Oh you go ahead and brood, John Shepard. I’ve read what sort of shit becomes of you in the opening stages of Mass Effect 2. And thankfully, I’m going to be rocking out with you soon enough. How have you been since our last encounter? I’ve been seeing Mass Effect 2 commercials, and even though they suck, they’ve been whipping me up into a froth.

One fucking week until Mass Effect 2 comes out. Sludging through the original game again has got me excited, and not just for the story but also for the improvements. Like a lot of shit in life, including that chick you hooked up with in a drunken fury, Mass Effect pales significantly when you see her for a second time. Or a third time. But you keep lovin’ her, ’cause she got something special about her.

…Yeah, I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about anymore.

I’m on a Diet Mountain Dew binge, writing up a fucking storm and hoping to get a chance to cap my characters in the first Mass Effect. There’s a sexy list of bonuses you get for importing that shit. I’m currently level 56, six days to go. Lords of Caffeine and Insomnia, don’t fail me now.

Final Fantasy XIII is making the rounds in the San Francisco area in the form of a swank ass tour bus this week. As if it isn’t bad enough that I’m buried in snow and gray skies here on the Left Coast, people in the land of Terminator Governing and medicinal marijuana are getting the chance to play an English demo of FFXIII. I’m god damn jealous.

The whole thing seems like a wet dream of mine come to life. Except in my dream, Snow and Lightning are like, GET IN, GET IN. So I hop into the bus, and then Snow is like “Oh hey, check out this couch” and Lightning is like “I uh, have to go update my Facebook status” and as I watch her walk off into some other compartment, Snow slowly and sensually takes off his ballin’ bandana and jacket and asks me to rub salve on his enormous pecs.

It’s sort of like that. But only you get to play Final Fantasy XIII in English two months early. Just a little cocktease, but better than nothing.

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.

Via Kotaku:

As seen outside the subway station one stop past Kotaku’s NYC office

Amidst the smell of piss and homeless person, awesome emerges in the form of Mass Effect 2 wall ads.

Hideki Kamiya is a straight pimp. Having worked on Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, and now Bayonetta, the dude owns a large portion of my gaming soul. One of the more ridiculous and awesome things about Bayonetta is the list of shout-outs that the game has been giving to Capcom greats.

One of the most classic moments in awful dialogue was Dante’s “Flock off, feather face” in the middle of Devil May Cry. Whether it was intentionally campy action movie dialogue- which I think it was, or just awful script, it has been one of the sweeter moments in gaming. I had mentioned yesterday that one of Bayonetta’s moves called for “Flock off!”, but today? Yeah, playing through today right before a boss fight, Bayonetta drops the actual dialogue.

Flock off, feather face!

I did a little geek lap around my room.

Then, the character Rodin serves as a means to another awesome Capcom reference. Any douchebag who has played through Resident Evil 4 has uttered the line “Whadya buying?!” at least over Ventrillo like a nerd. Wait, that’s just me? There’s some shitty clerk in Resident Evil 4 who sells shit to Leon to help him in his mauling of zombies. And every time you hit up the dude, he’d be all “Whadya buyin? Whadya sellin’!” It became iconic across the game, to the point where friends who had just watched me play the game know about it.

Today, I went to Rodin, who serves as the same sort of vendor in Bayonetta as the aforementioned clerk did in Resident Evil 4, opens up a cinema with this for his dialogue:

Whadya buyin? I heard that in a game once.

This was me: !!!!!!!!!!!!

Bayonetta takes fanservice to unforeseen heights, perhaps only matched by the rimjob that Kojima gave fans for twenty hours in MGS4.

Well done.

Perhaps the best way to describe the insanity that is Bayonetta is this: there was a moment this morning when I was frantically mashing on the X button on my 360 controller, while using my free hand to pound a two-liter of Diet Mountain Dew. On screen, an enormous demon dog type-thing was munching an enemy of mine. You see, it informed me to smash on the X button to make the battle CLIMAX. Following the encounter, Bayonetta moans, and upon receiving a Platinum Award at the end of the battle, you catch a cheap shot of her ass.

In other words, this game was created with me in mind. It’s utterly ludicrous. The action scenes are over-the-top slow-motion wank fests. The characters beyond wacky, and for some reason Bayonetta is always sucking on a lollipop, or finding a way to flash a glimpse at her leather covered crotch. It is hyper sexuality done to the zillionth degree, baked in a stew of genital-engorging character designs and frenetic action. Did I mention it was awesome?

I’m only on Chapter 4, but I figured I should post these impressions. Since I have been jacking off this game for roughly seventeen months, and I figure people are like, “Hey Ian, you sicko. Are you too busy masturbating to give us any sort of impressions?” Well, here you go. As a brief aside, I was going to type “Rubbing your man-clit”, but that just sounds so awful. Even for me.

Yeah, I’m completely fucked up on caffeine, and using Flash-like powers to try and jump into the future at the moment. What it looks like? Me running really fast into my wall, while my Nana screams at the loud and confusing noises. The cats look on at me with embarassment, wishing they could communicate in Human Talk to tell me what a dumb ass I am.

Fans of Kamiya, there’s some pretty rad fanservice for you. If you’re geeks for Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe, you’ll appreciate this. Bayonetta not only utters the words “Flock off”, in reference to the best line in gaming since “Jill, here’s a lockpick. It might be handy if you, the master of unlocking, take it with you”, from Resident Evil. Also a Kamiya game. And if Viewtiful Joe is your thing, Bayonetta, while hurtling through the air on some piece of decimated street, drops “Dancing a-go-go.”

Awesome. Well, there you have it. If I don’t die from a burst heart-organ, or from fapping myself into a friction-burn-induced-immolation, I’ll write something up upon completing it.

At first blush, I have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on in this picture. Let’s take a good look. We have a giant robot looking thing, that seems like something out of Gurren Lagann, fighting some sort of dog-snake-thing. It would be pretty sick if you got to pilot mechs in Final Fantasy XIII. But instead, you’re driving a motorcycle, that is actually Shiva. It doesn’t make any sense to me at this point, and every time I try to watch a video of the combat system I just walk away confused but excited.

There is some sort of epic clash going on here, and someone is driving something. I think it’s probably the hot chick with the red hair from a prior installment of WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN THIS FINAL FANTASY XIII SCREENSHOT, but I could be wrong. The battle system seems so kinetic and over the top it is going to gel perfectly with my caffeine addiction, and utter lack of attention span. Oh pretty numbers, and attacks, and deduction of hit points!

HIT POINTS!!!

Bayonetta’s here. She’s really here. She’s in my room. She’s mine! Stay the fuck away, Kenobi! And oh, I’m ready. To uh, play the game. Yup.

[Every week until Final Fantasy XIII comes out, we’re going to play a game. I post a picture, and we all try and make sense of what’s going on in it.]

Unlike the slow consensual love that Snow makes with me, this picture clearly is rocking some underage buttfuckery. I mean jesus christ, have you ever seen such ill-intent in a creepy mustached dude’s eyes? Just look at this picture. I’m pretty sure that’s 14 year-old Hope in this picture. And that dude who has clearly been carbo-loading for the last nine years has one thing in mind. Rape time, and then a Big Mac. Maybe some chicken nuggets too. Maybe he’s going to try and eat chicken nuggets out of Hope’s innocent hole.

I could be wrong.

I don’t know.

I’m just saying, I’m not a master of Japanese, but I believe the above text translates (roughly) to “Don’t worry, my dungeon has heating.”

Pepsibones and I have had a long line of gaming together. There has been literally thousands of millions of gallons of caffeine consumed and expletives dropped in the twenty-three years we have spent on the Earth together while playing video games. We haven’t played much together since the time I gunned a controller off the wall during some bullshit goal during Super Mario Strikers a couple of years ago. I don’t get why he didn’t want to play with me. I only dented a slab of wood with fury and probably had murderous intent in my eyes. It was a bullshit goal, and he was a cheater.

That said, I bought that buttfucker Super Mario Bros Wii Fantabulous Edition for Christmas. I knew he was too stingy to buy it himself, and if I didn’t snag it during the week when he wasn’t warping childrens’ minds with his thinly-disguised anarchist panderings, we’d never get to play it together. I slapped that shit in a big fat box of shit, let him open it up, and then we were off to the giggle factory. He was drinking dirt water, and I was on my fiftieth Diet Mountain Dew of the day.

This game is fucking fantastic.

Two fucking renegade plumbers rocking out on some hallucinogenic mindfuck. Riding dinosaurs and smashing fish that for some inexplicable reason drop coins. You smash into dudes’ houses and then you take their goods. You plunder little fuckers wearing weird hats so you can go fight Godzilla, who just so happens to be the worst father ever. Meanwhile, a princess is getting assfucked and raped into a coma, covered in lizard slosh. In the middle of one gaming session, I was like…Jesus Christ, the things we take to make sense in a Mario game are insane. I imagined the board room meeting while the game was being pitched, and there was one rational dude, who was like, what the fuck is doing on!

Jesus fucking Christ, Jim, how many times do I have to explain it? This guy in the overalls throws balls of ice that freeze the red cockhead with feet, we call them goombas, and then he picks up the block of ice, throwing it into a wall. Then the guy drops a coin…I just, I just don’t get what is so hard here. Are you trying to be difficult?

It’s pure madness. There’s something elegant about the stripped down gameplay in the game that is refreshing. Listen, I’m all for the insane graphics, pretentious storytelling, overly ornate super blockbuster. I love my ear holes and eyes being fucked by awesomeness. But? But sometimes I just want to pick up a god damn turtle shell, and throw it at my dumb unsuspecting brother. The simple gameplay is doubly good too, since Pepsibones doesn’t have the dexterity to play any game that involves more than three buttons. Though, to be fair he did play and love some Fallout 3 last year. He almost shit himself with glee while fucking around with the character creator:

The gameplay and hanging out with Pepsibones harkens back to a simpler time. When I could shit my pants and not receive such a stern reprimand from my parents. When I could pick boogers and not rip out fourteen nose hairs. Everything from the music to the side-scrolling awesomosity is classic. Unevolved, to an extent. But excellent because of that. Some things aren’t broken, and they have lasted the test of time because of that. Cunnilingus, beer, and Super Mario Bros.

It isn’t without its fucking super awesome new flourishes though. There’s a couple of retarded new power-ups that will get your gaming fluids excreting. I mean, they give Mario a god damn propeller hat. Two dudes strapped in propellers, complete with absurd fart sounding propulsion that has a grown man (me) in his parents basement (I’m a failure) making wet fart sounds with his lips. And then there’s the penguin suit, and you can slide down hills without skinning your tits somehow. It’s fantastic.

The game lets you work together or fuck over one another as much as you want. The hit detection is hilarious, since even when you’re trying to help a brother out, you can inevitably fuck up the other guy you’re playing with. You bump and collide into one another, hopping on dome pieces and inadvertently pushing the other guy off a ledge. At one point dumb fucking Pepsibones accidentally ass-stomped my Luigi. The dude hits the ground with a thump, his neck clearly broken. And then Pepsibones and I laugh as Luigi’s fallen, mush-necked body slides off the screen strapped to some apparent rotating wheel.

What don’t you fucking get Jim? There’s platforms and wheels that rotate, because there’s no fucking ground. It’s simple. Simple.

At some point it always devolves into one of us throwing turtle shells up the ass of the other one. I’m just trying to rock out on Yoshi, when Mario guns a spikey carapace of doom off my little dinosaur. And then the pussy that   he is, Yoshi runs off into some pit of doom. I weep momentarily, and then shake the Wiimote, pick up Mario, and throw his dumb ass into the pit after Yoshi. The two of us die laughing, like it’s 1992 again.

Cunnilingus, beer, and Super Mario Bros. Some things never get old.