FuzzyCo

OK, so I can't do fighting game combos. Ask Shaun or Erica to describe the hilarity of watching me try and do the first XXY combo in a Mortal Kombat tutorial. So when I had Bayonetta borrowed for two days while Shaun was in Vegas, I made a very deliberate choice that rather than struggle through the first few chapters on Normal I'd just crank it down to Easy and see if I could get through the whole game.

And with the gameplay reduced to wild button mashing, that left more time for me to pay attention to the story. And the story is crazy.

SPOILERS!

Bayonetta is the last (+/- 1) of an ancient line of moon-worshipping witches, supposed to be the balance to a sect of sun worshipping-sages. Each faction controls an "eye of the world" and the two are never supposed to meet. But 500 years ago a sage and a witch had a baby, and that was Bayonetta, and then she was put in a coffin for 500 years. And now she has to kill a bunch of angels every day or she'll be dragged down to Inferno. Maybe. It's mentioned once or twice and then doesn't ever seem to matter. (though, to be fair, maybe it doesn't matter because you do kill a lot of angels in the course of the game.)

So Bayonetta gets attacked by a lady in red, who we know from the intro is her BFF witch but Bayonetta has amnesia from all her time in the coffin, and decides to go to this Spanish city to investigate. Once there, Bayonetta kills bigger and bigger angels using punching and guns and her hair (which is also her jumpsuit) until she finally figures out that the last of the Sages (who is her father, of course) is trying to wake up the Creator, using the two eyes of the world, so that the Creator can unite the three realities (Paradiso, Inferno, and Terra) into one. Bayonetta wants to stop him because... well, just because. "Because I'm a wise-cracking sexy witch!" seems to be most of her reason. It's really kind of odd that Bayonetta doesn't ever seem to ask the question whether combining all the realities is a good or bad thing. "You're for it, so I'm against it" seems to be the whole of her motivation. I mean, if nothing else, if she really is in thrall to Inferno and in danger of being drug off to hell, might she not want Inferno to go away?

Oh, and there's a little girl who is Bayonetta herself as a child. Whatevs.

Long story short, Bayonetta defeats the Sage (who is also her father) but then it was a trick and he sticks her in a rocket and shoots himself and her into space and into God's eyes, who wakes up. The end.

Wow. What subversive storytelling. Maybe Bayonetta was the villain all along and the Sage had the right idea. There's an Epilogue, so maybe that will just be God uniting the realities and then Bayonetta realizing the error of her ways.

Or... maybe the red witch from before will ride her motorcycle into space, wake up Bayonetta, who will then have the biggest boss-battle ever and beat up God (with punching and shooting and her hair) and then throw him/her into the sun.

And then the ending calls back the opening (dear lord, I totally forgot to mention the low-rent Joe Pesci knock-off) and we're back to beating to angels, hahaha, freeze-frame!

What?!?

Also, the character designs, especially of all the various angels, are excellent. And I hear that if you can do those fighting-game combos, that part is challenging and engaging.

FuzzyCo grade: B-