{"id":16778,"date":"2015-02-15T21:31:11","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T11:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=16778"},"modified":"2015-02-21T10:20:07","modified_gmt":"2015-02-21T00:20:07","slug":"bayonetta-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=16778","title":{"rendered":"Bayonetta 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bayonetta2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Platform: \u00a0<\/strong>Wii U
\nDeveloper: \u00a0<\/strong>Platinum Games
\nPublisher: \u00a0<\/strong>Nintendo<\/p>\n

I<\/span>n the modern day video game landscape, there are few announcements of exclusive games that have the capacity to shock and surprise. \u00a0Generally, the importance of third party exclusives\u00a0has been watered down as the major titles like\u00a0Grand Theft Auto<\/em>,\u00a0Assassin’s Creed<\/em> and\u00a0Call of Duty<\/em> are freely available across multiple systems. \u00a0One game announcement that bucked the trend away from exclusivity was the news that\u00a0Bayonetta 2<\/em>\u00a0was in development and would only be available on the Nintendo Wii U.<\/p>\n

Most people thought the odds of getting a sequel to the critically acclaimed but commercially disappointing\u00a0Bayonetta<\/em> was a long shot in of itself. \u00a0And if few people expected the game to find a publisher, even fewer still would have thought\u00a0that the publisher willing to front up the financial support would be Nintendo considering that the original game was never released on the Wii and the game’s edgy content is rather at odds with Nintendo’s family friendly image. \u00a0There was plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth online as fans of the original begged, pleaded and petitioned for the game to come to a Microsoft or Sony platform.<\/p>\n

If it was a bitter pill to swallow for fans of the series who don’t own a Wii U before the game’s launch, it would get even worse\u00a0in October last year. \u00a0Bayonetta<\/em> is a game that matches the lofty heights of the original and rightly received a ton of praise and Game of the Year awards, scooping the Best Of The Year honours for Edge Magazine, Destructoid, NeoGaf and more.<\/p>\n

\"2014bayonetta2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For the uninitiated,\u00a0Bayonetta<\/em> and its sequel are action adventure games starring the eponymous Umbran witch Bayonetta – a leggy, hyper-sexualized super hero who wears gun stilettos and sports magical hair that can come to life as a weapon of mass destruction. \u00a0Bayonetta has a swagger and bravado about her demeanour that mark an instant impression on the player. \u00a0The games are somewhat divisive for their content as the camera lens does have a leery Male Gaze about it that focuses rather gratuitously on her body. \u00a0The game also delves a fair bit into cheap sexual innuendo with its dialogue. \u00a0Having said that, Bayonetta is also one of the most charismatic, bad ass women in the medium of video games and she isn’t one for suffering fools gladly. \u00a0She makes short work of men who underestimate her.<\/p>\n

If the presentation of the Bayonetta character is somewhat polarizing, the same can’t be said for the playability of the games themselves which are universally lauded as some of the best in the history of the genre. \u00a0Bayonetta 2<\/em> sticks pretty closely to the formula of the original game and this is no bad thing.<\/p>\n

The combat in Bayonetta 2<\/em>\u00a0is wildly varied and visually spectacular. \u00a0It’s a pleasure to watch the crisp animations as Bayonetta transitions from unloading her dual barettas into a hapless demon ogre and then\u00a0seamlessly moves into a flurry of fists and boots to finish off the imps and wild dogs surrounding her. \u00a0The game has an old school beat ’em up heritage that harkens back to\u00a0the likes of\u00a0Ninja Gaiden\u00a0<\/em>where\u00a0an emphasis is placed on combos and nailing your timing between attack and defence. \u00a0The game implements this using ‘witch time’, a Matrix inspired slow-mo mode that is unlocked when the player successfully dodges an attack (rather than blocking it) at the last possible moment. \u00a0It sounds like a simple concept on paper but its a large part of what makes\u00a0Bayonetta<\/em> so fun to play and sets it apart from its contemporaries. \u00a0The risk-reward system of witch time coupled with the general ebb and flow of the game’s combat\u00a0makes for a heady combination. \u00a0Once you get your head around the combat mechanics and begin to uncover its depth and flexibility, it absolutely transforms the experience into one of those games where you enter a zone of concentration and immense satisfaction.<\/p>\n

The quality of the combat mechanics coupled with the spectacle of the Bayonetta universe are what make this an action game for the ages. \u00a0To set the scene, consider the game’s prologue where we start with Bayonetta in New York walking around a high street shopping precinct. \u00a0A barrage of demon spawn spring a surprise attack on Bayonetta and within minutes, she finds herself standing on the back of a fighter jet plane in mid air, battling minions of the underworld. \u00a0Once dispatched, Bayonetta then fights a dragon beast\u00a0the size of the Chrysler building. \u00a0After landing the killer blow, she flips, lands back on terra firma and throws out a cheesy one liner to show that she’s non-plussed and cool as ever. \u00a0Phew<\/em>. \u00a0It’s no exaggeration to say that the opening scene in\u00a0Bayonetta 2<\/em> probably has a greater sense of size and spectacle than most games’ final stages.<\/p>\n

Bayonetta 2<\/em> is a game that starts in fifth gear and maintains the rage for a full fifteen hour story mode. \u00a0The game is packed with additional content including outfits, unlockable moves, new missions, a New Game+ mode and extra Making Of content. \u00a0Not unlike the combat,\u00a0Bayonetta 2<\/em> has design blueprints of a game designed from the Playstation 2 era, before DLC, patches and micro-transactions became the norm. \u00a0The whole package is absolutely sublime and given that the Wii U game currently comes bundled with the original\u00a0Bayonetta<\/em> at no extra cost, provides considerable bang for its buck.<\/p>\n

Bayonetta 2<\/em>\u00a0is an iterative improvement upon the original\u00a0Bayonetta<\/em> but together they are so far ahead of the pack and provide such a satisfying experience that you can’t begrudge Platinum Games for sticking with a winning formula. \u00a0These two games are to the Action Adventure genre\u00a0as\u00a0Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2<\/em> are to 3D platformers – near perfect and utterly peerless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Umbra witch returns exclusively on the Wii U in a mind bending new action adventure game<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[480,441,2175,950],"class_list":["post-16778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-bayonetta","tag-nintendo","tag-platinum-games","tag-wii-u"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16778"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17186,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16778\/revisions\/17186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}