Game Review: Bayonetta

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

"Bayonetta"

Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Style: 1-player action

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Platinum Games

Release: January 5

ESRB: M

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Concept: Take "Devil May Cry," make the combat even better, and replace Dante with every fetish you can think of.

Graphics: Character and enemy models are remarkably detailed. Some of the environments are a bit bland, but others are downright beautiful.

Sound: The fluffy, poppy soundtrack is a fun and amusing deviation from the genre's generic metal tendencies.

Playability: During standard combat, the controls are airtight. Things get sloppier during the one-off novelty sequences.

Entertainment: Cutting through foes with outrageous combos is consistently awesome, and it just gets better as the game's complexity unfolds.

Replay Value: Moderate

The Bottom Line: 9/10

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All of the ridiculous hijinks reserved for over-the-top cutscenes in most games are right at your fingertips during every moment of "Bayonetta." Breakdancing and firing off a flurry of bullets, teleport-kicking your enemies from a magic portal, and summoning enormous lethal devices from thin air are just a few of the moves in your standard arsenal ? and that's before things get really crazy. However, don't let all of the game's showboating fool you into thinking that it is devoid of substance; with a fluid combat system and incredibly responsive controls, "Bayonetta" delivers improbable action with unprecedented style.

You may be slightly overwhelmed at first. With foes coming at you from all directions and magically charged attacks firing off everywhere, it can be challenging to make sense of the chaos. Once you master the intricacies of battle, however, you'll be conducting the flow of destruction like a symphony. Perform a well-timed dodge to initiate a few seconds of slo-mo, lay into the nearest creature using your sword and boot-mounted shotguns, then finish it off by conjuring a medieval torture device. Not only are these combos visually stunning and endlessly entertaining, they're a breeze to execute thanks to the precise controls.

Anyone familiar with the Devil May Cry series will feel right at home with "Bayonetta's" control scheme. That shouldn't be a surprise; "Bayonetta" director Hideki Kamiya created "Devil May Cry" while working at Capcom. Now with Platinum Games, Kamiya has refined the genre he helped invent by pushing it to the limit, giving players a ludicrous amount of power and flexibility, and making each stage a playground to showcase their prowess. Each enemy type requires different tactics to defeat, which gets especially interesting when they start appearing in mixed groups in enclosed spaces. Most of the bosses ? which are amazing in both scale and detail ? require quick reactions and your undivided attention to take down. Providing you don't set the difficulty to easy automatic mode (which can literally be played with one hand), you're in for a satisfying challenge, though it certainly isn't as unforgiving as the likes of "Ninja Gaiden" or "Devil May Cry 3."

Though you can expect a lot from the combat in "Bayonetta," the same cannot be said of the story. The game's nonsense plot is only important insofar as it occasionally pits "Bayonetta" against her nemesis and fellow witch, Jeanne. Along the way, "Bayonetta" struts her stuff and spouts various tawdry and suggestive phrases. Thankfully, the sexuality is so comically overblown that it never takes on the creepy voyeuristic qualities of games like "Dead or Alive." This title is conscious of its own silliness, and treats its leading lady and her exploits with an appropriate tongue-in-cheek tone.

Not every high-heeled step of the way is a right one; the weakest points of "Bayonetta" are the handful of one-off sequences that replace the normally taut battles with shoddy and repetitive novelty gameplay. Driving a motorcycle or blasting flying enemies while riding a missile may change up the routine, but the segments last too long for how poorly they control. People will play "Bayonetta" because they want a particular brand of action, and that doesn't include lame and simplistic turret gunning. The sequences aren't numerous enough to kill the mood, but they are back-loaded; parts of the final chapters ? where you should be exercising the full extent of your power ? are bound to these mediocre events instead of the combat the game does so well.

When you're chaining combos together, switching between weapons, and punishing otherworldly opponents, "Bayonetta" is the epitome of its breed. It isn't so much an evolution of the genre as a well-tuned and highly polished culmination of its history. From this point forward, something about stylish action games will need to change, because I have trouble imagining how a developer could use the tried-and-true formula to create anything more delightfully excessive than "Bayonetta."

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