Graphics

In an industry that’s usually dominated by Gears of Brown or Halo palettes, when a game like Bayonetta comes along that uses bright colours and flashy effects, your eyes start to bleed. That’s the best way to describe the game, its eye-bleeding gorgeous graphically and it’s such a breath of fresh air to see a game like this, as much as you can see it. With the blistering pace, the amount of attacks and enemy characters on screen it can be hard to keep up with the graphical goodness of the game at times. It has a slick colour design, bright palette and some truly smooth lighting effects for the levels. Special effects are likewise extremely good and the level design works well with the various elements. There’s no texture tearing or pop, or anything and for once the 360 version outperforms the PS3 counterpart.

One minor niggle: the camera, the camera has a habit of putting you out of shot behind a non-fading foreground object.

Animations

Fast and fluid is the order of the day here. Bayonetta’s animations are excellent, with the characters and the enemies doing some amazingly cool moves as they battle. Bayonetta is a superbly animated character, part warrior, part pole dancer and all ‘attitude’. The boss characters are fantastic, varied and extremely well put together with numerous minor animations crossing the whole character since many of them are multi-part enemies. The final boss is a wonderful design and animated to near-perfection.

AI

The AI in the game is a good challenge; it uses a variety of special moves, works as a pack to get you off guard and can trigger some devastating combos when you’re facing similar characters to the protagonist. It does what it needs to do on the tin, nothing more, nothing yes.

Physics

In some of the vehicle based sections, the physics is a little off in some places but it’s not too bad. It’s nothing that detracts wholly from the game, doesn’t happen all of the time and it’s usually fairly solid.

Sound

It’s a solid sound suite for Bayonetta, from the character’s guns to the various ambient and spot sound effects, there’s nothing more to say.

Music

Bayonetta uses a bright and fairly energetic soundtrack; there are a few remixes of Fly me to the Moon to battle along to now and then. It also has some classical pieces for the Angelic Hymn records. All in all it’s a great juxtaposition of musical choices that have been chosen to fit the moment.

Voice and Dialogue

The voice work is solid enough, there are a few grating performances and Bayonetta is a lot easier on the ears than the previous Dante was. As for the script, it’s camp at times, hokey at others and basically what you’d expect from a Devil May Cry style game... don’t go looking for originality in the writing and be warned it’s packed with cursing.

Multiplayer

None.

Final shot?

For a new IP it’s refreshing to see that whilst it’s based on the DMC idea, it doesn’t try and clone it. Bayonetta feels fresh, with a lot to do and see in game as well as specific unlocks for the next playthrough. There’s enough here to keep you coming back, hoarding and spending Halos on the next special item and so forth. With numerous levels of difficulty the game is pitched as a challenge for all kinds of gamers.

The first play is likely going to take you around 8-10 hours depending on how much you explore and how many times you go back to grind up the things you missed, better medals mean better rewards after all.