Internet Apocalypse

With perfect scores from Famitsu and Edge and a glowing review from Kotaku, Capcom seem to have finally found the formula for the ultimate videogame, Guns, Tits and Buns. Bayonetta went on sale in the UK last Friday and smashed into the top 20 at number 5. This might seem like a lukewarm reception to the title, but bear in mind that no one has yet managed to knock Modern Warfare 2 off the top spot for weeks now and, in a chart inexplicably dominated by Nintendo Wii games it has done well to beat other triple A titles like Dragon Age: Origins, Darksiders and Assassins Creed 2.

I’m habitually cynical when it comes to perfect games, so I tried to remain neutral when playing it, trying not to expect anything too awesome, while at the same time, gearing myself up for the first of the big console releases for 2010. First impressions? Well, not great. The cut scenes in this game, although some of them are visually great, are very confusing. At points, the dialogue between the characters makes absolutely no sense and the attempts to explain the plot are laughable. I can’t help feeling that maybe crucial plot elements disguised as Japanese metaphors were lost in translation along the way and what I was left with was an unfathomable mess of random conversations that allude to concepts and storyline only understood by the guy that wrote it in the first place.

That aside, Modern Warfare 2’s storyline makes next to no sense and that’s brilliant, so let’s move on to the gameplay itself. Wall-running, turning into a panther, blowing stuff up and shooting the shit out of things with the guns either in your hands or the ones attached to your feet all feels smooth and well done. The combo system is one you’ll be well used to if you’ve played Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden or Onimusha, with a very similar weapon and character upgrade system. Within 15 – 20 minutes or so, you’ll be well used to the controls and kicking some angel ass. The fact that I didn’t have a clue what was going on in the story actually seemed to make it better as I was hurled from one completely abstract level to another. One minute I’m surfing on a missile, the next I’m running up the side of a sky scraper, dodging trains and the next I’m slamming a huge angel tentacle phallus into a babies mouth and slicing it in half, before tearing it to pieces using demons summoned from and made out of hair. Yeah, it is random.

The game is 70% boss battles. You may get a feeling of “I’m sure I killed you on the last level” as the game forces you to kill the same boss four or five times on consecutive missions, before having you fight them all again in a final, final, FINAL battle to the death. The boss battles are so ridiculously awesome in how they look and the amount of colour and activity going on that it really doesn’t matter and most of them are challenging enough to tax the average player without getting them stuck for too long. Saying that there are points in that game that are so knuckle-bitingly frustratingly hard that I almost destroyed London in a ball of white hot ball of fury several times during the completion of this game.

I’d personally not give this game a perfect score, but it would be pretty close. I can understand why the Japanese might think it’s perfect as they have a higher chance of being able to figure out what the hell is actually going on. I just can’t fault how graphically amazing this game is at times and when I finally turned my Xbox off after completion, I was surprised it hadn’t RROD’d on me again from being overloaded by sheer awesomeness.