Have you seen that advertisement for Uncharted 2 where the guy is like, hey my girlfriend keeps mistaking this game for an action movie! The best way to describe Bayonetta is that it is absolutely not that sort of game. It is a post-modern, hyper-violent, super-fuck. Any loved one who stumbls across you playing Bayonetta probably think you’re watching some hallucinogenic pornography. And that’s why Bayonetta is one of the best games I’ve played in years.
It’s apologetically insane.
I began sweating Bayonetta when I heard the premise: It’s Devil May Cry starring a gorgeous woman with glasses and a British accent. And along the way it began to be the most-hyped nerdboner explosion in the fanboy community I’ve ever seen. Emphasis on nerdboner. Because the game ejaculates sexuality, and doesn’t give a fuck if you like it or not. Cutscenes in the game find amazing ways to feature Bayonetta sucking on lollipops, flashing her ass, or zooming in on her crotch. I’ve never seen a game where the camera’s most prominent position is stuck onto a character’s leather-covered ass.
And can we talk for a moment about how Bayonetta’s crotch has got to smell with all that flipping and shooting and killing while wearing a leather bodysuit? I don’t care, I’d still hit it.
The entire game is an exercise in hyper-conscious absurdism. Bayonetta is over the top, but more importantly, Bayonetta knows that its over the top. To the point where Bayonetta drops high-fives to other games by its creator, Hideki Kamiya, from Resident Evil to Devil May Cry to Viewtiful Joe. Classic phrases from those games like “Flock off, feather face!” and “Whadya buyin?” are strewn about so the game doesn’t just jerk off your genitals but also your nerd organs too. The game smashes down the fourth wall while rubbing itself.
The storyline doesn’t matter, or at least I hope it doesn’t, because I don’t remember a lick of it. And I don’t think you’re supposed to, since the game seems quite conscious of why all the fanboys and fangirls with engorged junk-pieces are playing it: for the gameplay and absurd sexuality.
For example:
There’s a moment towards the end of the game when Bayonetta, some weird intrepid reporter named Luka, and I think what is Bayonetta’s past eight year-old self complete with librarian fuck-me glasses are riding in a helicopter towards some sort of epic confrontation. As Bayonetta vomits on and on about whatever sort of epic story is going on, Luka begins to stare at Bayonetta’s cleavage. Bayonetta’s recently rain soaked, and as she speaks, her huge, backbreaking tits are glistening. A perfectly formed droplet stops right where her nipple would be, and when Bayonetta says something like “Are you fucking listening, Luka?!”, the nipple-droplet falls off and both the player and Luka realize they didn’t give a shit about the storyline.
‘Cause it doesn’t matter, and the game knows it.
But let’s face it, all that absurdity and sexuality is fucking useless without tight gameplay. And after playing the demo back in the early winter, I was concerned this game was just going to be a Devil May Cry-clone with stunning cleavage. I kept the dark secret to myself, hoping I was fucking wrong. Thankfully, I was.
There’s no denying the game’s connection to Devil May Cry. But the game is Devil May Cry done to the zillionth degree. Fuck Devil May Cry 4, consider this the next-generation installment. Kamiya, who left Capcom to form Platinum Games carries over a lot of what made Devil May Cry awesome: the kinetic action, the ridiculous air-juggling, and retools it a bit. Snagging some shiz from his other franchise, Viewtiful Joe, Bayonetta gives you bullet-time. In Viewtiful Joe it was called Slow Viewtiful. But now you’re going to call it Witch Time. Apparently witches are in the Matrix, or at least hang out with Barry Allen.
The first couple of chapters you just fuck around and learn the combat system. You’re taught how to climax, and let’s face it, every boy should be taught how to make a chick climax. At the end of every boss battle, you have to mash two buttons together, which apparently is how you make someone climax, by mashing buttons, and then Bayonetta strips and eats things with her hair. Yeah, I have no god damn idea. Again, welcome to Bayonetta.
As the game progresses, the scope of the battles get larger and crazier, and so does the difficulty. It starts off manageable, and gets more and more difficult until the final battle had me ready to wing a controller off the wall again like I was thirteen and playing my friend Joe in X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Who the fuck just crouches and fierce punches?! SON OF A BITCH.
Unlike Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe which were both severe pains in the fucking ass, this game rocks a continuous auto-save option. So when you die, you don’t get thrown back to the beginning of the level. Instead, you’re just tea-bagged by the game at the end of the entire Chapter. That’s when you’re awarded a statue, from Stone to Platinum. And let me tell you, all those deaths you rocked? They’re shitting on you in the form of a stone statue. As if to say, you passed, but you fucking suck.
The true epicness of the game is nailed in the final battle. Turn away if you’re spoilerphobic. For it is in that fight, when you get to climax on the face of God and throw her into the sun. The game’s battles go from running along streets, to sword fights on missiles zooming through the air, to fighting the one responsible for all creation. Obviously, God is a massive stone chick with wings and enormous stone boobs. She’s insanely huge, can barely be contained on screen, and is complete with the thirty-five forms that final bosses have in every Japanese game ever.
After finishing her off, you of course, have to climax! all over her. And then? Then you throw her into the sun. Problem solved.
Bayonetta isn’t for everyone. It’s odd, it’s super-erotic, probably a bit heretical, and it isn’t the easiest game. It is a niche game, but for those within the niche, it is the greatest thing ever. You know, those who are fans of cleavage, self-aware action sequences, enormous boss battles, and chicks with glasses. If you’ve ever played Devil May Cry, or jerked off to latex porn, or done both at the same time, you’ve just found your new favorite game.
Like me.
