Female figures have always been a bit of a sore spot in the gaming world
for two reasons; Either they are portrayed as the damsel in distress
figure, scared of everything and constantly in need of saving or oversexualized essentially turning them into eye candy. There have been a
few female characters through the years that have done their best to
combat the typical stereotypes like Lara Croft or Samus Aran, both
showing that a female character can be strong and in control of the
situation while also being attractive, but they are few and far between.
Today I'm taking a look at Bayonetta, a game belonging to the maybe lesser known genre of spectacle fighter, a genre populated by games like Devil May Cry, God of War and Viewtiful Joe that focus more on the combat with over elaborate attacks and finishers interweaved with a fair share of slow motion.
You play Bayonetta, a witch with amnesia tasked with battling the demons of hell for reasons not immediately established other than she used to belong to some kind of witch cult or something and apparently came from the sea. It's all delivered in flash back moments as you play through the story which is pretty silly in all honesty, but the overarching theme of Bayonetta is best described by imagining a big neon red triple X sign buzzily blinking away. Bayonetta is one of the most gratuitously oversexualized video game characters ever; Shes about eight feet tall (not an exaggeration as in one cut scene early on shes standing next to a regular sized child and the child barely comes up to her knees) her legs take up a good majority of that eight feet and shes dressed in a skintight black outfit, that apparently is made from her hair which must be painful at times, she's sporting glasses, a hair bun and topped off with an eloquent British accent in a sort of school teacher way. With all that said about her appearance it is entirely possible that this in meant in a more ironic way which I could believe if it weren't for everything else. From full on cut-scene crotch shots to parading her arse in a special attack animation to pole dancing on a lever to pull it, there has been so much detail put in to over state Bayonetta's sexuality that it stops being tongue in cheek and turns more into tongue very much somewhere else.
It might be easy to condemn Bayonetta to the ever growing female stereotype bin to join the likes of the Street Fighter, Soul Calibur and Dead Or Alive characters but wait. Despite being multiple fetishes on legs shes always in control of the situation and definitely able to hold her own even when demonic forces are chomping at her heel guns, oh yeah she's got heel guns another reason to over expose her ridiculously long legs and feet jammed into what look like ten inch heels. This creates a bit of a dilemma because she hits all the right points for a good, competent female character while also completely missing the point of subtlety and speeding way past the point of a joke.
You get the feeling that the game doesn't really know what it wants to do. Half the time its high octane bombastic fighting, be it if you're playing those sections or if its showing you this all through a cut-scene in which you probably could be playing but I guess the game is worried you'd screw it up. The other half it's just trundling around performing timed platforming puzzles which would normally be fine, but in a game like this just throws of your rhythm from back-flipping, shooting and kicking your way through enemies galore.
Speaking of the combat, having such a fast pace it obviously rewards you for chaining moves together and having good reactions. the only problem with that is the dodge button which just out right refuses to work often right at the time when a giant fuck off axe is coming your way, and in a big heated firefight with an endless swarm of winged harpy things, astral dragons, giant golems and even at one point Bayonetta herself, that's a pretty big thing not to work. It's more down to stubbornness than skill in this battle of attrition, which isn't to say you cant get the enemies patterns down and learn when to dodge for maximum damage done and minimal damage taken but as we've established the dodge button is a moody thing. The game will also frequently change which enemy you're targeting, leaving you at the mercy of a camera swinging wildly around as it picks which enemy it thinks is the prettiest leaving you try to wrangle it back into place, all the while getting your shit pushed in by everything else around you. So the main character is a walking innuendo, the dodge button and the camera are in cahoots and plotting against you, that just leaves the story to let us down.
Its silly, confusing and at times just plain woeful. That snippet of the story that I gave you earlier is the extent that I understood it; Bayonetta is a witch that was found at the bottom of the sea for some reason and now spends her time being attacked by and attacking inter-dimensional forces. Apparently she's looking for something and another witch keeps popping up that seems to want to kill her, but also kinda helps a bit, and there's this guy that runs around blaming Bayonetta for his ruined childhood, the story's all over the place.
Couple this poor attempt at a coherent story with the awful am-dram writing and what we have is a mess on a disc, a pretty mess don't get me wrong. A game in which you have a fifteen foot vertical double jump and can smack a demon up in the air, keep it afloat with a barrage of bullets then wail on it with a flurry of punches and kicks before finishing it off with a giant witch boot out of an unseen dimension is downright fun even if it can be frustrating at times, but that's the whole point in the spectacle fighter genre, its mastered through repetition and very cathartic when you pull it off.
Bayonetta is fun but I wouldn't say its a good game, there is potential but everything overlays and it feels a bit wooden. if you're looking for ten hours of over the top, off the wall action then its an obvious choice, but if you're the type of person that likes there games to be a bit more about the atmosphere, story and make more sense then you can do much much better.
The best thing about this whole debacle is Bayonetta herself. A character that looks and acts the way she does isn't the best role model for young girls and will leave young boys confused and with a strange feeling, but as we've established she knows what shes doing and is never going to pull, what we in the gaming world call a "Princess Peach"; getting kidnapped and relying on a man to save her. She's a weird paradox as the perfect thing to point at and say "Things have gone too far, something like this must have been designed by a man to ogle as part of a sexual fantasy." But then you can say the exact opposite stance saying "Shes a strong independent women that doesn't need a man to hold a door open because she just kicks it off its hinges anyway." The meshing of these aspects obviously creates controversy and in a world where political correctness has gone mad, maybe its a welcome debate. On the other hand its a game and I think its pretty obvious that you shouldn't take any of your ideals from this game the moment you've run up a wall, thrown yourself off and axe kicked a demon from twenty feet in the air then turned into a panther.
Thanks for reading guys, hope you enjoyed it and if you did share it, follow, bookmark it whatever but keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.
Today I'm taking a look at Bayonetta, a game belonging to the maybe lesser known genre of spectacle fighter, a genre populated by games like Devil May Cry, God of War and Viewtiful Joe that focus more on the combat with over elaborate attacks and finishers interweaved with a fair share of slow motion.
You play Bayonetta, a witch with amnesia tasked with battling the demons of hell for reasons not immediately established other than she used to belong to some kind of witch cult or something and apparently came from the sea. It's all delivered in flash back moments as you play through the story which is pretty silly in all honesty, but the overarching theme of Bayonetta is best described by imagining a big neon red triple X sign buzzily blinking away. Bayonetta is one of the most gratuitously oversexualized video game characters ever; Shes about eight feet tall (not an exaggeration as in one cut scene early on shes standing next to a regular sized child and the child barely comes up to her knees) her legs take up a good majority of that eight feet and shes dressed in a skintight black outfit, that apparently is made from her hair which must be painful at times, she's sporting glasses, a hair bun and topped off with an eloquent British accent in a sort of school teacher way. With all that said about her appearance it is entirely possible that this in meant in a more ironic way which I could believe if it weren't for everything else. From full on cut-scene crotch shots to parading her arse in a special attack animation to pole dancing on a lever to pull it, there has been so much detail put in to over state Bayonetta's sexuality that it stops being tongue in cheek and turns more into tongue very much somewhere else.
It might be easy to condemn Bayonetta to the ever growing female stereotype bin to join the likes of the Street Fighter, Soul Calibur and Dead Or Alive characters but wait. Despite being multiple fetishes on legs shes always in control of the situation and definitely able to hold her own even when demonic forces are chomping at her heel guns, oh yeah she's got heel guns another reason to over expose her ridiculously long legs and feet jammed into what look like ten inch heels. This creates a bit of a dilemma because she hits all the right points for a good, competent female character while also completely missing the point of subtlety and speeding way past the point of a joke.
You get the feeling that the game doesn't really know what it wants to do. Half the time its high octane bombastic fighting, be it if you're playing those sections or if its showing you this all through a cut-scene in which you probably could be playing but I guess the game is worried you'd screw it up. The other half it's just trundling around performing timed platforming puzzles which would normally be fine, but in a game like this just throws of your rhythm from back-flipping, shooting and kicking your way through enemies galore.
Speaking of the combat, having such a fast pace it obviously rewards you for chaining moves together and having good reactions. the only problem with that is the dodge button which just out right refuses to work often right at the time when a giant fuck off axe is coming your way, and in a big heated firefight with an endless swarm of winged harpy things, astral dragons, giant golems and even at one point Bayonetta herself, that's a pretty big thing not to work. It's more down to stubbornness than skill in this battle of attrition, which isn't to say you cant get the enemies patterns down and learn when to dodge for maximum damage done and minimal damage taken but as we've established the dodge button is a moody thing. The game will also frequently change which enemy you're targeting, leaving you at the mercy of a camera swinging wildly around as it picks which enemy it thinks is the prettiest leaving you try to wrangle it back into place, all the while getting your shit pushed in by everything else around you. So the main character is a walking innuendo, the dodge button and the camera are in cahoots and plotting against you, that just leaves the story to let us down.
Its silly, confusing and at times just plain woeful. That snippet of the story that I gave you earlier is the extent that I understood it; Bayonetta is a witch that was found at the bottom of the sea for some reason and now spends her time being attacked by and attacking inter-dimensional forces. Apparently she's looking for something and another witch keeps popping up that seems to want to kill her, but also kinda helps a bit, and there's this guy that runs around blaming Bayonetta for his ruined childhood, the story's all over the place.
Couple this poor attempt at a coherent story with the awful am-dram writing and what we have is a mess on a disc, a pretty mess don't get me wrong. A game in which you have a fifteen foot vertical double jump and can smack a demon up in the air, keep it afloat with a barrage of bullets then wail on it with a flurry of punches and kicks before finishing it off with a giant witch boot out of an unseen dimension is downright fun even if it can be frustrating at times, but that's the whole point in the spectacle fighter genre, its mastered through repetition and very cathartic when you pull it off.
Bayonetta is fun but I wouldn't say its a good game, there is potential but everything overlays and it feels a bit wooden. if you're looking for ten hours of over the top, off the wall action then its an obvious choice, but if you're the type of person that likes there games to be a bit more about the atmosphere, story and make more sense then you can do much much better.
The best thing about this whole debacle is Bayonetta herself. A character that looks and acts the way she does isn't the best role model for young girls and will leave young boys confused and with a strange feeling, but as we've established she knows what shes doing and is never going to pull, what we in the gaming world call a "Princess Peach"; getting kidnapped and relying on a man to save her. She's a weird paradox as the perfect thing to point at and say "Things have gone too far, something like this must have been designed by a man to ogle as part of a sexual fantasy." But then you can say the exact opposite stance saying "Shes a strong independent women that doesn't need a man to hold a door open because she just kicks it off its hinges anyway." The meshing of these aspects obviously creates controversy and in a world where political correctness has gone mad, maybe its a welcome debate. On the other hand its a game and I think its pretty obvious that you shouldn't take any of your ideals from this game the moment you've run up a wall, thrown yourself off and axe kicked a demon from twenty feet in the air then turned into a panther.
Thanks for reading guys, hope you enjoyed it and if you did share it, follow, bookmark it whatever but keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.
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