Bayonetta (Xbox 360)

Bayonetta is one of the most confusing games I've ever played.

To explain - there are certain trends in Japanese design whereby many seemingly disconnected elements are energetically blended together into something that western minds find it tricky to grasp. Shapes and colors bounce off each other, and each new angle is utterly unpredictable. Well, Bayonetta manages to take liberties in that direction with just about everything. The difference here is that it really works, but you'll have to work hard to meet it halfway.

Bayonetta is one of the last of the Umbra witches, a dark, mystical sect charged with overseeing the wellbeing of the world and maintaining the lines between Heaven, Hell and humanity. Along with their brighter counterparts, the Lumen Sages, they kept an uneasy balance going for years until a witch and a sage got together against all the rules, and had a child. This child was considered to be tainted and locked away for hundreds of years, losing almost all her memories in the process, but has now awakened to find that order has broken down and the world is descending into chaos.

You play Bayonetta, the now fully grown version of that child, and your job is to work out what the universe is trying to do to you and kindly get it to stop. This may involve lots of mindless violence in the pursuit of remembering who you are and what you're capable of, but then that's what you're good at. Along with Rodin, a demonic barkeeper and weapons dealer, you'll find yourself pitted against the best warriors Heaven has to offer, who really don't seem that Heavenly at all once you get up close, across a series of levels set in and around the city of Vigrid, and across a variety of supernatural realms.

At first glance Bayonetta appears to be just another third person button basher along the lines of Devil May Cry. You're chucked headfirst into the action by getting into a slugging match with a group of freakish angels in a graveyard, during which you'll get to try out a few combinations of basic kicks and punches. After you've cracked a few skulls, Rodin grants you two pairs of pistols, one set for your hands and one set that clips to the back of Bayonetta's ankles, and then things start to get really interesting..

At the heart of Bayonetta is a surprisingly deep and subtle combat mechanism consisting of kick and gun attacks plus a punch/weapon attack which differ depending on which weapon you have equipped. By combining these attacks in various sequences at just the right time you can unleash amazing amounts of damage, juggle enemies, break incoming attacks and generally become a diva of duffing stuff up. You can also modify these attacks by launching them from the air, inserting brief pauses between critical movements, locking onto an enemy, or moving in a certain direction at just the right time. This gives a huge range of attacking possibilities, which you can extend by equipping two sets of weapons and switching between them on the fly, allowing you to customise attacks for different enemies.

The icing on the cake comes in the form of a series of dramatic ‘torture attacks’ that Bayonetta can trigger by expending magical energy, and finishing moves that involve our heroine conjuring her hair into a variety of gigantic demons (yes, really) in order to munch, stomp, squish and generally break the larger enemies. If even that's not enough for you, Rodin is on hand to sell you 'extras' which will further modify your fighting abilities and add extra attacks to your arsenal, and Bayonetta can concoct additional bonus items from elements dropped by defeated enemies.

The final piece of the combat jigsaw comes in the form of the Evade button. This is more than a simple dodge, because evading an incoming attack just before it strikes puts you into 'witch time', slowing the rest of the world down to a crawl for a few seconds and allowing you to get some serious whup-ass in. You can also carry out extremely powerful 'combo offsets' by dodging mid combo and then carrying on with the button sequence like nothing had happened. Once you master these techniques, anyone watching you play will struggle to keep up with your actions even though you feel perfectly in control, and that's where Bayonetta triumphs over similar 'twitch' games - even when all hell is quite literally breaking loose, you always feel as if the controls are on your side, and the challenges presented to you are made challenging through complexity and variety rather than cheapness.

The speed of the game is worth restating here, because it really does move along at an amazing pace. You'll have a few moments of respite when you're exploring or wandering between areas, but for the most part you'll be pinging off hordes of enemies like a demented gothic pinball. This is made even more impressive when you take the sheer quality and visual impact of the characters, environments and animations into account. The major bosses in particular are a joy to behold, frequently too big to fit on the screen and coming at you with multiple imaginative attacks that you'll need to quickly identify and account for. Bayonetta is one of the best looking action titles on any current system, and although it's not entirely consistent it has a few set pieces that'll have you grinning from ear to ear at the sheer insanity of it all. The sound deserves a mention too - the backing tracks are nicely done if you can deal with J-pop and techno, but the voice acting behind our heroine eclipses all of that, delivering every insult, threat and witticism with oodles of style and sass. Throw in a cacophony of screeches, bangs and splats, and it does for the ears what the visuals do for the eyes.

That all sounds extremely promising, so why is it confusing?

The issue is that Bayonetta's developers clearly love games, anime, actions films, martial arts and all sorts of fun and diverse stuff, so they've taken the decision to just throw all of it in. At first it's hard enough trying to stay alive, and you'll be so busy cranking up your reactions to meet the challenge that the fractured and twisty storyline will completely throw you. Characters come and go at odd times with no explanation of who they are, situations from the past are referenced as if you already know about them and Bayonetta experiences more flashbacks than a Scooby Doo marathon. Throw in all the strange comments and elements that turn out to be little easter eggs and in-jokes for experienced gamers to discover (check out the Space Harrier / Afterburner mash up level) and you'll not really understand what's going on until the final third of the game. Coming off the back of an intense boss fight with a creature the size of a small town, only to be rewarded with a comedy interlude followed by a bit of a dance leaves you slightly bemused. This is just something you'll have to get used to, and learn to enjoy, which isn't that bad as the visuals would be good to watch even without the game to back them up.

In short, Bayonetta may look bright and fizzy, but underneath lurks a properly hardcore game for the hardened adrenaline junkies among you. There's a huge challenge in there waiting to lean in and bounce your head off the table, and the deeper you go into its subtleties, the more you'll get out of it. Once you add the replay value that comes with unlockable items and difficulty levels, it's a game that will continue to beat you up for some time if you're up for it.

8/10