John Zeitler

I sat down a couple of days ago with the “First Climax” demo of Bayonetta on the 360. Granted, I don’t really think I’m much in the target demographic for this game; by that I mean I’m over the age of sixteen. Really, Bayonetta does not have a whole lot going for it beyond the maximum boobage factor, and even then, I would seriously doubt the sanity of anyone who honestly finds that character model in the slightest bit attractive. I mean, come on. There’s sexy, there’s too sexy to be real, and then there’s “there is no way in hell she could even walk, let alone balance herself on derringer high heels“.

Okay, so she does have glasses. Minor point there, but putting glasses on what amounts to a polygonal RealDoll won’t get me to admit that there’s anything else worth drooling over.

If there was any real substance to the gameplay, though, I could have forgiven Bayonetta for being hormone overdosed. The game plays out like, well, Devil May Cry. Except without the… yeah, seriously, when you try to get over the fact that she’s trying way too hard to be a fetish object, there’s nothing really all that interesting here. If Platinum Games has done anything to the DMC formula, though, it’s only served to make the game worse. The tutorial level shows you how to do some of the basic moves, but then you’re thrown into a stage that looks like the guys at Platinum watched Dead Fantasy about fifty zillion times and took out anything copyright infringing. It’s in this stage where you realize the tutorial lied to you: you don’t get to see the over-the-shoulder view when performing the rapid-fire gun-kata bullet storm move; the camera is zoomed out so far back that you can barely tell which character is you, let alone when to dodge for the Witch Time slowdown effect; even if the camera wasn’t a thousand yards away, you still can’t discriminate between Bayonetta and the tall, gangly, ambiguously-gendered things she’s fighting; and worst of all, it just never stops. I mashed B and Y for about four minutes, then the game told me I was done with the level (and that I did badly), and then there was a pure cheesecake shot of Bayonetta walking in a train.

That’s when I realized exactly what Bayonetta is. It’s cheesecake. It’s basically Maxim. It talks a big game, with “climax” this and “child of the light” that; but in the end you’re still not gonna see any of the good stuff because a tactfully-choreographed knee, or elbow, or strand of hair is always going to block your vision. The game’s a big tease. It would be better if there was at least some redeeming quality, either in the gameplay or the visuals, but there isn’t.

I suppose that it’s telling, then, that despite it being a big selling point of the game, I never once saw the “climax” finishes. There’s something poetic about that, I think.