Note:  The following review is based on an imported copy of the Japanese release.  Bayonetta is scheduled for release in North America on January 5th, 2010.

Opening Statement:
I’ll admit, for the last year or so, I haven’t been the most eager to play Sega’s upcoming Bayonetta, a prophesized action epic from Platinum Games (the crazed geniuses behind last year’s Mad World for the Wii) and director Hideki Kamiya (the future legend behind Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe and Okami; pay your respects at the altar).  As I just typed the evidence of its pedigree, I realize that my bull headed and blind prejudice has denied me any sense of excitement for what has turned out to be a concentrated burst of gaming dynamite.  With Bayonetta, Kamiya and Platinum Games have served up a witch’s brew of devilish fun.

Krueger seems like Romper Room and Elm Street ain't so bad.

Facts of the Case:
In the beautiful (and fictional) European villa of Vigrid, a biblical cold war has been brewing between the last few remaining Umbra Witches, the followers of the dark; and the tyrannical Lumen Sages, the keeper’s of heaven’s light.  But all is not as it seems in this skirmish between what we believe to be good and evil; and as this metaphysical secret war reaches critical mass, Bayonetta; a forgotten daughter of the long since destroyed Umbra witch clan is caught in the middle.  She looks like the love child of Janis Joplin and a Barbie Doll, accessorizes with high calibre artillery, and possesses enough kung-fu badness to fill a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.  Plus she’s got thirst for war and an insatiable lust to kill.  Somehow I get the feeling Bayonetta’s going to come out of this one okay.  Though with her antagonists primarily being the seraphic servants of the holy and the divine, I can’t see her growing too popular with the Religious Right.

Every sermon comes with a free bowl of soup!

The Evidence:

During a session of Bayonetta, it is not uncommon to be strolling through a gorgeous hillside garden, having just dispatched a platoon of angelic interlopers, only to have a gargantuan creature emerge from the skies to uproot a building and throw it at you.  The name of the game in Bayonetta is insanity.  Certified, frothy-mouthed craziness that cannot be bargained with, cannot be reasoned with, and will not rest until it has tied gamers across the world’s thumbs in knots.

This is considered run-of-the-mill for Bayonetta.

Kamiya has taken the concepts he developed back in 2001 for Devil May Cry, stripped away the parts that didn’t work, and chipped away at the barnacles that the series had built up in the three sequels that followed.  What remains is a sleeker beast, a diesel-fueled, white-knuckle 200 mph shot of video game awesomeness.  It’s a game where a simple twirl of an analog stick and an attack button sends our heroine into a spinning hand stand, bullets blazing in all directions; where just about every successful combo ends with an enemy being crushed underneath a summoned stiletto heel that is made up from the very fibres of the main character’s costume.  Yes, she loses her clothes the bigger her attacks get.  So nine year old Timmy should probably not get this one for his birthday.

Remember this episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch?

Make no mistake; Bayonetta is not a methodical title in the least, rather a gluttonous action smorgasbord.  The bulk of the game’s combat is spent intertwining a variety of attacks into boundless combo strings.  Bayonetta has four open weapon slots, two for her hands, and one strapped to each heel.  With a separate move list for each weapon type and the ability to link into impressively long striking combinations; the potential attack list is truly labyrinthine.  I guess that’s why the loading screens afford gamers a few seconds to practice Bayonetta’s bottomless barrel of tricks (which can be lengthened with a simple press of the select button while the level loads).

For some reason, Double Dragon II seems a little boring after this.

While combat makes up the lion’s share of Bayonetta, there are short spurts of level navigation to be found in between the game’s innumerable micro-battles with smaller enemies, and title bouts with the indescribably large bosses.  The long slogs through cavernous empty corridors that plagues games of this nature during the PS2 and original Xbox games have been peeled away.  So many great action games that aged like an open bucket of salt beef simply because their length was padded with marathon runs through sparsely populated levels.  While gamers looking for a little more side dish to go along with the prime-rib fighting will probably be disappointed that these segments pretty much consist entirely of carrying keys from one location to another (keys that can used as weapons nonetheless), or using Bayonetta’s Witch Time abilities to complete reaction-based puzzles.   Personally I’m grateful, because gamers who haven’t mastered witch time by the beginning of the game’s third stage will find themselves staring at the game over screen ad nauseum.  The concept itself is pure simplicity.  Dodge at the last possible second before getting waffled by an attack and time slows to a crawl, allowing Bayonetta to navigate an impassable obstacle at Mach speed, or score a few seconds worth of powerful counterattack time in between the infinite enemy onslaught.  What most action games play up as a gimmick, or a mere window dressing, Bayonetta uses masterfully as its main combat mechanic.  This is the John Belushi of beat’em ups.  Larger than life.  And that’s not even getting into the joygasm inducing Torture Attacks.  Naughty little insta-kills that are powered by successfully hitting an uninterrupted string of attacks without taking a single hit.  Fill the bar, press both kick and punch at the same time and witness the devastation.  You can even try to add bonus points with a little button mashing (hip hip hooray for crazy arcade action!).

You were right Dave, she is hanging him.

Items and weapons can be purchased in between levels at Bayonetta’s favourite demon-owned speakeasy, purchased of course with the shimmering halos that have been purloined from the corpses of the angels she left in her wake.  More halos can be scored in the between-level arcade shooting gallery (awesome!!)  With a selection including hand cannons, shot guns, a cursed katana, and a wicked whip with a demonic cobra head at the tip, and the cavalcade of weapons dropped by vanquished foes; Bayonetta is pretty much a wholesale retail warehouse club of destruction.  This game plays like the CostCo of kicking ass.  The fighting is structured in such a way that the battles never seem to go on too long, and we never get that feeling of programmed boredom, where gamers can pretty much predict which wave of enemies will attack next before they clear the room and get a break.  Besides, name me one other game that lets you literally spank prone foes?  Is it a game where the foes hide their twisted, inhuman forms under layers of Renaissance inspired sculpting and cherubic faces?  Ironically, while it’s visually cool to peel of these layers of Paladinesque armour to see the Clive barker inspired grossness underneath, that very graphical effect ties into Bayonetta’s ironically compelling storyline.  I don’t want to spoil any details, but suffice to say there is much more going on in the background than the Witch-slapping the entire world trailers have shown off.

Remember when we were kids, and a katana instantly made a character cooler?

I’ve been told that the PS3 build of Bayonetta, ported over by an internal Sega development team is of an inferior make to the 360 version, developed by Platinum Games.  I’m unable to make any sort of judgment, as I am unable to compare the two until the North American release.  But judging by the amount of fun I’m having with the PS3 version, unless Buddha materializes out of the Xbox 360 when it is switched on, declaring that he has arrived to miraculously free us all from the cycle of rebirth, I can’t see the games being that much different from one another.  It’s a great title on either console.  The presentation values are top-notch, with sublimely detailed character models that animate beautifully (check out Bayonetta’s hip swing when she walks slowly, or her facial animation when she winks or blows a kiss at the end of a large combo string) and appropriately pretty textures.  Watching the ethereal shimmer of her hair when a Wicked Weave attack is unleashed is almost hypnotic.  Effects such as explosions of flame or bolts of lightning make the screen crackle with life, and the game’s soundtrack is an explosive and eclectic symphony of bone crunches, high calibre gunfire, and some bizarre coupling of trippy jazz and rockin’ techno.  I don’t know what to call the feeling I got the first time I wiped out an army of monstrous angels to the oddly enunciated karaoke version of “Fly Me to the Moon” which serves as the game’s defacto theme song, but I do know that I liked it.  All in all the game’s presentation is a perfect wrapping around its sumptuous gameplay.

"Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God"

Rebuttal Witness:
There’s nothing I can really say about Bayonetta that I out and out disliked.  The game is HARD. It’s Geneva Convention violatingly difficult, and that may turn some gamers off.  But those who cut their teeth on, or were honed to a fine edge by the Devil May Cry series should be able to tackle its difficulty with little fuss.  Besides, would you expect a two headed angel-dragon that’s the size of sky scraper to be a pushover of a boss fight?  Man up dawg.

Closing Statement:
Bayonetta is one of the finest action outings I’ve played this generation.  An unstoppable bullet binge that undoubtedly gives all of us brawler addicts our fix.  If this is the sign of things to come in 2010, it’s gonna be one hell of a happy new year.  Put aside some holiday money and save it for January 5th.  You’ve all got a date with witch of a game.

The Verdict:

I wonder if there’s an executive at Sega who was so hung up on the idea of arming a witch with a machine gun that even after the unmitigated failure of “Bullet Witch”, he gave the go ahead on “Bayonetta”, in between 5 ¾ coke lines?  If so, I salute him.

- J

Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (PS3 version reviewed)
Developer: Platinum Games (Xbox 360), Sega (PlayStation 3)
Publisher: Sega
Release Date: January 5th, 2010
Rated: M for Mature

And you can tell by the way I use my walk...

The Charge:

Spectacular Mayhem!  Over-The-Top Madness!  Wanna Play?

Opening Statement:

In 2007, Clover Studios, a subsidy of Capcom closed their doors following a string of critically acclaimed, yet commercially excommunicated titles (as well as God Hand; which apparently only I liked).  This was less than a year after they’d delivered Okami, which was an incredibly strong contender for 2006’s game of the year.  Following the break-up, key members of Clover’s roster banded together to form Platinum Games, and announced that their first title under this new banner would be Mad World; a highly stylized, ultra-violent beat-em-up in the vein of Final Fight or Streets of Rage?!  Not only that but it would be exclusive to the Nintendo Wii, a console not exactly known for M-rated titles.  One has to wonder if Platinum Games, a proven and talented group of game makers  will turn out to be a Led Zeppelin from out the New Yardbirds, or an Andrew Ridgeley from out of Wham!?

What a puny plan...

Facts of the Case:

In a near-future that looks on paper like it had been created by John Carpenter, the bustling metropolis of Varrigan City plays host to the television phenomenon “Death Watch”.  The audience is in a bloodthirsty frenzy, cheering as roaming packs of gangs and “Killseekers” turn the streets into a war zone.  The entire populace has been infected with an airborne poison that will kill them all off by the end of the season, and the only way to score an antidote is to amass enough kill points by slaughtering fellow citizens to warrant it being awarded.  Somewhere along the way, Jack; a grizzled auto-mechanic with a cybernetic chainsaw arm enters the fray alongside morbidly curious gamers.

The Evidence:

Mad World wears its colours on its sleeve with unmitigated pride.  A pure beat-em-up in the strictest sense, where throngs of low-level no-good-niks line up like so much cannon fodder to be quite literally be pound into bloody paste by gamers.  Where the game truly excels is in its presentation, and the gusto in which it allows gamers to eviscerate on-screen enemies.

Cover your heart Indy!!

Presented in stark black and white (and buckets of red), Mad World is inevitably going to draw endless comparison to Frank Miller’s seminal work; Sin City.  In all honesty I found it had more in common visually with ultra violent manga like Battle Angel Alita, MBQ, or Zombie Powder.  The stylish visuals help to mask the meager power of the Wii’s under-powered graphics capabilities (as opposed to its competition) as well as the early sensations of boredom that players may feel when confronted with Mad World’s rather limited move set.  I’m especially glad because once gamers discover the joys of the various environmental death-traps scattered about the stages, and how their score increases for using these rather than cookie-cutter combos, they’ll be happily giant swinging goons into jet engines with glee.

Where Mad World gets truly immersive is in the game’s cartoonishly gory finishing moves.  Much like the God of War franchise; every enemy in Mad World seems to have a selection of macabre fatalities that can be performed to elicit both big points from the game, and chortles of laughter from players.  After dealing significant damage, the game will instruct gamers to enter a QTE (quick-time-event) in order to finish an attacker off.  Thankfully, with the Wii’s rather unique control scheme, Mad World gets truly creative (and really freaking’ fun) with these crazylicious dispatches.  In two hours of playing time, I had slashed the Wii-mote vertically to hew enemies from crotch to crown, rattled the Wii-mote and Nunchuck like a pair of old-west six shooters, and won several quick-draw sword duels with a button tap followed by a quick horizontal cut.  All while a hilarious commentary by Greg Proops (remember Whose Line Is It Anyway?) is carried out.  THIS is what the Wii’s should be used for!  Delivering an immersive play experience full of exciting moments, not pretending to cut up celery for rice and soup.

A rare glimpse at a forthcoming entry in the Cooking Mama franchise.

Rebuttal Witness:

Unfortunately, Mad World’s unwavering dedication to delivering a truly old-school gaming experience comes with a handful of slight drawbacks.  Perhaps gamers today have grown soft, but this is the first game of its type since Maximo on the PS2 that I can remember having a punishing limit on how many lives a player gets during any given level.  Seriously, it’s worse than Viewtiful Joe ever was.  Die during one of the game’s ingenious boss battles?  Have fun slogging through the entire level again.  Personally I don’t have a major problem with this as I found the levels to be just as much fun on a second play through, but many gamers today may be put-off by Mad World’s rather unforgiving nature.  As well, there were points when I found that the roar of Jack’s chainsaw, combined with the commentary and the Hip-Hop soundtrack (complete with lyrics G!!) to form a muddy audio soup that was like hitting a grey wall of N64 quality sound.  There are some problematic moments with the camera, when it fails to keep up with the myriad of action onscreen, and the Wii-mote is fairly limiting with only one analog stick to allow for camera correction.  There is a quick button press to re-center the camera, but doing so often led to an unjustified in-game death for me.

Jack goes head-on with both Herr Frederik Von Twirlenkiller and broken camera controls.

Closing Statement:

Mad World may not be for everyone, and it sure as hell isn’t aimed at Nintendo’s target audience for the Wii (I really can’t see Grandma or your 8 year old niece enjoying this game very much), but for gamers who are looking for something a little more visceral, or want to giggle like they did watching Beavis and Butthead back in junior high school, they could do a lot worse.  This to me felt like the movies Doomsday and Death Race mixed together into a wild concoction. It may be less than 10 hours in length, but the pulverizing difficulty and the nature of the game would make anything longer seem like a chore.  As it is, Mad World is a well-oiled machine, managing to deliver a white-knuckle, 200 mph gaming experience despite the limitations of its console.

The Verdict:

Platform: Nintendo Wii

Developer: Platinum Games

Publisher: Sega

Release Date: March 10, 2009

Rated: M(17+) for Mature.