Dear Diary,

I killed somebody today… And if you ever tell anybody, I’ll kill you too.
 

That little diary entry is as important to this blog post as the story is to Bayonetta.

I’ll be honest. Despite all the time I’ve spent with Bayonetta, I still have no idea what the story is about. I kept zoning in and out of the exposition due to it being boring and useless. I’m still not completely sure who the little girl was. I mean, I have an educated guess based on what I’ve gathered from my few moments of vigilance. Mostly, though, I waited through the cut scenes in hopes of an over the top fight scene or a clever camera swoop, showcasing those wonderfully refined buttocks.

Like a Mario game, this is one of those situations where gameplay is absolute king. And believe you me, what we have here should be a new standard in crazy martial arts action. No one creates these types of games like Japanese developers. The sole western exception is that crazy group over at SCE Santa Monica Studio and their God of War outings. You’d have to be crazy to make something so deliciously violent.

Like I said, No one makes these games like the Japanese. They’re fast, they’re tight, they have overly long cut-scenes. Bayonetta is no exception to these rules. Hells yeah, I said tight. The way they design these games are as unique as their style of RPG’s. Platinum Games have created a game with everything we’ve come to expect from a Japanese studio and made sure it was done right… mostly.

Let’s get this straight. I love this game. Don’t even start to think that I don’t. It was delightful. Like a stripper whose going to school to be an elementary teacher. I say again: Delightful.

But I need to rant. I started by talking about the story, and that’s exactly what I want to talk about.

                                                                    She's a very classy lady...

 

Cut-scene Begins!

Bayonetta walks across the room, one hip at a time. Her outfit is made of her own hair. It wraps around her perfect figure in a way that would make Trinity (of Matrix fame) blush. She leans against the bar with the rapturous delight that only a perfect woman possesses…

I can’t help but wonder where my life would be without videogames. Where would my passions lie? I’d probably fall back on my secondary forms of entertainment; Music, books or movies. I’d probably be writing about how, despite a few misses, Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Perhaps I’d write blissfully about how calming I find Jenny Lewis’ voice while I’m trying to sleep. But I don’t listen to her anymore whilst I’m sleeping, due to fact that last time I fell asleep to her music I had a no-no dream about Gerard Butler. It didn’t involve me, mind you… it only involved him. I also don’t watch “300” anymore.

Oh, Gameplay.

See? Zoning in and out.

This is one of those cases where a game would have benefited from being made with an old school formula in mind. I remember back in the day when I was a bad enough dude to rescue the President. That was all the exposition I needed. What I didn’t need was a 20 minute sermon about the end of the world or whatever. A 2 minute sermon would suffice. I did, after all, enjoy the NES Ninja Gaiden.

I suppose I wouldn’t be so irked if the story itself was interesting. But you know… It’s not.
 

Bayonetta, herself, is a compelling enough character. I mean, I don’t really care about her motivation, but she spits out one-liners with enough zeal that kept me, at the very least, somewhat attentive.

There are a few cut-scenes that warrant some praise. Overall, they are very stylized and the action in some of them can be pretty entertaining, if not inadvertently comical.

Despite a story that is so irrelevant that I felt the need to drone on and on about it, the game itself will probably go down as one of my top picks of the year. In truth, it may have inched just ahead of Mass Effect 2 on my current list. The gameplay is just so strong. I really should remember to skip the cut-scenes when next I play it.

If I could take this time to make a wish. Tis a simple wish. I wish… that developers would spare us the crappy stories and just let us play. Do I need to know why I’m fighting a 300 foot tall woman? No. I just need to know how to kill her. You know what? I don’t even need to know that. Just put me in front of her. I’ll do her in, no questions asked.