“Bayonetta” Demo Impressions.
Back in 2001, Hideki Kamiya’s Devil May Cry single-handedly revolutionized action games. The canceling-heavy/juggle-heavy combat was more akin to fighting games than to regular action games and the effortless combination of a gothic atmosphere, over-the-top action, a weapon leveling system and light puzzle elements put the title in a league of its own. Games like Ninja Gaiden or God of War would have, arguably, not existed without DMC.
Nonetheless, Kamiya thinks the genre has stagnated since DMC was released (perhaps rightly so) and is eager to top his previous efforts with his newest action game, Bayonetta. The game is out in Japan and you can get a demo of the game in 360 or PS3 variations if you happen to live in the land of the rising sun. Here in the US, we’ll have to wait until January to play the full game (unless you’re into importing) but you can download the demo if you own a PS3 and create a Japanese PSN account.
I’ve been eagerly anticipating this game so I wasted no time in doing so.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: in Bayonetta you control a witch with guns on her feet. That should give you an idea as to the kind of over-the-top insanity you’ll find in this game but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Over the course of the demo you’ll kill some angels, beat up a gigantic boss as he grabs and violently shakes the platform you’re standing on and run on walls and ceilings as you fight another, more human boss. The 360 demo, I understand, ends before the second boss fight but has a section where you’re fighting in free fall at the beginning instead. From the demo (and the trailers of the game I’ve seen) I can surmise that the game will do a good job at throwing new things at you which is a vital element to any good action game.
It’s difficult to gauge exactly how deep the combat system will be from this demo but here’s what I gathered. You basically have a jump button, an evade button and three attack buttons. Jump is self-explanatory but the other two are interesting in how they work during combat. The evade button makes Bayonetta do a quick roll in any direction and this is, obviously, useful in dodging attacks. The interesting part about this move is that if you dodge just before being hit you enter “Witch Time” which is really just a fancy way of saying bullet time. The timing on this is rather lenient and you can evade in the air as well so as to not discourage air combat, I pressume. I’m sure this will be an essential mechanic to dealing damage later in the game as it’s easy to the lay the smack down on enemies while they go through their recovery animation in slow motion.
Now, as I mentioned, attacking is handled by three buttons: one for hands, one for feet and one for pistols. The demo didn’t allow you to customize weapons very much (you can only swap between two weapons sets) but I understand that you can equip different weapons on your hands and feet. This is a nice change from the usual “light/heavy” attacks found in most action games and should provide some nice combinations depending on just how much customization you’re allowed to have. The two weapon sets found in the demo are pistols/pistols and sword/pistols and the two control very differently though both have rather large move lists. It stands to be seen how many of these moves are unlocked from the start and how many are gained via upgrades.
The “pistols” button is a question mark to me because, from the demo, I can’t figure out whether it controls pistols and only pistols or if you can swap between any other form of long range weapons (I’m guessing the latter). In any case, the pistols button also serves a second purpose: picking up enemy weapons. Usually, an enemy will drop a weapon after being defeated it and you can equip (or unequip) that weapon momentarily with the pistols button. At that point, your hands/feet moveset changes into that of whichever weapon you have in hand and, even though each weapon has about 3-4 attacks total, they’re very powerful and deal a good amount of damage with the caveat being that they break after a certain number of attacks. It’s feature that successfully adds more variety to an already expansive combat system, i.e. their power encourages use and their short life-span doesn’t make them overpowered. It’s a great system any way you look at it.
The demo leaves a lot of blanks in regards to gameplay and it’s only about 10 minutes long but it gave me a decent idea of what the final game is going to be like. The combat is extremely satisfying, more so than most action games I’ve played, and I didn’t even get to the flashy torture attacks (which reward you for not getting hit), the extravagant atmosphere, the jazzy soundtrack or the myriad of small visual and aural flourishes found in the game but hey, I don’t want to write an essay on a 10 minute demo.
Bayonetta is a sexy game and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
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shes got specs appeal