Quest to Nowhere

I finished Bayonetta a few nights back, but I couldn’t really rationalize it until the day after I finished it. See I completely enjoyed the game while I was playing it, not just the fighting but every part of it, but I couldn’t figure out why.

Now gameplay wise its basically the best possible version of a Devil May Cry-style game. The combos are easy to pull off, and always satisfying. You always feel like you are doing something awesome. They removed the block for the dodge, which means you don’t get stuck in one spot to defend yourself, but rather are always moving around.

The game is very good about keeping things moving. The fights don’t typically last too long, or at least to a point where they feel like they are dragging along. The cut scenes are also generally pretty short, although they get longer as the game progresses, but after each one you are usually thrown into a fight. So even if you are bored by the cut scene you are thrown right back into the mix.

Now the thing about the game that most concerned me was the character of Bayonetta, and how over the top sexual the game seemed to be. However now that I’ve finished the game I don’t think it is a sexual game, its suggestive, but I wouldn’t call it sexy. Mainly because when it, “trying to be sexy,” its doing it in incredibly over the top and ridiculous ways. Which ends up making it silly, as opposed to sexy.

The key to this game is how ridiculous it is, and it was done purposefully, but not seriously. I’ve heard the game described as being “very Japanese,” because of how weird and sexual it seemed to be. Although I can understand that thought from some who hasn’t played it, or someone who has only played a little bit of it. It seems to me that what they were doing was trying to be, basically, campy. They wanted to be completely ridiculous and over the top for the purpose of being completely ridiculous and over the top, and they own it. Which they did.

Which in turn makes Bayonetta, the character, not a sexy woman to be ogled, but rather empowered woman who is in control of her sexuality. I think that had I played this before doing my top 7 women in videogames list, she likely would have ended up on the list. I’m really interested to see what they do with the character, let alone the series.

With the series I think they definitely can’t just release the same game with some improvements, which is what the Devil May Cry series has basically done. I think that the next Bayonetta, or DMC, has to almost completely reinvent the gameplay in order to do something better then what Bayonetta has done.