My Week in Gaming

This week I have been mostly playing BAYONETTA. And Modern Warfare 2 of course. A quick MW2 update first then. This last week has seen me rocket up through the ranks to hit level 52 of second prestige, unfortunately it's at about this point that the grind really sets in and level progression becomes a real chore. Hopefully a few 10K challenges will expedite matters. I've still got my trusty silent assassin load-out but it's not my primary role now. Since unlocking the ACR assault rifle I've decided to try and max that out for the shiny gold title it'll give me. It's going well so far, all I need now are the 40 bullet penetration kills with FMJ's equipped to finish it off, unfortunately that's going to take quite a while.

So, onto the main focus of the week, Bayonetta! A mad story driven romp about a 500 year old witch who uses her magical hair as clothing and kills angels to prevent herself being dragged down to Hell! Or something. The story is a badly told, convoluted mess that makes very little sense, but the script is smart and funny and the characters are like-able enough. The game is as cool as it is odd, Bayonetta herself is a ludicrously overly sexualised creature, complete with perpetual lollypop sucking and getting nekkid at the drop of a hat, and your angelic foes are increadibly well designed and realised. The boss fights, which seem to happen every 5 minutes, tend to end in a series of immersion-breaking quick-time events, but are on the whole good fun. The cinematic sequences are fun and quite watchable the first time around, but I imagine will get very tiresome on subsequent playthroughs, playthroughs that will be required if you want to get all the achievements on offer.

My biggest gripe is with the difficulty settings. I started off playing on normal mode which was fine at the beginning, but once I'd gotten passed the initial low level baddies I started getting so much damage during the fights that I was spending every penny (or halo to be precise) that I earned on health boosting lollypops, meaning I'd never get a chance to buy the advanced techniques, weapons or equipment from the store. The amount of damage I was taking also meant I was getting 'stone' awards after every boss fight, which is basically the games way of telling me that I suck! This was starting to make me not want to play anymore, but fortunately you can alter the difficulty setting on the fly, so I dropped down one level onto Easy mode, and lo and behold, it's way too easy! I finished the rest of the game with nothing lower than a bronze medal, and that I got for fighting the end game boss, who is, for all intents and purposes, GOD! I mean, ok, maybe I do suck, I've never played a game like this before and maybe with a couple of playthroughs I could do ok on the normal difficulty setting, but COME ON! The difference between Easy and Normal is just colossal. It was fun on easy, but the lack of any real challenge meant it wasn't as fun as it could have been, and the constant deaths after about level 4 on normal meant that it just wasn't fun at all. Surely the 'Normal' difficulty should have been called 'Hard' and 'Normal' should have come somewhere between the two?

On the whole though, the difficulty disparity and the confusing story are only minor drawbacks compared to the magnificent whole. Loads of class and character, plenty of ingenuity and a big pile of laugh-out-loud fun. A fine way to start 2010.

Next up I'm getting my RPG on! I've just spent a few hours immersed in Dragon Age: Origins, and so far I'm thoroughly enjoying it. It's like a movie crossed with one of those choose-your-own-adventure books! I've played a few MMORPG's before, but never really tried a single player one, so, like Bayonetta, this is another new gaming experience for me, and so far, I like!