Review - Bayonetta 2 - WiiU

• Classy English lady
• Clothes made of hair
• Angels, demons, hair?
• I need this game in my life

- INFINITE CLIMAX (heh) -

What is it?

Bayonetta 2 is the most recent instalment in the spectacle fighting, or Third person 3-D action game, series from Platinum Games who are responsible for some fantastic games such as Madworld for the Wii, the original Bayonetta, the underrated Vanquish and Metal Gear Rising. Despite the rocky performance of the first game it was well received and people loved it for how over the top the fighting was and the character of Bayonetta herself, but even with that Sega had no intention or desire to put out a sequel, flash forward a few years and out of nowhere Nintendo of all people announce that they will be funding development for the WiiU exclusive sequel and I found a huge reason to buy a WiiU.

Story

You're an Umbra Witch, you kill angels and demons. OK moving on..

Alright alright more depth etc. The game begins with our leading leggy lady Bayonetta out on a little shopping trip in the city with her stocky Italian-American walking cliché of a friend (or at least what passes for a friend in her mind) Enzo Ferino. On his merry way to acquire presents for his children Enzo is nearly run down by a lady on a motorbike with outrageously long hair, this turns out to be Jeanne (Bayonettas former rival turned ally) who arrives to update Bayonetta on the situation in Paradiso (that's Heaven to you and me). Once that's done she disappears and Enzo resumes his toy quest, whilst doing that a fighter jet comes down to street level and heads straight for him and yes it really does change that quickly. Cue Bayonetta who arrives just in time to punt the jet skyward and begin her assault.

Skip forward a few fights with Angels and an appearance Jeanne to save our arse and it looks like things are wrapping up so we summon a giant Demon from Hell to finish things off at which point things go a bit awry as it breaks free and begins to terrorise the city, during this fight Jeanne gets hit so hard her soul comes out and is dragged down to Inferno and THIS is where the story begins as we embark to rescue her soul and shove it back in her body. Along the way you'll encounter a couple of returning characters as well as some new faces and a fair amount of throwbacks and nods to the first game, there's a lot more to the story than just a rescue mission but going into detail about that would ruin the fun were you to play it for yourself, also it's worth noting that I only covered the first 15-20 minutes of the game so there's that.

Gameplay

Hey, did you play the first Bayonetta? Did you like it? Good because it's more of the same with the punching and the kicking and the giant fists made of hair and the spanking, oh the spanking. Anyway. You move from chapter to chapter completing a varying number of verses (the biggest variation is whether you find all the bastarding verses or not), during which you'll find portals to the Muspelheim where you must complete a task using a given set of rules such as don't touch the floor as well as portals to the Gates of Hell where you'll find the lovable Rodin (pronounced Rodaaaan for some reason) peddling his overpriced wares in exchange for your hard earned currency. You earn Halos for every enemy you kill and more based on your overall performance throughout the chapter and these can be spent on various things such as: new weapons, restorative items, trinkets to alter gameplay, new moves and costumes of which there are many including some special Nintendo ones such as Peach and Samus.

As I mentioned above you can buy new moves from the shop to expand the already huge combo list, however I ended up going through the game only buying one extra move and I'm pretty certain I could have done without it. While the combo list is big and varies with every weapon fights will always devolve into hammer as many buttons as possible and cool shit will happen which isn't really that bad when you think about it. The only place this tactic fails to work is in the games Tag Climax mode aka co-op. Here you and a friend (or random person) choose 6 different scenarios and compete for score and ultimately more halos to spend on more costumes, these scenarios are unlocked as you progress through the story and there are 52 total cards to unlock however some cards do have secret conditions that need to be met in order to unlock them such as completing the game on a higher difficulty.

Graphics

The game is gorgeous and runs at a glorious 60fps in 1080p and definitely helps show what the WiiU is actually capable of as opposed to something like Mario 3D world (which was also great). The environments are beautifully rendered if a little repetitive but where the game shines is in Paradiso and the Inferno because it's here that the artists have more license to essentially go nuts and over the top. Paradiso is what you would expect in that it's very regal and bright with lots of use of white, yellow and gold and if I'm wrong about that just put it down to being colourblind.. Inferno really stands out and everything about the environment feels oppressive and like it wants to kill you and the enemy design amplifies that feeling of terror and dread that you would expect to find in a place called the Inferno. Monsters in this game are a sight to behold and it's clear that as much effort went into designing the small flying ball angel things as it did into the giant hair demon dragon and it's not like there are a small amount of enemy types, as you progress through the game each enemy type seems to evolve and continuously get bigger and more of a pain in the arse to fight.

Also, get used to that creepy baby face that's on the angels because you'll be seeing it constantly, in your nightmares..it haunts me.

Audio

Boasting an absurd 183 tracks the Bayonetta 2 soundtrack is pretty damn epic, that's really the best way to describe it, when you're fighting a giant bone snake you want something suitably amazing musically to accompany that scene and make it even more over the top and that's exactly what the soundtrack accomplishes, they even throw in a cover of Moon River. The sound design is pretty flawless and whether you're slicing and dicing with your swords or hammering something to death every hit feels good, it's not even annoying when you're skating around with chainsaws for shoes. Hellena Taylor also gives a fantastic performance as Bayonetta and perfectly delivers the characters hyper-confidence throughout the game.

Yay/Nay?

Bayonetta 2 is a fantastic game with incredible characters and gameplay to match and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, but it does have it's issues. The biggest issue of all is that it's essentially just more of the same, you can buy this game bundled with the original and if you played through the first and jumped straight into the second you'd probably wonder if you'd forgotten to change discs. There's also what I consider to be poor design within the co-op mode in that you're limited to one set of weapons for all 6 scenarios as opposed to the two sets you can utilise in single player and you can't change your character or weapon loadouts without quitting out of co-op which means you then have to start the lobby over again. It's a small thing I know but it seems like an oversight to me and it became annoying when I would unlock a new character mid game and have to finish all 6 scenarios, change character and start a new set of 6 not knowing if I would even like the character.

However even with those few issues it's not even close to being a deal breaker, even with the repetition I wouldn't call this a failing because at the end of the day if you enjoyed the experience the first time then having the experience all over again with some changes is fantastic. If you loved the first Bayonetta then you'll no doubt love this one as well, if you love spectacle fighters then you'll probably love this as well. I loved it to the point that I went from start to finish in two sittings and have already started over again on a harder difficulty with a different character. If you have a WiiU this is definitely what I would call a must buy game, I'd even say it's a good reason to buy a WiiU.

http://bayonetta2.nintendo.com/

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Wii-U/Bayonetta-2-765382.html

Review - Shovel Knight - PC

• Retro Platformer
• Pogo Simulator
• £10.99/£14.99 with the glorious soundtrack  

- FOR SHOVELRY -

*Disclosure - These screenshots are from the press kit on Yacht Clubs website because mine got corrupted in a HDD issue*

What is it?

Released back in June 2014, Shovel Knight is an 8-bit 2D platformer in the vein of old Castlevania games for PC, 3DS and the WiiU from Yacht Club Games. It began life as a Kickstarter campaign and is one of the few things we can safely call a success when it comes to Kickstarter.

Story

One day whilst out adventuring with your favourite gal pal Shield Knight you stumble upon the ominously named Tower of Fate where you both fall prey to a cursed amulet, when you wake up Shield Knight is gone and you're left feeling quite upset by the whole thing and sack adventuring in favour of early retirement. Big mistake really. During your extended vacation a formidable team of nasty chaps make an appearance and begin terrorising the realm, including the all powerful enchantress and as you might guess she's not too friendly. When news reaches you about all the bad things that have happened since you've been gone the decision is made, time to once again pick up shovel and put a stop to it all.

Gameplay

When you hear the words "8-bit 2D platformer" you know what you're getting and admittedly that isn't always a good thing since this is a genre filled with quite a lot of shitty games. Shovel Knight stays true to the genre and it's levels are laden with holes to fall down, spikes to fall on and secrets to be found, oh and enemies that will go out of their way to get you killed. You even get a Ducktales style pogo jump when you jam your mighty shovel into the moist brains of enemies.

When you do die, and you will a lot, you lose a portion of your money which you have a chance at reclaiming by getting to the spot you died and collecting the bags ala Dark Souls. The controls are incredibly responsive and whilst I prefer to play with an Xbox 360 pad (despite it having one of the worst D-pads in the world) using a keyboard will not be a hindrance on you.

It's worth mentioning that if you're playing on PC check your V-sync settings because I went through over half the game before I realised turning it off made the game run much better and made me run much MUCH quicker, or rather run at the speed I'm supposed to.

Graphics

Again, you know what you're getting when it comes to 8-bit. Yacht Club have gone above and beyond when it comes to the stylistic feel of Shovel Knight, even using a colour palette nearly identical to the original NES and their effort shows because the game is simply stunning to look at. The character design is incredible and each environment is varied and conveys the theme of each level so well. The 8-bit style isn't for everyone and it isn't always done right but you would have a hard time looking at this game and not thinking it looks beautiful.

Audio

Before I gush about how good the music is I want to touch on the sound design because it's really good and has a lot of satisfying bit-crush throughout, okay music time. Oh it's so good, seriously it's just so damn good! Jake Kaufman did outstanding work on this game, truly inspiring. I love chiptune music and this is no exception, it's so well written and an absolutely perfect match for the game, it even has 2 tracks written by Manami Matsumi who wrote music for Mega Man! How amazing is that! Go to Jakes Bandcamp page and listen to it, just, do it. Now.

Yay or Nay?

There's a reason I like this game a lot that I've yet to touch on and that's the character of Shield Knight, she's not the usual woman that needs saving, she isn't a love interest she's your partner and the two of you are a well oiled machine together. Much better than whining about being in a castle or some other plot device. The games biggest failing is its length, I got a lot of enjoyment out of my first playthrough (which would've gone faster without the V-sync issues) and while you have the option for a new game plus it feels artificial since all it does really is make things a bit harder. That having been said I really do like this game and find it hard not to recommend it to anyone and everyone because it's just a really enjoyable experience and who doesn't love that?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/250760/
http://yachtclubgames.com/shovel-knight/
http://virt.bandcamp.com/album/shovel-knight-original-soundtrack

Review - Tomodachi Life - 3DS

• Fun
• Stupid
• Fan-fic generator
• Pricey

What is it?

The Island as it starts

Tomodachi Life is a very strange crossbreed of The Sims and Animal Crossing wherein you are god and have to deal with an island full of Mii's who have problems that need solving and their free will

can only do so much.

The whole gang..so far

Story

Basically there isn't a story...or nothing that I would say actually counts as narrative. You start the game, create yourself in your image and then forever forward you are know as "blahs" look-a-like. You exist to solve these Mii's problems and solve them you will and as you solve them and tick off different requirements your island will grow and expand with new buildings and such.

Gameplay

The first thing you'll want to do is take advantage of the QR scanning feature and head over to the internet to find a huge list of QR codes for characters you know and love, as you scan a character in you'll want to make sure that each character at least has a date of birth set, I'll elaborate on that soon.

Princess Zelda doing the news

Depending on the type of QR code you scan you may have to fill out some more options with the Mii such as personality, voice, first name, last name, nickname and a few other stats. Personality is done through a series of extreme sliders for example you are either incredibly normal or incredibly mental, obviously you can be anywhere on the scale but the extremes are somewhat hilarious. Voice is also done through sliders and hearing the speech feedback can be terrifying, especially when your Mii says your name for the first time, it's haunting.

As I mentioned you exist to solve these Mii's problems and you'll do that by checking in on them in their room in the big island council flat where they all reside. Mii's will have different types of thought bubbles on their rooms depending on the type of problem they have, maybe they want food, want to meet somebody or are in love with another islander or maybe they want to play a game which when clicked they will ask you in a very scary 8-bit style voice "come play with me"...again, haunting. There are a variety of mini games which you'll end up doing including Sumo Wrestling, Catch, Match 2 and more, nothing really too taxing but some of them can just be a pain in the arse like Identify Mii where you are shown a silhouette of a Mii on your island and given a choice of 3 names to choose from which given the limited amount of hair styles in the Nintendo character creator can be as I said, a pain in the arse.

Mii Apartments

Problems and requests

It's not all entertaining Mii's though, you also need to feed them by buying whatever food is on sale in the shop that day which they may or may not like. Buy them new clothes with whatever is available in the shop that day or buy them a whole new room design. None of that is actually important though because since this is a Nintendo game you can't die from starvation or anything but it's always nice to keep your subjects Mii's happy. With enough interaction between your Mii's they will eventually develop friendships and distaste for each other  which can lead to arguments or better yet, marriage and tiny little babies. This is why having date of birth set for each character is important because without it they could be a child and that would be...bad. So make sure everything is above board and okay first. When two Mii's have a baby it will eventually grow up and you'll be given two options, either he or she can live on the island with the other slaves Mii's or you can send them off to another island via street-pass (which I haven't managed to do because I don't get any street-pass hits here..).

Just...fantastic

YEA!...right?

Awww

Graphics

I don't know what anybody is expecting to find here, it looks like anything that involves Mii's really which means it can look anywhere between Okay and OH GOD NO. At the end of the day you're not buying this to look at the sweet 3DS graphics are you.

Eren mytriggeristitans Jaeger

Professor Oak coping with his problems

Audio

So in order to make your Mii feel more like you when you create your Mii you are given a very odd set of sliders to manipulate your voice, you can choose from a few presets (Old man, old woman, man, woman, boy, girl) but then everyone sounds the same. Trying to replicate your own voice is difficult to say the least, it's really only 1 or 2 steps above Microsoft Sam..For all kinds of fun you should hit that randomize button because some of those randomized voices are most definitely speaking in tongues. Also the music is as bland and forgettable as Animal Crossing.

Yay or Nay?

This game is pretty fantastic. Having the ability to put all your favourite videogame and TV characters together in one space and see who hates who and who loves who is pretty great, it's basically a fan-fiction generator..if you're into that. There was some rather big and frankly unnecessary hoo-hah about the removal of a bug or glitch that allowed same sex couples to have children and get married and such, Nintendo pulled it and people were furious, saying it was homophobic and unfair and blah blah blah. This is just a fun silly game that's mainly for kids, definitely not something that was worth all the drama it got.

I opened by saying this game was like Animal Crossing and it is but it's different in one key way, there's no time restriction placed on character interaction. In Animal Crossing you were pretty screwed if you wanted to play at 2am or even if you just did too much early in the day. In Tomodachi there is pretty much always something to do, the game doesn't shut down at 10am, it's great. It's a fun, stupid, silly experiment of a game and I'm still not bored of it.

That's how you do it Tifa

Bye bye

http://tomodachi.nintendo.com/
http://www.reddit.com/r/tomodachilife/

Review - Watch_Dogs - PC

 

What is it?

THE FUTURE OF GAMING!!! Pfft not even close. Watch_Dogs is the highly anticipated new IP from Ubisoft, an open world, third person action game which lies in a similar vein to GTA though with less emphasis on fucking shit up and instead on hacking things like some passive aggressive nerd on the Internet.


Story

So in this rendition of Chicago you are Aiden Pearce, notorious hacker and terrible person. The game opens with you scouting out a hotel or store or something that isn't made incredibly clear but as you're doing it something goes wrong and another hacker is on to you and orders a hit on you. Cut to you driving through a tunnel when some guy on a motorbike comes along side you and blows your tyre out causing your car to flip and killing your poor little niece in the process, after that it's all just a revenge story at the core. A few twists here and there but nothing that will completely shock you. There are some likeable characters, or one at least (Jordi) though there are plenty of unlikeable expressionless sacks of meat...

Gameplay

Watch_Dogs is another sandbox simulator from Ubisoft. The big selling point for this game was the ability to "hack anything" which in this case actually means: cars, phones, ATM's, traffic lights, bollards, helicopters, radios and bridges. There are more things to hack of course but the anything part of the earlier statement is way off the mark. Your time in sunny/rainy Chicago will be spent doing one of 3 things: Driving, hacking and getting involved in the games terrible combat mechanics. Driving isn't the best of times, the cars feel very loose and the way they take damage is just bizarre, you can plough a sports car at full speed into a pick-up truck and drive away from it, we're a long way from the damage modelling we saw in GTA:V that's for damn sure. The hacking is...shit. If you remember the plumbing/hacking mechanic from the original Bioshock it's basically that but with current and nodes, needless to say it's a little uninspired and every time I was presented with one a little piece of myself died. As for the gun-play...Terrible. No customisation options for things like silencers which make life a lot easier since you can pop a guy in the head with the silenced pistol you get at the start and nobody even bats an eyelid, be prepared to die a lot in gunfights as you aren't exactly wearing Kevlar so you're going to be hitting those checkpoints a lot.

Like most "next gen" or rather current gen games Watch_Dogs comes complete with it's own iPad (or Smart Glass if you prefer) app and through this you can engage in some of the multiplayer systems of the game. Playing with your particular brand of tablet device will allow you to take on the roll of the police as you try to prevent people in game from getting to a certain waypoint, to do this you follow them with your helicopter whilst sending in various levels of police power and altering traffic lights etc., it's a nice new experience that actually feels like something "next-gen". The other interesting part of the multiplayer is the invasion style mode where somebody enters your world (disguised of course not just running round as Aiden like you are) and the longer it takes you to find them the more the hacking bar fills up and when it's full they win, you lose, the usual. Don't worry yourself too much thinking you'll have to drive round the whole city to find the scum who's stealing your shit, all these events take place in a finite radius which gradually gets smaller making it easier to find them with your magical Macguffin phone and well if you don't want to be part of any of this new age multiplayer nonsense then you can just turn it all off and be alone in your city with no-one to play with just like in real life.

It's not all doom and gloom and people stealing your hard stolen cash though, you can take a Digital Trip and become a giant spider tank and basically destroy Chicago and all it's inhabitants for points, it's one of the few "fun" side-quests or mini-games to take the edge off the gritty revenge story you're dealing with in the story which is always nice.

Graphics

Now...I am reviewing the PC version here which at the time of writing is...shit. Besides the poor optimisation the game just isn't as pretty and shiny as it should be, it's definitely not even close to what was show at E3 and in various trailers etc. It all reeks of something that had to be toned down to run on consoles which is just a little sad at this point as it happens far too often, Ubisoft have said a patch is coming but unless they add in another 30gb of textures it's still not going to look as good as we thought.


(Waters nice though)

Ignoring all of that however the game does have it's moments, the water textures are incredibly nice and you will occasionally find yourself staring at a beautiful sunset with just one too many lens flares. Don't get me wrong it's not an AWFUL looking game but for a game that was delayed for as long as it was it should look better than this.

Audio 

Why don't open world games like this have metal in their soundtracks anymore? That was the best thing about Saints Row 2 and 3, driving round like a mad bastard listening to heavy ass guitars and bands screaming about whales or something. Suffice to say Watch underscore Dogs doesn't have any metal which to me is a bad thing, though I could forgive them if the rest of the soundtrack made up for it but it just doesn't. To clarify I'm talking about all the in-game radio music here since that's what you'll listen to 90% of the time. It's a mishmash of songs of varying genres that must have been pulled from Guy Blands iTunes account in the office because there's just no logical reason for half the music to be there, especially something as unpopular and insignificant as an Alkaline Trio song, I wasn't aware that being from the area the game is set in grants you a spot on the soundtrack...I'll remember that next time a game comes out of Warrington (my hometown).

It's not just a bad choice of songs though, the sound design is a real let down for the game. The guns sound fairly poor and the voice acting is Ubisofts usual brand of terrible, I'm not sure but I'm fairly confident some of the main characters were random people plucked off the streets. When I was playing an announcement came on over the radio in the car and was a good 400% louder than what was previously on, now I understand that the dialogue contained in that broadcast was at least somewhat relevant to the games lore but I really didn't need it to be so deafeningly loud. By contrast another news announcement was barely audible (and no I didn't lower the volume). Audio is one of the most important things in a game to me and they really missed out with this one I'm sorry to say.

Yay or Nay

I think I've talked enough shit about this game already so I'll just sum up my main problems here:

• It's on Uplay and that is a terrible terrible thing
• Needs a lot of work (future patch may improve things)
• Story is a bit bland
• Something of a let down after all the hype
• Poor audio assets in places
• Can't jump over a small gap

 
 (Damn small gaps ruining my sweet parkour)

HOWEVER I do think the game has some good things going for it, the hacking is new and interesting and could definitely have potential depending on what they choose to do with the game down the line and the multiplayer has definite potential and definitely removes some of the monotony of going from mission to mission to mission. We were all so excited when this game was announced and the hype got well out of hand which is a shame because I really wanted to enjoy this game but I just couldn't overlook some of the issues that were staring me in the face.

The game is not bad by any stretch but it definitely lets itself down in a good number of ways, if you're after a sandbox to dick around in because lets face it that's what they all become when you finish the story, then buy GTAV. At least in that you won't lose reputation for covering all the cars in stick bombs and blowing them up..if anything you'll be loved. Probably. OH one more thing, there's too much damn DLC, okay I'm done.


http://store.steampowered.com/app/243470/
http://uplay.ubi.com/en-GB/game/watch-dogs