While the story is fittingly "weird," the plot can’t hold a candle to the characters.Very slight dips in frame rate at points.In just two games Bayonetta went from a somewhat memorable action hero to one of my favorite leads in the medium.Boss fights and set-pieces have a hilarious scope that feeds into a screwy world.In and out of combat, Bayonetta 2 is dazzling to look at.
Flashy, fluid combat that's challenging when it needs to be, and satisfying when you want it to be.
The confidence in her presentation fuels intense, memorable moments, from running along a crumbling cathedral on a panther made of hair to simply boxing with a skyscraper-sized bosses.Įveryone's welcome to share in these fun moments in a richly realized world, but only so long so long as they remember that, in the end, that world still belongs to Bayonetta. It all comes together to elevate Bayonetta into what I consider one of the more positive and interesting characters in games right now. Things slow down considerably during the static, "motion comic" cut scenes, but these only matter if you’re paying attention to the appropriately ludicrous plot-a rescue mission plotted through heaven, hell, and Northern Europe-and not the battles that should rightly be the focus.
#Bayonetta weapons series#
The similarities between the two series are hard to miss, chief among them a penchant for air-juggling foes, but Bayonetta 2 turns the craziness level up further than any in the past.Įverything from the star's redesigned costume to the outlandish arenas she rules looks incredible at a (mostly) stable 60 frames per second on the Wii U. Incidentally, Kamiya also plays director for both games in the Bayonetta series, making him one of the last remaining standard bearers for the genre. The most recent game I can draw comparisons to is DmC: Devil May Cry, the early 2013 reboot of Hideki Kamiya's PlayStation 2 opus. It’s a refreshing kind of reward to find in a once-popular action genre that has lately fallen into obscurity as publishers put down their virtual swords in favor of fully automatic rifles. Of course, you could stick to Bayonetta's signature handguns (as well as foot-guns), but there's no reason you should when each weapon feels uniquely and finely tuned for specific encounters. AdvertisementĮnlarge / Perfectly timed dodges are an important part of the gameplay.īy mixing and matching various weapons to her hands and feet, you can alter the flow of any standard combo for incredibly different results. It's an invaluable tool for surmounting the seemingly endless stream of boss-tier foes, not to mention especially rewarding: both psychologically and literally in the form of in-game "halo" currency. "Witch Time" (it’s like bullet time, but more magical) activates whenever Bayonetta dodges an attack at the last second, opening a window to land Wicked Weaves and keeping her temporarily safe from harm. It's explosive, colorful, and tuned to tight perfection even on the Wii U's gamepad, a controller which until now I've always felt too spacious and unwieldy for this kind of precision combat based around a dichotomy of light and heavy attacks. Complete a combo uninterrupted, and Bayonetta calls forth a "Wicked Weave" demonic summon finisher before stringing the tempest over to another heavenly target. Bayonetta is a force of nature in combat, sliding effortlessly into battle to land blows with guns, fists, and any whatever weapons she can collect. The result isn't just ridiculous, but incredibly fluid and responsive. If you played the first game in the Bayonetta series, you know the titular character gets her witchy powers through a pact with the aforementioned hell-spawn, giving her the canvas to express herself through a unique combination of magic, violence, and dance. When Bayonetta 2 steps past that baseline and actually tries to put on a show, it somehow gets infinitely more absurd, and entertaining. Hooking dragons out from hell and launching them at your enemies is as basic in this game as firing bullets from a gun is in a Call of Duty title. That sense of control is the most easily accepted facet of Bayonetta 2. Nobody could possibly strap a pair of flamethrowers to their feet and breakdance the propellant over a crowd of hostile angels if they weren't 100 percent confident that they were completely in control of everything that happens next. That much was clear after watching her dispatch wave after wave of enemies in divine style in her first game. It's Bayonetta's world, and we're all just living in it.
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