Bayonetta GC Hands On

Behind closed doors at SEGA in GamesCom 2009, I was fortunate enough to not only see a bit more of Bayonetta in action – but also to have Yusuke Hashimoto in the room next to me. Hashimoto is the producer of the Japanese developed game who told me that he even had a hand in the drawing of some of the more nightmarish creatures we'll witness in the game.

After actualy seeing said horrific beastie I was a bit concerned to be in the same room as him, but there is no question that the art direction in Bayonetta is absolutely stunning. Watching the combat in this game is a total assault on the senses with blood, feathers, blades, magical orbs and multi-coloured fireworks littering the screen. In fact at most times it was difficult to know who was even winning – until the dust settled down and the gorgeous leather-clad female heroine remained standing amongst a smattering of corpses.

Firstly, Bayonetta takes quite an unusual step away from the traditional good and bad guy formula. Being an evil witch, you will find yourself slaughtering angels and other innocents and fighting for the side of evil, rather than your typical goodie-goods was quite refreshing. Also playing as a character who has no memory of what has happened to her, and yet be so ruthless and down-right cruel is a curious one as well.

Sam has already discussed it here on NZGamer, but the graphics in the game definitely deserve a second mention. Just watching Bayonetta strut around is a joy to watch (and not for the reasons you might be thinking). Her clothes and hair all flow perfectly and the level background environments are incredibly detailed. And when you're not walking around with hips that go boom, you'll be engaged in combat. Bayonetta has an insane amount of attacks in her repertoire including rockets that fly out of her boots, huge and devastating guns, multiple blades and even magical attacks at her disposal. She can summon guillotines out of thin-air, or lock bad guys up in ice-coffins with the click of her fingers. She can also take the form of creatures (we saw a panther in our run-through) and just incase kicking and punching ain't enough – she can even fight with her hair! How bad-ass is that?

Unfortunately our experience with the game sort of threw us in the deep end with regards to the plot. We witnessed a beautifully rendered cut-scene with hooded figures running around in a setting that reminded me of Assassin's Creed. The sequence then focused on one particular character who pulled back his hood in slow motion to reveal his pretty-boy looks and long Pantene fresh hair that he then proceeded to flick back flirtatiously. It was unbelievably cheesy, but had all of that Japanese cinematic flair that we all know and love. From there it all got a bit mad... but the plot seems to transverse time, slipping between the past and present neatly between cut-scenes. The game even merges the world of the living and the afterlife without slowing pace as well.



Finally to end our playing experience we encountered one of the larger bosses in the game. This is the freaky thing that Hashimoto helped sketch-up and it resembled a giant, mutant plant thing with two horrible, emotionless stone faces that extended out on rubbery tubes. It was armed with two huge organic appendages that had menancing mace-like clubs on the end of them that both loomed over the slender Bayonetta below. It was hideous. But absolutely mesmorising to watch. Kind of like being eaten by a giant butterfly – it's horrible but you just can't help but admire the thing that's eating you. The combat that took place was even more impressive, as Bayonetta started carving off bits of the creature's green limbs before hacking one of the heads off. She then started to run along the neck of the severed head to get closer to the body, running upside down and defying gravity as she found a better position to attack the second, slightly larger face. The sense of scale and height that the game achieves is remarkable and we were told that this was a relatively minor boss in the final game. Woah. It's no surprise that this game picked up best action title on show at E3 this year.



Finally Hashimoto had one last announcement to add to close off with. As you should be able to guess, the combat in the game is immense and as players of Devil May Cry may know – it can be quite daunting to casual gamers. The developers want Bayonetta to be highly accessible and have now included an Easy mode with the option of “Automatic” next to it. This means that combos aren't quite so hard to pull off and will chain together by themselves. Getting your attacks to look good on the other difficulties will take more practice, but in turn will be more rewarding. Hopefully this will get everyone as excited as I am about this game.

NZGamer.com would like thank Activision, Capcom, Microsoft NZ, SCENZ, SEGA, THQ and Ubisoft for making this trip possible.

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