It's been a while since I've blogged at length, but it's also been a while since I haven't not slept because of staggering amounts of homework. Either way I decided to get some quick impressions up.

I was browsing gametrailers earlier today and saw some Bayonetta videos. Up to this point I haven't been particularly interested in the game, despite hearing absolutely wondrous sounding things about it for more than a year. I started watching one of the videos and was intrigued by two things, the fact that all the speech was in English with the text being Japanese, and that it said demo. I paused the video immediately and mosied on over to my japanese PSN account. Lo and behold there was the Bayonetta demo, up for grabs. I had seen zero fanfare regarding its availability, so I felt as if I was discovering a hidden treasure. So, my impressions, let me show you them.



The demo consists of

Tutorial

You can play this, I did, but there's still a fair chance you won't bother with most of what it teaches you anyways. The important thing to remember is that R2 is dodge.

Cutscene 1
Corridors + Fight in Open Courtyard + Big Angel #1
2 second fight in small room
Fight against staircase devouring Big Angel #2
Cutscene
Boss Fight

1.The first cutscene doesn't reveal much, in fact I could barely hear what was being said, so it didn't reveal much at all. Long story short Bayonetta is on a train, there are ghost things behind her being all menacing, someone is saying something, she turns around and the ghost things are lounging as if menace was the furthest thing from their evil minds, train arrives at station.

2.I also spent that time nitpicking the graphics which looked fairly "meh." I was pretty disappointed by them honestly. However, once the train stopped I started to change my mind.


2. Once you exit the train there are a few short corridors that lead into a large open courtyard.

3.It was in the corridors that I made my first major discovery, Bayonetta is somehow related to Sonic. I have no idea just how Sega managed to dream up an even more convoluted family tree for the blue blur, but the fact that Bayonetta is collecting Sonic's rings makes it clear that they are somehow related. The rings come out of most breakable things and enemies.

4."Breakable things" includes vases, crates, benches, the usual basically.

5.Another discovery made in these corridors is that Bayonetta can wall jump. I did it on accident a few times because 3D wall jumping doesn't come naturally right away, but I did enjoy the mechanic once I realized what I was doing.

6. The pedestal that you start on after exiting the train station started to turn my mind around on the graphics. It was fairly ornate and had a glisten that my eyes enjoyed.

7. Throughout this whole area until enemies showed up there were outline-ish things of robed people wandering around. As far as I can tell there is no way to interact with them.

8. Bayonetta has blood! I honestly had no idea. During my first fight I accidentally changed weapons to a totally bitching sword and called forth the crimson rush from the severed arteries of my vanquished foes. While the blood has a think, meaty quality to it it evaporates almost as soon as it makes contact with the ground.

9. The enemies are very ornate and covered in jewels and bangles and all sorts of gold looking things. They're also some kind of bird-angel designed to kick your ass.

10. When you get attacked the game changes. The graphical filters alter a bit and the music doesn't just pick up, it changes pieces entirely. This is good and bad. It's always neat to have a a clear delineation for battles, but it was sort of jarring and the transition was nonexistent.

11. During the cutscene when the enemies were rushing in I realized I had been too harsh on the games graphics earlier. It seems that everything I saw was running in-game and the only changes were through graphical filters. By keeping the foreground clear and blurring everything else it was obvious when the game had gone into cut-scene mode.

12. The combat is fun. I immediately started button-mashing and was doing ok against the smaller minions, but the larger angel-thing was kind of kicking my ass while I did the same to him. It was only as I was about to die that I remembered to dodge.

13. Dodging is half the combat. Once you doge an attack the game goes into witch-time. Here time slows and you can unleash the beast on your enemies. I think witch-time entrance may also be dependent on a series of sphere below your health that you charge up through combat, but I wasn't paying attention, so I couldn't tell you.

14. As you dismantle the health bars of the larger angel fellas, and possibly the smaller ones, chunks of their skin come off revealing the demonic looking carapace beneath. This leads me to believe that these so-called angels may in fact be up to no good.

15. Bayonetta's finisher on the larger enemies is sick. It's massive and ridiculous.

late Addition. The first giant thing I fought had a sweet golden jewel-encrusted axe. Once I dispatched him I was able to use a shrunken version of it for a limited time. It had different attacks and was absurdly strong. In fact, many of the enemies drop usable weapons. I saw a tuba looking thing, the aforementioned battle axe and a staff with the ring ornamental thing on top.

16. The game has some frantic button mashing to get a higher score on kills, as well as some joystick manipulation to get out of enemy attacks. All of these are accompanied by cool looking circular meters that yelled things at me in Japanese or made cool noises.

17. The large angel-demons have weak points but they can also be dispatched by simply slashing at whatever part of them is available.

18. The boss fight was against another one of whatever you are except more pure or something. It wasn't that hard considering I never dodged, but I was one hit away from death.

19. The boss fight was memorable in that you could run around and fight on the walls and ceilings. Think a much faster version of Isaac's mag boots + no gravity from Dead Space.

20. After each section you get a grade. It's pretty much the same as Viewtiful Joe. Minus points for damage or using items, plus points for style, speed and being awesome. The lowest medal I got was bronze, the highest was platinum.

Overall? The game looked good. Once you start fighting you can see where the graphical effort is, and that's a good thing. Fights looked awesome, enemies were massive, ridiculous, and fun to beat down. I would be a bit worried about variation in the environment, but I've heard positive things about that in the past so we'll just have to wait and see. One thing I haven't heard about is variation in enemies, this could end up being an issue if it's just the same few variations over and over.

So far I would say that Platinum games is living up to their pedigree.