Simply magic

Up next is Jon Beach’s game of the year, the bewitching and mind blowing Bayonetta, which scored a 9/10 in review.

Even back as far as our snow swept January it was hard to imagine any game bettering Platinum Games’ glorious Bayonetta when it came to best of the year lists. In fact – playing through Kamiya’s magnum opus again for the purposes of this feature, it’s hard to imagine a more consistently imaginative, tantalisingly challenging and wonderfully tongue-in-cheek videogame coming out this decade.

Essentially the bastard child of a furious, passionate, drug fuelled relationship between Devil May Cry and Super Mario Galaxy, the game is at times an absolute wonder to behold; and comes off as some kind of demonised trip down videogame memory lane, dragging the player through maniacal hallucinations of classic games past and present – whilst also setting the benchmark for hack n’ slash adventures in terms of its combat and endlessly madcap design.

Bayonetta’s is a world where hundred foot high hair monsters swirl around the atmosphere, crunching towering foes in metric units of increasing pressure, where smashed clock towers cascade through the night sky and form platforms for dancing witches, and where flashback images from the throes of videogame history come together in shapes of Platinum’s own choosing. Strangely, it’s also a world of balance – where it’s just as effective to learn how to time a dodge as it is to bulldoze in with gun wielding ankles and devastating combos. Learning how to tread Bayonetta’s many tightropes requires time and patience, but those who lack these levels of patience can still bear witness to many, if not all of the game’s treasures. On the other side of the spectrum, Youtube is awash with clips of players who have gotten seriously good at the game – ‘no hit’ runs and mind boggling combos are all out there, invoking feelings of inspiration and jealousy in equal measure.

Playing Bayonetta is genuinely like being in a dream. As in dreams, the landscapes, motifs and boundaries constantly shift; bursting with life and colour and bubbling above a rich undercurrent of humour and kinky sexuality. It toys with the player’s perceptions and expectations from start to finish, never once boring or bowing to convention. The game has more ideas and playful invention in any one of its chapters than many games released recently contain throughout the entire length of their single player campaigns, and one can only hope Platinum’s witch is just as feisty when they put her to work in the inevitable sequel.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

//Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Review – 9/10)

Forget the lacklustre All-Stars repackage that snuck onto shelves recently – if you really want to experience the last 25 years of Mario, it’s all right here.  Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the technicolour pinnacle of what can be achieved with a 3D platform game, frothing with applause inducing ideas that somehow keep coming even after the next Russian doll seems impossibly small.

Yoshi returned and it felt just as fresh in his saddle as it did back in 1990, the new power ups saw players drilling through levels and bowling themselves through neon laser alleys, the bosses were simply magnificent throughout – but most importantly, Mario’s second appearance on Wii was true to his roots. Galaxy 2 is a genuine challenge, providing countless hours of spellbinding play in which the player finds himself poking his delighted, fascinated nose into each nook and cranny.

//Limbo (Review – 9/10)

Seemingly the videogame David Lynch never made, Limbo‘s biggest draw was in its thick, oppressive atmosphere. Monochrome, sluggish, at times nauseating but never anything less than totally compelling; the world in which ‘boy’ inhabits is one of the most unspeakably nightmarish locales ever seen in a videogame.

Laced with black humour (there IS something funny about an eight year old boy having his head impaled on a spike, after all) Limbo presents a series of physics based puzzles which lack the conceptual complexity of something like Braid, but still remain satisfying and rewarding due to their common sense simplicity and the marvellous physics engine. Nothing’s beyond your reach, and it’s challenging without the player ever having to resort to checking walkthroughs.

It’s a short time spent in the company of ‘boy’, but that short amount of time will not be forgotten in a hurry.

//Red Dead Redemption (Review – 9/10)
Never mind sprawling grey cities and schools, the Wild West proved to be the best suited location for some Rockstar based tomfoolery. And with Red Dead Redemption that was exactly what we got, not to mention one of the best told stories and unforgettable characters ever realised in a videogame script.

John Marston was an ineffably likeable lead, and there are some equally deplorable villains to be found here too. These characters propel the player through one of the best realised and vivid gaming environments ever seen – and where horse riding might have seemed a chore at times, there was always something worthwhile to do and see when you reached your destination.

Appealing to many Clint Eastwood induced fantasies, Red Dead will continue to charm and engross players for years to come. Unfortunately José González has to take some credit for that.

Trials and tribulations

Jon Beach examines the hardship and satisfaction of facing the traditional boss battle.

THE LEVEL had been a bit of a stinker, if you’re honest with yourself. A couple of well-placed enemies nearly took a seventh life, and that jumping section with the falling, spinning platforms almost reduced you to shameful tears. Yet again.

But somehow you miraculously made it through, and now you’re looking at an open, empty arena, uncharacteristic of the rest of the level. You’ve drifted off into thoughts of tactics, dwindling resources, combat preparations. The avatar is looped into the animation reserved for periods of inactivity – stretching, impatiently stamping its feet. You’ve inadvertently moved from being sat up against your wall, legs crossed, to being perched intently on the edge of your bed. If your phone was on, the slider now rests in the ‘off’ position. You whisper expletives in your mind. “Please don’t die…”

Don’t throw your controller

It can only be boss battles. Those inescapable tests of dexterity that have lain in wait post-level since the dawn of videogames; a constant source of our fear, anticipation, spectacle, amusement, frustration, satisfaction and furious, furious anger. Often gigantic, sometimes tiny, but more than always challenging – bosses are a much loved part of videogame culture, and have formed an essential means of structuring the games we play, testing our skills as well as the robustness of our control pads.

Where did these tests come from? Gamers certainly never asked for them, though the nature of the medium dictates that we have our skills pushed to the limit, on a regular basis. Rather, boss battles crept up on us, starting with the top down shooters of the early eighties, and stamping their ghastly talons all over the culture with the arrival of a certain Italian plumber. By the time we were timing that mad run underneath Bowser’s pixellated form and jumping onto an oversized axe, the boss battle was here to stay.

With the arrival of Super Mario Bros and the subsequent explosion of 2D platformers, it wasn’t just the fight itself that was making gamers quiver; but rather the entire preceding level, and solemn knowledge that the battle was just around the corner. These stages were typically drenched in foreboding, pushing gamers to their absolute limits – many last levels played just as big a part in creating anxiety within gamers as the boss battle itself.

Eggman

16-Bit ushered in a new era of slick, menacing bosses, who had now learned to develop their own diabolical contraptions and attack the player in different ways. Sonic’s Robotnik was battering gamers with homemade drills powered by steam, chemicals and pistons; swinging balls, a menacing 20 foot automaton and dot eyed determination.

Sega’s steam-punk vision of the boss fight resonated throughout the generation – across the lake, Bowser was leaping into circus machines and zooming in and out of the screen, bringing a sprite scalingly scary dimension to the fight harnessed by the sheer grunt of the SNES.

Other titles were enjoying just as much creativity in their design – Shinobi 3 saw the player stalked by an 80-foot sludge monster throughout its level, one of few memorable instances of a boss being revealed and present throughout the stage; leaving the player thinking “am I going to have actually fight that thing in a moment?”, and bringing a whole new sense of dread to proceedings.

Elsewhere, Mickey Mouse was bottom bouncing a whole host of themed enemies in his Castle of Illusion, and Loki from Ghouls N’ Ghosts  was famously sending Arthur all the way back. In his pants.

So what’s changed today? We’ve seen games comprised solely of consecutive boss battles; a desolate land where each new enemy is an environment to traverse, and brings a new set of problems. This was Fumito Ueda’s seminal Shadow of the Colossus, which presented us sixteen boss fights, each one requiring a different mental and physical approach if the player was to successfully crumble its statue. The game took the existing template and turned it on his head – here we were silently trotting to our next fight, no enemies or falling spinning log jumping sequences, just us and a horse. But we were scared regardless, reinforcing the idea that if the creature is large and threatening enough, even a walk through Hamley’s can seem terrifying, never mind a fortress swollen with ruthless enemies and insurmountable magma chasms.

Continues…

‘The End is Nigh’ is a weekly column by Play.tm’s Martin Gaston, pondering the nature of videogame endings and why we do or don’t choose to finish the games we play. This week, Bayonetta, and how its perfectly pitched structure makes it the first must-play title of 2010.

As I start writing this article, I’m exactly halfway through a Hard playthrough of Bayonetta. By the time this article is published, due to the inherent magic of the writing and editing process, I’ll have completed the game on its most challenging Infinite Climax mode and netted a cool 1000 GamerScore. Fact.

It’s an interesting game, though I’ll freely buck the trend amongst popular critical opinion and say I don’t care a fig about the sexuality of the game’s heroine. I’m invested because, amongst other things, it’s got a solid combat mechanic where you can reduce an enemy to gore by punching him with a rock-solid fist made of the protagonist’s hair.

To hammer home the point: so little do I care for its universe outside of gameplay that I’ve not watched a cutscene past the game’s prologue. I don’t really get the humour, though I can certainly muster up a passing appreciation for the plethora of cheeky game culture references. This is personally noteworthy because I tend to persevere through even the most tedious in-game cinematics – take Devil May Cry 4, for instance, or Metal Gear Solid 2. That’s not to say Bayonetta’s universe is devoid of any kitsch charm – as Greg’s review superbly points out – it’s just that I see its storyline as a perfunctory barrier between perfecting combos and firing rockets from the launchers strapped to Bayonetta’s legs. My in-game clock currently stands at thirty hours, and I’ve promised myself I’ll maybe watch the cutscenes on my third playthrough.

DEVIL MAY CARE
If I sound like I’m moaning, I’m not: it’s a phenomenal game, one with a supreme confidence in its virtues and an impeccable understanding of the minds of its potential audience. Bayonetta works where Devil May Cry doesn’t – both have flash graphics, decent combo systems and hearty swathes of bonus content – by tweaking the difficulty settings so that everyone can play it.

For instance, completing the game on normal is a doddle. Healing items and checkpoints are scattered about in abundance – you can easily pick up a coveted red hot shot healing item in every post-level bonus round – and the game doesn’t force the player to spend five hours learning how to faff about with combos (spamming a simple punch, kick and punch attack can easily get you through the entire game at the cost of your score) and multiple weapon loadouts if they want to be able to complete the second level. Even Hard, whilst it does ramp up the damage modifiers and enemy aggressiveness considerably, is still easily completed if you’re persistent enough to retain your grip on the controller after getting continually pasted by a group of three Gracious and Glorious.

Where it significantly differs from Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry is in its strict scoring. Complete a level and you’ll be assigned a rank based on the intricacy and splendour of your combos alongside overall time and damage taken, but use an item or have the gall to die and you’ll receive a red skull mark that virtually ensures you’ll receive the lowest rating, Stone, represented in-game by a trophy of the game’s overweight, bumbling comic relief character falling on his behind. Nice.

It’s a hard game to do well in, but it’s also very easy to complete. Therein lies its genius. It caters for the people who like to blast through their games a couple of times and call it a day, and in doing so it features a fair difficulty curve for gamers who’d like to cut their teeth on a game of its ilk but can’t get to grips with DMC’s and Ninja Gaiden’s constant chastising. On the other hand it sets itself up with an unforgiving ranking system that demands a great deal of skill and dedication from players looking for high scores. Though I lean towards the latter, I can certainly appreciate its efforts to make the game enjoyable, and possible to complete, by everyone. It’s a very clever move, it means most gamers can consider Bayonetta a game they can finish, and it’s done wonders to bring a sub-genre I personally treasure to an audience who might normally consider it out of their depth. Bravo, Platinum Games. By Martin Gaston

Format: Xbox360/PS3 | Genre: Action | Publisher: Sega | Developer: Platinum Games | Release date: 08/01/10 | RRP: £49.99

Bayonetta perpetuates those ideas about the stereotypical Japanese game. It’s extremely over-the-top, truly absurd and flamboyant, and yet it’s one of the purest experiences of fun currently on the market.

It’s beautifully crafted, tied together by the idyllic synergy of entertainment and craziness, and works in the most fluid way. The result is a marvellous action title that utterly re-invigorates, and consequently redefines, the genre. It’s oozing with enough charm, depth and originality to capture the attention of all who play it.

It’s all in the tone. Bayonetta is a serious game, but never demands you take it seriously. It allows you to choose which, if any, of its eccentricities to accept as a driving force to keep playing. And while some of these marks of character are borderline insane, to criticise Bayonetta for that would be the most ludicrous thing of all.

ANGELS AND DEMONS
Corny dialogue dripping with sexual innuendo, gravity-defying combat and the occasional dance numbers are but a few of Bayonetta’s defining characteristics, all of which are brought together under the umbrella of a seemingly shallow narrative. It initially feels weak, simply providing enough momentum to reach the next combat-oriented set-piece. However, with combat being the core element behind Bayonetta, the narrative’s shortcomings are easily forgiven. And by the end, the denouement proves there was a plan all along, showing off a very clever, well-thought-out tale with hidden degrees of depth.

There are two factions. The Umbra Witches can perform magic with the dark arts and the aid of Demons. The Lumen Sages perform magic with the light arts and with the aid of Angels. You play as Bayonetta, a witch who has been awoken after centuries of slumber in a coffin at the bottom of a lake, who now has but a fractured memory of her life. The two factions are now long extinct, due to a war between them five hundred years ago, so the answers to Bayoneeta’s past seems impossible to find. But with legions of Angels hell-bent on her destruction, she battles on to discover more about the factions’ demise and her role in an escalating chain of events following her around.

The scene is set for a journey of personal discovery, but for the most part nothing is really learnt about Bayonetta herself until near the end. However, through journal entries and enemy encounters, you do learn a lot about the Demons, Angels, Lumen Sages and Umbra Witches, so whilst Bayonetta’s own history is sketchy, the world you inhabit is laid bare, and the portrayal of Angels in particular is an interesting and unique take.

Uniquely, the story works despite not really pulling you in – not initially, at least. Lengthy cinematics bursting with over-the-top action look fantastic, but many lack substance, and the semi-static film-reel story segments fill you in a little more but ultimately look sub-par against the more traditional cinematics. They do provide Bayonetta with a style all of its own, but while the ending ties the plot together fairly effectively, until you reach that point all you really experience is drawn out confusion. Yet it doesn’t matter. Even if the story doesn’t gel, there’s very little loss of enjoyment.

MORTAL COMBAT
That’s because Bayonetta’s combat is so supremely enjoyable – which is handy, as there’s rather a lot of it. The action rarely eases up – light platforming and puzzles construct the path to each combat section, but for the most part you’re shooting, punching, and erotically torturing your way through the Angels trying to stop you. The smooth controls allow you to perform the monumental amount of combos available with relative ease, making the complex experience surprisingly accessible. Button-bashers will find their random strikes pulling off a flurry of impressive looking moves, while the more contemplative players will find just as much joy from the equally impressive but entirely different sets of moves available with precise timing and longer sequences.

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