Bayonetta (Xbox 360)

Bayonetta is the work of Platinum Games, a studio made of former Capcom/Clover employees. Focussing around Bayonetta, a dark witch, as she fights against angelic hordes who she must sacrifice to appease the demons, Bayonetta's storyline is functional if alittle basic. The characterisation charms the player however with Bayonetta's personality, playful yet wicked and a source of amusement.

Gameplay-wise, Bayonetta is sublime. The gameplay is simplistic yet deep, based out three basic attack buttons, jump and dodge. Yet the sheer amount of combos based across a range of weapons (from simple guns to swords to rockets!) is staggering and the freedom it offers is amazing. Dodging at the right time activates 'Witch Time' a period of slow-motion to deal a large amount of damage. Bayonetta's enemies are no punch bags for these combos either and the way you fight each one will vary. Then there are the outstanding boss fights, which is where Bayonetta truly shines. These are generally huge enemies and each will amaze the player. The only real flaws in Bayonetta's gameplay is that sometimes the games platforming lets it down, some of the quicktime events come out of nowhere (catching the player unaware) and the vehicle levels (which overstay their welcome and become abit boring). But otherwise Bayonetta is excellent.

Bayonetta, graphically is beautiful. Between the character models, which stand out from the background to the backgrounds themselves, Bayonetta is visually stunning. The character models are well designed and look brilliant. The levels are mixture and work really well, from the towns, to air bases and angelic paradises. The huge boss fights look outstanding and give Bayonetta a real sense of scale. Musically Bayonetta is good. The voice-over is good but can be alittle off putting. The music is generally very good, with a rather...fitting battle theme.

Bayonetta can be adjusted difficulty wise, from very easy to the much difficult hard and very hard. This leads to alot of replayability and there are times when you may retry a level just to improve your score. At the time of writing the game is also really cheap (for around £15) which makes it excellent value for money. At full price Bayonetta was well worth the money. Reduced it's essential.