attacks while your foes are moving in slow motion. Once you get good at dodging, you’ll be able to pull off this maneuver with relative ease and rack up combo points.
Once you get into the game proper, you’ll be pitted against a handful of demonic enemies, all waiting to send you to a very gory death. You can use the tricks you’ve learned to take them down, and sometimes, if you’ve positioned them just right, finish them off with a “Torture Attack” (an action command-triggered finishing move, such as piercing through them with a spear, or shoving their body into an iron maiden). Midway through the stage, you’ll fight a giant beast called the Beloved, which moves slow, but hits quite hard. When you knock this one out, you get a chance to close the fight with a “Climax Attack”, where Bayonetta’s suit comes alive to devour the beast (conveniently covering her naughty bits as she does so).
The last section of the demo is a one-on-one fight with Bayonetta and a rival witch named Jeanne, who when imbued with the powers of the full moon, have the ability to walk on walls. During the battle, both you and Jeanne run, jump and shoot at each other while making a mockery of the laws of gravity. At the battle’s conclusion, a “To be continued…” video is shown with Bayonetta fighting more monsters and finishing them off in more over-the-top gruesome ways (one of them involved a guillotine, and another a giant spiked wheel…that’s all I’ll say for now).
It looks like Bayonetta will be gracing PlayStation 3’s and Xbox 360’s across North America just in time for the new year. Japan seems to be eating it up…gaming magazine Famitsu reviewed it and gave it a perfect 40 (not too many other games can say that). Will American audiences be as charitable? With the popularity of games like Devil May Cry (which this game shares a project director in Hideki Kamiya) and God of War over here, signs are pointing to “yes”.
I’ve been playing Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires (yes, they made another one; shut up) on-and-off-and-on for the last two weeks, and I figured it’d be amusing to carve through Chinese warlords as a female character. I kinda cheated, though…I played the game on Easy in my first run, but I had powered up my warlord (war lady?) up to the point where she could take on Lu Bu and four other generals by herself, and she could run faster on foot than she could on her horse. There’s something for you to ponder…why bother saving up the money for Red Hare when you can dart around the battlefield like Sonic the Hedgehog?
Anyway, the first scenario I finished was “A Land in Chaos”, which is pretty much when the game hits the “random” button and tells you to pick a side and a country. Next, I’m going to go with the tried-and-true “Yellow Turban” campaign, first siding with He Jin and the Han dynasty, and then with Zhang Jiao and the Turbans his awesome beard. For shits and giggles, I decided one day to take my newly-minted level 1 character and take on Zhang Jiao’s army…all by myself. I was even more stupefied to find out that I could actually win the battle.
So, three days after losing Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, we’ve learned that infomercial pitchman Billy Mays died in his home today. I doubt this is going to get half the media coverage that Jackson’s death has (and likely will have for the next few days), but when my brother told me about it, he was in shock.
At the flea market in Upper Darby today, I managed to score both parts of Kill Bill, the first eight episodes of Cyborg 009 (an anime series about a multinational team of cyborg that reminds me a bit of Astro Boy), and a few PlayStation 2 games, including Silent Hill 3 and Primal (the latter seems to be pretty cutscene-heavy in the first part of the game…I’ll see how that pans out as I play it). I wasn’t able to get any super-duper bargains this time around, but I’ll take what I can get.
Thanks to this video of someone full-clearing “They’re Red Hot” (Red Hot Chili Peppers’ cover version of a Robert Johnson song) on Rock Band 2, I haven’t been able to get that song out of my head all day. I have the album on which that song’s featured, and I’m still wondering how the heck Anthony Kiedis was able to sing all of that in under one minute and not flub any lines.
Speaking of Rock Band, I got past Rock Band Unplugged this morning. The only thing that stands between me and legendary status at the moment is the famed “endless setlist”, where I have to play and pass every single song in the game without interruption. Right after the credits rolled, the game gave me a message that roughly translated to “Good luck! You’ll need it!” For once, I agree with the damn game. This is a feat I’ll need to do on a Friday or Saturday night, as the work day isn’t long enough to give me sufficient after-work break time.
Sometimes, you make achievements in the least likely of places. Today, I managed to beat a game while waiting in line to purchase another one. Move over, Mega Man Star Force…it’s time for you to make room for Star Ocean: The First Departure. You’ll probably take longer than 20 hours to beat, but at least you’ll keep me company on the train rides to and from work.
Category: Video Games
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: awesome, bayonetta, playstation 3 