Bayonetta [PS3/360]

[smokedog]

Oh that bit, just do a "double jump" in panther form.

[Eight Rooks]

Oh that bit, just do a "double jump" in panther form.

</facepalm>

I mean, I stand by the gist of what I just said, but still... Christ, I swear there's practically too much detail in the damn controls. <_< For some reason I just automatically assume 'Oh, right, this is just for running very fast, it can't do anything else'.

[losersclub]

Bought this on friday and finished my first run through on saturday night, i'm without the internet in my new house so haven't been able to get involved in the first play thread until now which has been a shame.

Great game, maybe not an Edge 10 but still a great game, after finishing it i went back to DMC4 for a quick comparison and that was the point where it really hit home how wonderfully fluid the combat is in Bayonetta - which i would say is it's greatest strength along with it's intense set pieces and it's great little homages

Looking forward to more playthroughs so i can aquire all the weapons/techniques etc

[crocky-chocky]

Played through chapters 8, 9 and some of 10 last night. Chapter 8 was a wee bit duff actually, though it did contain some fabulous touches in the form of the

->Open Spoiler<-

Outrun music

and

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Bayonetta starting up a bike by putting her extended middle finger in the ignition

. Chapter 9 was right back on form though, an absolute dream in fact. Loved the fight with

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Golem

...Even if it was just a revamp of Okami's last boss, I loved the idea of it

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being an obstacle throughout the whole level, but then suddenly turning up as the boss

. Well nift'.

Also, love the fight with the

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strange floating barges

! All the missile dodging and countering really reminded me of Viewtiful Joe.

[ChrisF]

the

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Outrun music

Pretty sure I heard that while I was playing that Angel Attack game too!

[Eight Rooks]

Yeah, chapter 8 simply isn't as good as the equivalent in Uncharted 2. Edge were definitely right in that this is Kamiya throwing everything at the player, yelling 'Look, it's a Japanese game the way we used to make 'em! Amazing scenes!!!1!!1!!' or whatever - it's just I don't think Platinum have the technical knowhow to completely live up to his ambitions.

The game gets damn close though, and it's still a lot of fun - Christ, how can you be a nerd who gets the reference and not crack a smile? Compare this with, say, The Saboteur, another game which obviously wants to wow the player too but where a) the tech and level design simply isn't up to it and b) there's little or nothing there beyond a fairly weak story and an overfamiliar setting. Bayonetta knows how daft it's being, it's blatantly toying with its audience - I'll say it again, I'm really surprised how much the game's won me over considering I hated the very idea of it to start with. It does go too far, no question (was Joy really necessary? Really?) but it's a lesson in how just remembering to have fun can make up for a lot (if not all) of your technical shortcomings.

[BaronSqwelch]

I had to drop this down to easy after level 4, got bored of dying!! I was getting too carried away with the combos and not dodging.

Have gone through the rest on easy, with the auto doll disabled, and have bought some techniques and add ons that have given me a fighting chance so am up to level 4 on normal now and really enjoying it!

The screen tearing on the xbox version is really bad tho...even worse than Battlefield Bad Company, my gf asked me if the tv is broken its so bad...what causes it?

Other than that, second run is more fun as ive dealt with the story and can skip the cutscenes (tho i get chinned quite often by a fireball i wasnt expecting to have to dodge ) and now I know how it works my combos and medals are improving. Not looking forward to some of the later bosses tho....better get stocked up on green lollies

[englishbob]

Mine finally showed today, my first 1 hour impressions.

If this was a film, you would turn it off in 5 minutes flat, the start is that bad. You wouldn't care you'd spent money on it, you would just want it to go away, never to return. The story is a disorientating mess, nothing wrong with that generally, except this one isn't much fun. Terrible voice acting and characters, Enzo in particular being one of the worst ever. Anyone seen Peter Kaye doing a character called "Stutter" on MTV? That's all I can hear. If there was ever a game that demanded a Japanese dialogue option with optional English subs (to "OFF"), this is it.

"But!"...you say..."The story is not the point". True. But. They spent loads of time and money on it, they obviously thought it should have some central focus. The opening, lengthy "Prologue" attempts to be structured, but ends up confusing more than educating. And its long, too long.

Get to the first real Chapter and things look up, much much better. The intro starts properly and you realise the "Prologue" was potentially just messing with you. It settles down to a pace you can live with, you can get a feel for the controls, the graphics and the action.

The game wants to reward you for pressing buttons, and it does this really, really well, although those looking for a really deep way of triggering some of the mega finishes will be disappointed, the game merely seems to trigger them when it feels like it, not when you do something amazing or collect loads of "ringos".

Its Devil-May-Cry roots show, it has a bewildering amount of collectable items, upgrades, combos, points and money systems. Of course the opening levels don't cover anything like this in any detail, so you have to look at the games printed manual, in all its bland black and white glory. Can't any game dev do a proper manual design anymore? its more like a project template than anything with any passion or flair. :/

Its been well documented that the 360 version is better than the PS3 conversion, so that's the one I went with. However the 360 pad is just not suited to this game, its uncomfortable to press those horrendously round, pebble-like face buttons for endless bashing of combos. And the RT trigger is miles away for quick Witch-time activation. Although you won't see any physical proof of it, your finger-tips will feel battered and bruised at the end of every session. The game may of been designed with the 360 as the lead platform in mind, but it is programmed for the PS3's pad.

The way I stand with it at the moment is that I do currently feel compelled to finish the game, provided it doesn't have too many silly difficulty spikes like DMC did. From what I have read it keeps things fairly varied in comparison to DMC, but lets just wait and see.

From what I have seen in Chapter 1 so far, it has that whiff of "Killer 7" about it. You know, a world that makes no sense whatsoever, but its a world that you end up living in and kind-of understanding how it threads itself together, in the weirdest way. As Killer 7 was one of my favourite games of the last 10 years, I currently have very high hopes!

[spagmasterswift]

Just finished my 360 'Normal' play through and some how managed to miss

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the ice skates

, I expect its one 45 piece hidden behind a wall someplace - it did make me use the

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panther form

more than when I played it on the PS3. Will have to hunt it down for the

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GEES!!!!!1

Good news - 'Hard' is just that!

[rmoxon]

Started playing this today and as much as I love the gameplay which is both challenging and fun there are a few things that annoy me about the game.

One is that seeing as I'm not exactly brilliant at it I spend alot of time running around with very little health, this means the screen is constantly flashing red and obscured by freaky demon hands that were cool looking for about 5 minutes but then got really annoying. Its an increadabley unsubtle way of the developer hammering home that you should be doing better in their opinion and it would be nice to at least have the option to turn this kind of crap off if you didnt like it.

The other frustrating thing about the game so far is that not only is each level bookended with a long cutscene, but there are cutscenes actualy during levels too. This means you rarely play more than 2 minutes at a time without it going to another one, its virtualy of Metal Gear Solid proportions and hopefuly it will get better as the game goes on and the levels get bigger, becuase right now its making it difficult to get into the game.

So Ive enjoyed it enough so far but am also slightly disapointed really.

[smokedog]

frustrating thing about the game so far is that not only is each level bookended with a long cutscene, but there are cutscenes actualy during levels too. This means you rarely play more than 2 minutes at a time without it going to another one, its virtualy of Metal Gear Solid proportions and hopefuly it will get better as the game goes on and the levels get bigger

Levels don't get bigger but smaller, and later on there are even cut scenes in the middle of boss fights. I got fed up the cut scenes in later levels and skipped them.

[Charlie]

This game, for want of better words is, f**king mental. Made it to chapter XII thus far and though, like a lot of people, am unsure if it's a 10/10 game, there's no denying its glittering brilliance and consequently whether it deserves an 8, 9 10 or whatever becomes an irrelevance.

As to why it’s brilliant; well, that's quite difficult to pin down too and subsequently imbues the game with that enigmatic quality all good art possesses. If I had to highlight just one element, it wouldn't be the incredible depth or flow to the combat, the sumptuous visuals, majestic soundtrack, or even the game's brazen swagger, sense of humour or incredible flair. It would be the imagination that’s thrown around with glorious abandon. You never quite know what the game will throw at you next, around every corner waits a surprise, and in this day and age that's incredibly refreshing.

Another standout component is the enemies and their design. That they draw heavily on inspiration from sacred beings depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Aztec dimethyltryptamine experience illustrations and ancient Hindu/Buddhist/Christian religious art gives them a great sense of weight and relevance which the usual Hollywood/comic book-style monsters portrayed in the vast majority of videogames lack. The angels, in particular, are paradoxical in that the seem at once both familiar and foreign, earthly and unearthly. They really are magnificently designed and steeped in mysticism.

It’s not a perfect game, mind. The camera angle, especially when battling in confined spaces, occasionally goes awry. There’s no saving mid-chapter. The control layout is fixed which annoys me as I’d like the option of switching the ‘lock on’ and ‘change weapon’ buttons over. Sometimes the loot immediately following a battle can’t be collected because the game suddenly switches to a cut scene. And the highway level is kinda crappy.

But that really is nitpicking. This is gaming at its finest, most confident and most rewarding and saturated in so much soul and style that it seems to pour out of every pixel.

[ezee ryder]

Just finished Chapter XIII, now that's more like it!

What an epic boss fight! The boss reminded me so much of

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Metal Gear RAY from MGS2

! Loved it, favourite part of the game so far for me.

[saturn-gamer]

I like the highway level a lot. But it could also be due to the awesome music playing there.

[ezee ryder]

Boy, way to ruin a chapter.....again!

Chapter XIV, the

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shooting missile section

is utterly awful. Controls are horrid and just like the section in chapter VIII it goes on for way too long.

I get what they are trying to do with those sections, break up the normal gameplay and pay homage to old SEGA games or whatever but they don't work for me.

EDIT - Yeah, waaaaaaaaaaay too long. It reaches a point where it is not even a small amount of fun anymore. Atrocious section.