Game Review: Bayonetta

Coming from the same minds that founded the revolutionary Devil May Cry series, you’d expect the same stylish, brutal and blisteringly paced hack-and-slashing from Bayonetta that has made Capcom’s series so popular. What you probably weren’t anticipating were the slick slow-time mechanics, impossibly brutal finishing moves and perception-buggering visuals that make Bayonetta an early contender for action game of the year.

The gist of it (because any expansion on a gist would probably make both our heads hurt) is that Bayonetta is a witch, who spends her life killing angels to stop them dragging her down to hell. That’s all you need to know really. There’s a never-realised romantic sub-plot in there somewhere and something vague happened 500 years ago which apparently explains everything, but all that generally takes a back seat to inverse smiting. Which is fine, because that’s bloody good fun.

Bayonetta’s combat is, like most good games, easy to grasp but harder to master. It’s simple really; X shoots, Y punches, B kicks, and you string these together for damaging combos. It’s highly accessible; anybody could pick up a pad and immediately start beating the hell (heaven?) out of a few angels, and look fairly stylish while they’re at it. But then there’s that extra level of depth for more hardcore hack-and-slashers: last-minute dodges that slow down time, obscenely brutal torture attacks and a wide variety of weapons (including trombones and a snake whip) that can make Bayonetta a diverse, blisteringly paced and beautifully stylish experience that – at least until God Of War 3 comes out later this year – is unparalleled on the current generation.

Something tells me that the developers are having a bit of a dry spell.

As usual with this sort of game, there are regular boss fights throughout Bayonetta. They’re suitably challenging without completely spiking the difficulty curve, which is great, but more importantly they’re some of the weirdest bosses ever conceived. I mean, the first one is a giant, flying upside-down cherub face with dragons for ears. How could you not have fun killing that? After each boss you’re treated to a visually stunning “Climax” (did I mention the shameless sexual overtones? Only the Japanese), where Bayonetta’s hair (seriously) passes through the dimensions and becomes all kinds of giant creatures, fists, or whatever to finish off the enemy. Sure, it doesn’t really make any sense, but it’s so visually satisfying you probably won’t care. The only slight downside is that you will end up fighting the same bosses a few times, although these appear as toned-down versions to gradually raise the difficulty curve before tougher bosses later in the game, so their cameos are forgiveable.

Yes, that is a giant gargoyle face with a massive tongue tipped with a smiling, crowned cherub. Yes, it does have massive tentacles. I'll have one of what Hideki Kamiya is having, please.

Just in case there was any chance that the combat could become tedious (yeah right) Bayonetta spices things up the with a couple of phenomenally fast, arcade-y vehicle sections, which put you on the back of motorbikes and, er, a missile, as well as a mini-game between missions where you shoot enemies for extra points. These sections really help mix up the gameplay, making Bayonetta a surprisingly diverse and a constantly fun experience that is impossible to get bored of during the first playthrough.

The gameplay will probably draw all the expected comparisons; Devil May Cry, God of War, Ninja Gaiden and the like. But it’s the environments the separates Bayonetta from these games, giving the combat and platforming an entire new dimension that relentlessly buggers your perception – think Mario Galaxy, but with a super-powered receptionist in spandex. Running along walls to escape a lava flow, following a winding path that ends up with you standing up-side down, a hundred feet in the air facing the ground where you were just fighting, and jumping across giant chasms onto a revolving island are just a couple of examples of how Bayonetta plays with the dimensions, and it’s this completely different perspective that raises it above other games of its type.

And now she's running up a wall, dodging falling rocks while killing various flying things. There isn't much they haven't thought of, is there?

So Bayonetta, while making absolutely no sense whatsoever, is an absolutely superb game, raising the bar for all games of its type with its awesome, fluid combat and stunning worlds, and is probably as close to perfect as these games have ever come, experimenting with concepts and making them work so well with proven excellent gameplay. And with the ending leaving things open for a sequel, hopefully it’ll be around again in a few years as another incredible example of the hack-and-slash sub-genre. Frankly, it’s a must-rent for anyone who has ever enjoyed a hack-and-slasher. Chances are it’ll blow you away.

10/10

If you're still not convinced, the game ends with you kicking God across the solar system into the sun, then shooting up it's charred corpse. Best. Ending. Ever.

Reviews coming soon:
Glee (Series Review)
Being Human (Series Review)
Dark Void

Mass Effect 2

Film Review: Avatar

So this is it, then. Over a decade in the making, the film that would change cinema as we know it is finally here. Or maybe self-proclaimed “king of the world” James Cameron has just spent fifteen years and hundreds of millions of dollars setting us up for the biggest, preachiest let down of the year. Yeah, that sounds more like it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Avatar is a bad film. The concept behind it – humans controlling synthetic beings, or Avatars, with their mind – is fairly ingenious, the setting is suitably epic and the technology used to create what is undoubtedly the best looking CGI so far may well change how future blockbusters are produced. But despite all this, Avatar still manages to fall short of expectations.

This is partly down to the plot, which Liege Cameron insisted would win over initial scepticism, being so contrived. It’s that old future-humanity-has-exhausted-Earth’s-resources- so-is-invading-a-peaceful-planet-and-warring-with-the-indigeanous-populace chestnut (a climate change message so glaringly obvious it’d make the audience blind if it wasn’t for the funky 3D sunglasses), with a few sympathetic humans taking up the natives’ banner. Sympathetic human du jour is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former marine who is drafted into the Avatar programme, and under the instruction of chief meat-head Colonel Quaritch is sent to spy on the local Na’vi – a species of giant, blue cat-people that look vaguely like Angelina Jolie after she’s been smacked around with a frying pan. But it’s not long before he falls in love with the Na’vi princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and the planet itself, causing him to turn on his own people and their reckless, greed-driven destruction of the planet (we get it Jim, global warming is bad). Essentially, Avatar is one Na’vi rendition of "Colours of the Wind" away from being Pocahontas in Space, which isn’t about to win over the thousands of keyboard-mashing sceptics that were Cameron’s target audience.

Neither will the characters, who are ironically two-dimensional considering Avatar is supposedly the benchmark for 3D cinema. It’s not that any of the supporting characters are particularly bad, they’re just never properly fleshed out, probably because there’s so much time spent on wide-frame panning shots of the planet’s undergrowth, which makes it a little difficult to muster up any sympathy when they start dropping like flies in the climactic final battle. Maybe they just wanted to get the boring human characters out of the way so they could introduce a greedy, six legged racoon in the sequel.

Still, the story of Avatar was never really the selling point, even if Tzar Cameron has convinced himself it is. It was the promise of the incredible new technology, which never fails to impress. As much as the endless shots of the planet’s environment detract from the story and its characters, they don’t half look good. Making this alien world and its creatures look entirely natural is a colossal achievement in itself. It’s safe to say that, if this is the future of CGI, then the future does look pretty damn awesome.

The 3D, however, still leaves a little to be desired, due largely to the restriction of cinema screens. The beautiful fluttering of insects or falling leaves is often cut short as it goes beyond the limits of the multiplex screen, and there was even a moment where the barrel of a gun poking into the audience was lopped off, probably poking out of the ceiling somewhere. Times like these make 3D look genuinely poor, and no arrow-flying-out-of-the-screen gimmick is going to compensate for that.

It goes without saying that Shah Cameron’s gajillion dollar masterpiece doesn’t live up to expectations. It’s an incredible visual achievement, one that may well go down in cinema history, but there’s precious little else to it. It might be worth seeing, if only for a glimpse of what blockbusters will look like for the next decade or so, but as a story it’s nothing you wouldn’t get from playing "Just Around the River Bend" over a Halo 3 cutscene while someone behind you shouts Lion-O quotes every five minutes. THUNDER CATS HO.

Film Review: TTS: New Moon

The latest in the deservedly popular Twilight Saga, New Moon, is a masterpiece of film-making, a near-perfect story of tumultuous young love that is brimming with sparkling special effects, incredible performances that exceed the young cast's fame, and subtle yet evocative symbolism, the likes of which we have not been treated to since Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. At least that's how most of the teenage girl population will see it, anyway. Anyone else unfortunate enough to be swept up by the phenomenal hype that has surrounded the latest entry in the Twilight Series' (I refuse to seriously call it “Saga” as that is synonymous with “Epic”) will likely be underwhelmed.

New Moon picks up where the first Twilight film left off with Bella and Edward (Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, as if you didn't already know) enjoying their respective lives and after-lives as the high school's awkward couple. It's all going relatively well, considering Edward's overpowering desire to eat her, until Bella gets a paper cut in a room full of blood-starved vampires. The youngest, Jasper, goes mental, lunging for Bella like a rabid dog that's just caught the whiff of a Pepperami, forcing Edward to leap to the rescue. Which he does in the most chivalrous of ways: by pushing Jasper into a piano and throwing Bella several feet into a wall. I can see how he makes girls swoon.

The experience sees a guilty Edward leave town, insisting he never belonged with Bella. Naturally, Bella responds by curling up like an angsty foetus, screaming herself to sleep and sitting in a chair for absolutely ages before she falls into the ridiculously huge arms of Jacob Black (he's a werewolf, by the way). And so the love triangle is born.

Then stuff just seems to stop happening. Oh sure, there are bits where Bella goes a bit suicidal or where Jacob goes all furry and eats that one black vampire from the last film, but it all feels like irrelevant filler between Edward leaving and Bella chasing him. Without Bella and Edward being together there isn't any point in the story because their love is the story; which I'm sure is something the writers are thrilled they managed to get across, but with Edward absent for most of the film that's a good hour and a bit where New Moon just drags on and on, with nothing really interesting really happening besides Jacob Black getting his kit off for no obvious reason. Not that many people in the cinema were complaining, mind.

But the big problem with New Moon isn't that nothing relevant happens for most of the film. It's Bella Swan, probably one of the most infuriatingly weak lead characters in the history of... pretty much everything. There's absolutely nothing endearing about her whatsoever - she's not funny, she's so absorbed in her own angst that she seems totally uncaring unless it's for something that will probably eat her, and she's got an annoying habit of screaming at the top of her lungs when said flesh-eating man beast isn't there to hold her hand. It doesn't help that Kristen Stewart is as utterly talentless as she is, failing to deliver even a half convincing line for the entire 130 minutes.

The love interests aren't much better. Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black stumbles through his lines like he's been caught in a foothold trap, while Robert Pattinson's undead dreamboat Edward Cullen is as bland as ever, although to be fair it's difficult to determine whether that's just the character or whether Pattinson is just a bit rubbish. At least if it's the latter his new forced moniker is appropriate. R Patzzzzzzzzzz.

Fortunately, New Moon’s supporting cast are every bit as good as the leads are bland and wrapped up in their own self-loathing. Ashley Greene is quirky and cheeky as the pint-sized Alice Cullen, ranking as the only likable character who doesn’t want to kill Bella. Then the slightly less friendly Volturi, an order of more conventional vampires led by the wonderfully camp and evil mind of Aro (Michael Sheen), steal the film in during their brief appearance.

While the Volturi may steal the show, they aren’t around long enough to save it. New Moon is a tedious, bland and altogether irrelevant chapter in the series that lacks any real focus until the dying moments. No question about this: avoid. It’s not worth the time or money regardless of how into the series you are. Just skip this one altogether and catch up on the awkward romance next year.

One plus for director Chris Weitz though: New Moon is probably little better than the Golden Compass was. Although saying that is kind of like handing Gillian McKeith a freshly-filled tuppaware tub and pointing out that it’s floating a little bit more than the last one you gave her.

What [person with nothing better to do in the mornings] watched last night

You know that little article next to TV listings in newspapers titled “What [bloke with incredibly easy job] saw last night”? I figured I'd start doing that since blogging about my everyday life was hardly stimulating writing, never mind reading. And tonight seems like as good a time as any to start.

Like most of the people who will probably end up reading this, it was that much-controversial episode of Question Time, which featured BNP leader Nick Griffin as one of the panelists, that was on the box last night. Although it seemed less of an intellectual, topical Q+A and more of a session in medieval stocks for Griffin, complete with peasants throwing rancid vegetables and calling him names.

I should probably get one thing straight before I continue; I don't like Nick Griffin, as a man or as a politician. I'm not defending him, his personal views or those of his party. I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy watching him get a good verbal kicking in most other circumstances. But when it's coming from someone whose idea of wit is starting a sentence with “Dick, oh I'm sorry Nick” or a smug 12-year-old looking student with a blatantly massive stiffy for himself, it all gets a little tedious.

Besides the audience's juvenile insults and throwaway, self-satisfying lefty remarks making for rubbish television, isn't this is the sort of thing that has given the BNP a real hard-on in the past? No doubt they'll be using words like “injustice” and “undemocratic” to describe the audience's playground treatment of Griffin and they wouldn't be entirely unjustified in doing so. We may have given a far-right party with a history of racism a sympathy vote in exchange for a nob gag and a couple of smarmy comments. Superb.

That's not to say last night's Question Time was all bad. There were some good points made regarding the BNP's immigration policy (bricking up the UK-bound half on the channel tunnel and constructing a machine-gun nest on every beach) and Griffin's position on the panel - sitting to the right of a black woman - made unintentionally hilarious use of his lazy left eye as he seemingly kept a wary watch over her just in case she was concealing a tribal spear in her bandana. But other than that it was mostly forgettable; topics that should have been discussed – the BNP's current policies and the reasons for their recent rise to prominence – were largely ignored or were persistently dodged as panelists belted out years-old quotes to score easy points with the audience. In the end, the whole thing was utterly pointless.

Game Review: Halo 3: ODST

Apparently the fight isn't quite finished yet.

Originally intended as a small expansion for Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST seemed to have become so much more. It became a stand-alone game, midnight launches and release parties were announced, and they even surprised us with a brilliant live-action trailer. You'd have been forgiven for thinking all this hype was leading up to a potential game of the year, instead of an expansion with a few tweaks.

The obvious change is that Master Chief, the series' mascot, isn't the focal character. Instead you assume the role of an ODST (which stands for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, something I'm ashamed to admit I knew before ODST was announced), who are slightly more tactical than the gravelly, seven-foot colossus. With the change in personnel comes a snazzy new HUD - referred to in the game as a VISR, that comes complete with a map, list of objectives and not-quite-night-vision – and health system, with both the recharging shield and a health bar. Both have been integrated fairly well, and help make for a more tactical shooter than Halo 3. A couple of new weapons have been included too: a scoped pistol to effectively deal with Grunts and a scoped SMG that is...a little superfluous, really.

The new character: Rookie. A nameless, faceless, armour clad space marine. So not new at all then, really.

Supposedly, the ODSTs aren't quite as capable as the Chief, and this has been reflected in some of the gameplay tweaks; you can't dual-wield weapons, you can't jump as high, and you can't turn a tank into scrap metal with a few well-aimed punches. But at the same time you can rip a turret from it's stand and knock out a Brute Chieftain with one deft smack. Clearly they (Bungie) have tried to make you feel like less of a super-soldier, but haven't quite pulled it off. Whether or not that's a bad thing is debatable; some fans might be disappointed at the lack of change, others won't because it doesn't detract one iota from the experience.

Campaign is the initial draw of Halo, although in ODST it's a little insubstantial, lasting maybe five or six hours, with most of that time will be spent wandering the streets of New Mombassa (the city that was invaded during Halo 2), in a darkened sandbox environment with little-to-no visibility. This was a nice idea but, while credit is due to Bungie again for experimenting with a long established formula, it's an experiment that doesn't really work. The environment itself isn't particularly interesting to explore; every street looks identical, and enemies are few and far between. The lack of visibility, while suitably atmospheric, makes it so that even if there was something vaguely interesting to see, you'd probably miss it anyway unless you were permanently squinting. Even the use of O'Donnel's beautifully composed score doesn't work in the sandbox; it's fine for wandering around but once you find a couple of enemies it's slow, depressing melody feels incredibly out-of-place in a fire fight. Unless you're a dedicated achievement hunter you probably won't want to spend much time exploring New Mombassa, as there's no real purpose to it besides bridging the gap between the more enjoyable missions.

These other missions offer a stark contrast to the drudgery of the New Mombassa streets. The environments are bright and diverse, ranging from wide open nature reserves to teetering crates high above the clouds, that not only make brilliant use of O'Donnel's score but really show off the newly polished engine. Enemies are never in short supply, allowing for the fast paced action we have always associated with Halo. There is a slight feeling of familiarity; for example the second mission, which has you careering through a nature reserve in a Warthog, feels very similar to the Halo 3 mission "Road To Voi". But they're no less enjoyable, some ranking up there with the better missions in the trilogy.

The views are no less spectacular than they were in Halo 3.

The campaign, then, is a mixed bag, alternating between some of the better missions of the series and the probably worst executed idea in it to date. But the multiplayer has always been Halo's main appeal - even after two years, Halo 3 still regularly attracts gamers in their hundreds of thousands – and ODST contributes to that with a whole new co-operative mode: Firefight.

In Firefight, up to four players work to kill oncoming waves of enemies that become stronger and more numerous as the game progresses; anyone who has played either Gears of War 2's Horde or Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombie modes will feel right at home. It's a good mode with a nice variety of maps and, for the most part (a little more ammo would be nice), well thought out. Halo fans will undoubtedly be coming back for more time and time again, like they have been doing with both Halo 2 and Halo 3's multiplayer for the past five years. On the other hand, for everyone else who maybe dipped into Halo before moving onto something else, it probably won't have that lasting appeal.

That's a potential underlying problem with Halo 3: ODST; it's the definition of fan service. For Halo fans it's great, they'll all get their moneys worth by replaying the campaign for achievements, by getting together on Firefight every other night, and feeding their addiction to Halo 3's multiplayer with the three new maps. But if you're not a die-hard Halo fan you'll most likely be left wanting because, although ODST is decent, there's not enough to it, even with the ever-so-slight price cut.

Game Review: Wolfenstein

It's been an eight year wait but the Wolfenstein series, one of the grand-daddies of first-person shooters, has finally made it's way into this generation. Known simply as Wolfenstein, can the latest instalment in the veteran series re-establish itself in an increasingly huge market of first-person shooters?

Things don't start off promising as we find the protagonist, B.J Blazkowicz (I wish I was kidding), disguised on board a Nazi U-boat off the coast of jolly old Blighty. However, it's not long (maybe ten seconds into the cutscene) before our all-American hero abandons all subtlety and, after a daring attempted escape, finds himself cornered by the crew. But, just as they're about to fire, a mysterious blue light emanates around B.J, shielding him from an onslaught of bullets before disintegrating his surrounding enemies. When his bosses realise that the strange light came from a medallion linked to Isenstadt, a German town that has recently become occupied by Nazi cultists, B.J is sent undercover to investigate the goings-on, and then put a stop to it.

As you can tell based on that opening cutscene (a lot of which should have been playable, instead of leaving you sat there completely bewildered for about five minutes), Wolfenstein boasts one of the most hilariously contrived plots in video game history. There are some brilliantly bad moments dotted around the cutscenes - like a heavily accented Russian man with a Stalin 'tasche and an eye-patch standing in a pub full of snarling Nazis warning B.J not to "blow our cover", or how everyone in Isenstadt seems to know the apparently undercover protagonist by his full name - that come around without even the slightest hint of irony. It's so horrifically, shamefully bad that it's almost good. Except it isn't really. It's just rubbish.

It doesn't get much better while you're playing Wolfenstein. Most of the single player is spent wandering around Isenstadt, a sort of psuedo-free-roaming environment that pretends to encourage exploration (loading screens will be full of "Search every corner of Isenstadt for gold and intel") but punishes you for doing so by respawning enemies every time you walk round a corner. By the time you've fought your way through, picked up the minimal gold that was lying around and gotten to the market to spend it, you'd need to spend about a quarter of it on ammo for your weapons anyway! Still, maybe this is a blessing in disguise, since the weapon upgrades are mostly useless (more on that in a minute) and the story isn't nearly interesting enough to make any intel worth reading. That, and exploring Isenstadt is probably the most depressing thing in the world. Every street being a dreary mixture of grey and brown, and with Wolfenstein's graphics looking so dated it's probably one of the ugliest games that's been released for a while.

The missions are a little better, since unlike the areas in Isenstadt they have some purpose and direction. It goes without saying that they're a little generic - this series helped define generic back in the 90's - but they're well paced, and grant you access to all kinds of new powers and equipment.

There's a good variety of weapons to choose from in Wolfenstein. As well as the obligatory weapons that appear in every WW2 themed game (MP40, Panzerschrek, etc) there are a couple of fancy, futuristic weapons, such as the particle cannon. Mixing these very different weapons together works very well; not so much because it adds variety, but because storming round an underground Nazi fortress firing a huge disintegrating beam into anyone that so much as mutters "Achtung" is a hell of a lot of fun. At least until you run out of ammo. The only irritating thing about the weapons was swapping between them, since with a PS3 controller you're never quite sure how much pressure to apply to the R2 button, so a lot of the time it either doesn't swap at all or it brings up the full weapon menu instead of instantly swapping between two weapons, which can be a real pain in the middle of a fire fight.

You'll also have powers, accessed through the aforementioned medallion. The three main powers allow you to control time, deal extra damage and create a personal shield, and can be used to quickly get you out of any tough situations you find yourself in. The other, more basic power, which lets you see the world through an alternate dimension (I honest to God cannot believe I'm writing some of this stuff with my tongue out of my cheek), showing you any secret passages, enemy weak points, and areas where you can recharge your medallion. It's a decent extra but most of the time it's fairly pointless. You'll use it but only because it's there, not because it ever feels particularly necessary to overcome difficult obstacles.

The same can be said for the upgrades system. As I said earlier, you can spend any gold you find lying around on upgrades for your weapons and powers, although in my experience with Wolfenstein it turned out to be pretty frivolous. Since the bigger weapons and later powers are so expensive to upgrade, I just ended up ploughing all my money into the sniper rifle and time control power, and coasted through the game near enough effortlessly with just that one weapon and power, and didn't feel the need to use the otherwise awesome futuristic weapons.

So then, Wolfenstein is ugly, contrived, dated, stupid, clunky, rarely challenging, and the protagonist is named after fellatio. In short, pretty damn bad. It's not as if there are no saving graces - I'm going to bring up that particle gun again - but they don't do much to make up for everything that Wolfenstein does so clumsily. Still, it's not without purpose. Maybe, in twenty years time, developers looking to bring back Halo or Bioshock will look at Wolfenstein and go "Actually, no". Unless they're spearheaded by Activision, of course.

Acorah to inspire Ghost re-envisioning.

Medium Derek Acorah is all set to inspire a remake of hit 1990 movie ghost, following the death of original star Patrick Swayze yesterday.

Acorah, who made a name for himself as a medium working alongside shrieking blonde Yvette Fielding on Living TV's Most Haunted, has stated his interest in recreating the classic romantic flick, which starred Patrick Swayze as a ghost alongside co-star Demi Moore.

“I've already heard from my spirit guide that Swayze's spirit has returned to his home, so we've already got one big name on location” claimed the veteran bullshitter. “If we could just drag Demi from canoodling her adopted son for a couple of minutes we'd be mostly set”.

Acorah did note that a problem with filming scenes with Swayze could be visibility. “It is true that most ghosts are ethereal, making them very difficult to spot for most people” he confessed, “but if you really visualise the ghost, you'll see it. Think of it like the Emperor's new clothes, but I'm honestly not pulling a fast one.”

“If test audiences still struggle, we'll get one of the guys to put in a floating dot that hovers around Demi's erect nipples, or something like that.”

Reports in Hollywood claim that Fox are already in the advanced stages of negotiating a film deal with Acorah and his spirit guide.