Wii U review: Bayonetta

Originally released in 2009 on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3, the first game in the Bayonetta saga saw an updated release on the Wii U, one that was bundled with the Nintendo console-exclusive Bayonetta 2. The premise is easy enough to jump into – the witch known as Bayonetta works with two individuals to fight aggressive angels: an arms dealer named Rodin and one business associate named Enzo. Whereas Rodin is cool, tough, and smooth with both words and weapons, Enzo is excessively foul-mouthed, and seems to have a knack for getting himself in way over his head. Bayonetta, meanwhile, has an air of sass and confidence about her, as she knows she is one of the only magic-wielders of her kind, boasting a widely varied skill set and impressive power to boot. And yet, Bayonetta knows very little about her own history, which leads to this first entry in the story to be one of self-discovery, with cutscenes frequently jumping back in time to explain, bit-by-bit, just what happened five-hundred years prior to the game’s present day setting.

Over the course of her adventures across a fictional European vista, Bayonetta visits a number of locales, from old brick-street cities, to an ancient coliseum, to impossible spirals of land that wind up in to the sky only to meet other high-rise bridges of dirt and grass some miles above the Earth. Later chapters will even see Bayonetta enter ethereal realms of mist and golden décor as she take the fight to the angels’ home turf. And while most of the game’s grand reveals are saved for the late chapters, it is apparent from the outset that other players in this larger picture are keeping their eyes on Bayonetta. Though it may not match the astounding visual quality of its sequel, the slight update seen in this Wii U port is certainly cleaner than its Xbox 360 and PS3 counterparts. Similarly, new features have been added, perhaps the most noteworthy of the bunch being costumes that pay homage to the heroines of Nintendo’s Metroid and Mario properties, as well as Link’s tunic from The Legend of Zelda.

That said, the Gamepad is not emphasized as heavily in this first Bayonetta title as it is in Bayonetta 2. The basic controls for running through environments, chaining combos while slicing and dicing the grotesque angelic hordes, and the menu-based process of mixing ingredients for stat-recovering and stat-boosting lollipops all fell very natural with the traditional button and joystick combo. Boss encounters with the most massive of stone-and-gold goliaths are consistently exceptional, even with the occasional decision to include gimmicky uses the immediate environment. Similarly, the sequential rival battles with mysterious crimson-clad witch Jeanne prove among the most engaging and enjoyable moments of the overall experience, and these are spaced out so as to not grow so quickly tiresome as other interruptions to the familiar routine of the story and gameplay, such as a clunky motorcycle chase with unclear objectives or the minimally-inspired arcade shooting minigame that caps off each chapter.

Combat utilizes a time-slowing mechanic known as Witch Time, whereby a perfect last-minute dodge will result in enemies coming to a near-standstill and Bayonetta being granted a brief window to deal significant damage to foes. If a magic meter is full from delivering a strong chain of attacks, players can employ medieval torture devices to inflict massive damage upon foes. The magic meter, however, can be whittled back down if Bayonetta takes damage, effectively nullifying everything built up from combos. This makes this first title simultaneously more demanding and less forgiving than its successor, which in and of itself is not so much a problem, but rather plays into the game’s two major flaws: poor camera angles, and claustrophobic environments. Bayonetta gradually throws harder enemies at the titular witch, and in greater numbers, which only makes sense as a means for amping up the difficulty factor for players, but the fact that the combat arenas never grow presents a significant problem in trying to see where Bayonetta is versus the location of her enemies. This in turn forces strategy out the window during these particularly troublesome segments, leaving players to guesswork in their dodges and attacks. It’s not an issue that runs for the entire course of any given level, but instead pops up at sporadic intervals, making it all the more frustrating as a significant flaw in an otherwise solidly-designed game.

The lore of the world is delivered largely through Luka, a young man with dreams of following in his father’s footsteps as journalist and historian. Luka holds Bayonetta responsible for the death of his father upon her return to the land of the living many years ago, though a part of him is constantly drawn to her – in part, because of her mysterious nature, and the other part due to his finding her physically attractive. Shallow as he might be, Luka plays the part of comic relief a number of times over the course of the game, as Bayonetta leaves him to clean up after her messes and place him in charge of taking care of tasks she would rather not.

The angel designs are nowhere near as visually captivating as their successors in Bayonetta 2, though boss designs such as a plant-like form with many tentacles and a giant lizard-like beast with a gaping maw offer commanding aesthetics. There is a certain creepy and alien appeal in the bird-human hybrids of the common grunt enemies, while gold-trimmed boats that fire a barrage of missiles and flying snake-like beasts offer more in the way of silly visual appeal than they do for practical combat situations. The soundtrack emphasizes choir vocals for more dire moments, and jazzy numbers for when the game wants to let loose and allow Bayonetta a minute to properly flaunt her unique skill set.

Bayonetta is still an impressive showing for the action genre, and does well to base its combo chaining system around a fair dodge mechanic. Unfortunately, this is far too often nixed by poor choices in the placement of enemies in narrow hallways and compact rooms, or downright awful camera angles. It’s a step up in both more fluid design and more user-friendly design points than previous giants of the genre, yet it falls a fair distance from the sequel’s borderline-perfect design. If nothing else, this version of Bayonetta is easily the best in terms of its visual presentation, and the button layout on both the Wii U Gamepad and Pro Controller are perfect fits for the game’s demanding combat patterns.

My rating: 7.5 (out of 10)

Anime review: Resident Evil: Damnation

Set between the events of the Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 6 video games, Resident Evil: Damnation sees Leon S. Kennedy return to the spotlight as he is sent into a small former Soviet nation to investigate the use of B.O.W.s amidst civil unrest. Despite the political reforms that followed the nation’s detachment from the U.S.S.R., rebel groups have risen up arms against the government, and have resorted to the use of Lickers, skinless quadrupeds that are easily identified by their snaking tongues and exposed brain tissue. Given his wealth of knowledge on B.O.W.s, as well as his decorated experience from Raccoon City, Saddler’s cult, and more, Leon is strategic and careful in his actions, but not without the boldness to forge his own path and bend the rules from his superiors a bit (despite Hunnigan’s protests). Even with the tense political struggle going on around him and the serious threats of biological warfare, Leon doesn’t shy away from making the occasional snappy one-liner, most of which are mildly amusing and surprisingly less cheesy than in most RE properties.

There are ties to the more recent Resident Evil games through the use of the parasitic Las Plagas, and while many of the people fighting in the streets turn into the mindless infected, others use the Plagas in tandem with the Lickers, allowing them to directly control the actions of the terrifying beasts like hounds. However, this master-servant relationship comes at a price, in that once the Plagas are willingly injected into the controlling individual’s body, it is only a matter of time before they join the creeping hordes. Limiting the variety of enemies Leon and the freedom fighters encounter is a smart decision, in that it keeps the story and action sequences focused, as well as maintains an appropriate scale for this particular struggle.

Resident Evil: Damnation adopts a more action-heavy aesthetic than some of the other RE tales, though the horror vibe ala RE4 is not lost entirely. The dimly-lit and narrow tunnels beneath the city offer a gloomy atmosphere as the infected pursue Leon and company, while the grime inside parking structures and along old brick alleyways provides a strong contrast to the pristine Imperial halls of the president’s estate. Aside from Leon, the film focuses on two rebel fighters, who initially take him captive as they believe he is a spy employed by the state, but later allow him to aid them in their push towards the capital. Sasha is more of a dark and brooding individual, and while his reasons for fighting are explained in brief, the film does not dwell long on this, an act which is both a blessing and a curse – on the one hand, the narrative does not find itself bogged down with pushing a dramatic angle for some silly romantic subplot, but at the same time it makes it a bit difficult to feel for him or even properly gauge his emotions in the midst of all this fighting. The narrative implies Sasha has experienced some emotional and moral detachment since joining the fight, however, so perhaps this depiction is not wholly inappropriate. The other rebel fighter, JD, is a more gung-ho individual, but dorkishly obsessed with the image of being cool and views Leon’s American identity as a prime example of what he wants to associate with. He may be a goofball, and his dialogue may be among the weakest in the film, but at the end of the day JD has a heart of gold. Ada Wong acts in a supporting role, serving primarily to interact with the nation’s president, but also offering Leon tidbits of advice now and again.

The level of detail seen in the environments and character models is phenomenal, a significant step up from what the previous CG film, Resident Evil: Degeneration, had to offer. Similarly, the story is an improvement, as it chooses to keep itself ground in both its smaller cast and limited scope for the setting of one particular city within a small nation. Though many of the scenes take place underground or in the city streets at night, the eerie lighting does well to evoke the feel of a proper Resident Evil game. While not a narrative that will significantly change up the way viewers understand the pre-existing RE universe, Damnation does offer a satisfying stand-alone narrative that has sufficient levels of intrigue and thrills to keep both old-school and new-school fans engaged for its concise hour-and-forty-minute runtime.

My rating: 7.75 (out of 10)

Wii U review: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

A decade after its original Gamecube release, The Legend of Zelda title that introduced the cel-shaded Toon Link and the Great Sea he sailed across received an HD remake on Nintendo’s Wii U. During the years between the original Wind Waker and this new Wind Waker HD, it was expressed that there were a number of features that the development staff wanted to work into the original release, but were unable to due primarily to technological restrictions they faced in 2003. Wind Waker HD promised to be more than a simple visual upgrade of the original Gamecube adventure, and ultimately incorporated a number of reworked gameplay features, as well as a few new additions.

While many remakes in recent years have seen significant visual jumps in their quality (i.e. – Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Final Fantasy IV DS, etc.), Wind Waker HD’s strongest graphical showings come from its improved lighting effects and more strikingly visible environment textures. Character models and the various locales across the Great Sea appear largely unchanged from the Gamecube original, due in no small part to the fact that cel-shaded graphics were far ahead of their time, and have since aged significantly better than the visuals of nearly every other game in the long-running series. The soundtrack, however, has been cleaned up a bit, and a few subtle variations on classic tunes have been thrown into the mix.

For those who missed out on the Wind Waker during its original 2003 release, the story is set hundreds of years after the events of Ocarina of Time. The intro sequence explains that, even though OoT's Link was able to save Hyrule from Ganondorf’s evil conquest once, after he had returned to his own time there was no one to stop the Gerudo King once he escaped his imprisonment in the Sacred Realm. In a last-ditch effort to save the people of Hyrule, the goddesses washed away the kingdom, sending the people to live on the islands that now marked the Great Sea. As centuries passed, those who knew the legends of Hyrule dwindled in numbers, though on Link’s birthday, he receives a green Tunic from his grandmother, which she cites as being associated with the hero of legend, and a tradition for boys to wear on his home of Outset Island.

Not long after, a giant bird carrying the pirate captain Tetra flies over Outset Island, only to be struck by a cannonball from Tetra’s pursuing crew members. The bird drops Tetra in the forest atop the island, and Link decides to go help at the insistence of his younger sister Aryll. After scaling the island and fighting a few monsters, Link rescues Tetra and the two exit the forest only to witness young Aryll be whisked away by the giant bird from before, who mistook Aryll for Tetra. Determined to save his sister, Link acquires a shield and sword and climbs aboard Tetra’s ship as they head for the Forsaken Fortress.

Once inside, Link manages to sneak past Moblin patrols and is reunited with his sister, who is being held captive with two other young girls in a prison cell atop the Forsaken Fortress. However, this victory is short-lived, as the giant bird swoops in and tosses Link to the ocean, at the command of its shadowy master. The next morning, Link awakes to find he has been rescued by a talking sailboat which calls itself the King of Red Lions. He informs Link that the master of the Forsaken Fortress and the one who has been spreading monsters across the Great Sea is none other than Ganondorf, and that Link must gather three pearls in order to access a greater power capable of stopping Ganondorf’s schemes.

Mechanically, Wind Waker built directly off its N64 predecessors Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. The titular Wind Waker, which is used to control the direction of the wind that steers your sailboat, as well as a few other key interactions, effectively stood in for the previous musical instrument, the Ocarina of Time. Combat followed suit, with carefully timed strikes being coordinated with the trigger-based targeting system. The set of items Link collected from the various dungeons are still implemented with great frequency in later legs of The Wind Waker, often used in tandem with other items or weapons to overcome more challenging and complicated hurdles. While the core of this experience may remain largely the same, it is largely to the game’s benefit, as Wind Waker HD doesn’t need to fix what isn’t broken. That said, the optional gyroscope controls are available for the Telescope and Picto Box, should players feel so inclined to explore these additions, though the classic joystick controls are generally more smooth and precise.

Little changes to some of the items and questlines in Wind Waker HD end up going a long way. When sailing across the Great Sea, the Cannon, Crane, and Wind Waker are automatically set to the D-pad, while the Sail is set to the A button, allowing you to set another three separate items to the X, Y, and R buttons respectively. This cuts down on the amount of time spent swapping from the inventory. On a related note, the Gamepad’s touch controls allow you to drag items to these three buttons on the fly, without needing to pause the game first. Those who recall the Tingle Tuner from the Gamecube version will find it has been replaced with a more practical counterpart in the form of Tingle Bottles, which can carry messages into other player’s games via Miiverse, offering a more community-oriented experience not unlike the hints players can leave for one another in Dark Souls.

For completionists who enjoyed snapping pictographs of friendly faces and Ganondorf’s loyal monsters during their journey to turn into sculpted figurines at the Nintendo Gallery, the number of open slots in the Picto Box has been bumped up to twelve, as has the number of figurines that can be crafted each day. Enemy spoil drops appear to have been improved as well, making sidequests dependent on the number of Skull Necklaces, Butterfly Pendants, or Golden Feathers in your possession much quicker to complete. A speedier sail is available around the game’s midway point, and the process of collecting Triforce pieces during the late hours has been cut in half, thanks to the majority of the chart locations being replaced with the actual Triforce shards themselves. This not only makes collecting the Triforce shards feel like less of a chore than in the original Gamecube version, it circumvents the severe hiccup in the story’s pacing that comes as a result from suddenly needing to divert all of your attention from the buildup toward the late-game challenges and subsequent intense progression of the story.

If you have never experienced this particular Legend of Zelda title before, the HD update is a fantastic option. It’s also perhaps one of the most easily-accessible Zelda titles out there, for those who may have only experienced a scant few games in the series – not to say that The Wind Waker is an overly easy experience, but it does provide more intuitive controls and in-depth tutorials that stack as the game gradually offers up new options for improving combat and puzzle strategies. While the visuals may not be a vast improvement over the Gamecube original, they still hold up strong today, and offer a very distinct style that matches the sense of wonder in this fantasy setting, as well as the coming-of-age direction that the story takes with its younger protagonist.

My rating: 8.5 (out of 10)

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD journal - entry three

When I first played Wind Waker, I was in middle school and had no qualms about sinking hours into the tedious process of collecting three pictographs at a time, bringing them to the Forest Haven’s Nintendo Gallery, and then fast-forwarding time via the Song of Passing to have them converted into sculpted figures one by one. While Wind Waker lacks as many real meaty sidequests as its home console predecessor Majora’s Mask offered up, the more involved sidequests that Wind Waker does have are just that – very involved, and by association, rather time-consuming. I am incredibly pleased to see that Nintendo has not only quadrupled the number of pictographs Link can store in his Picto Box at any given time, but also upped the ante on the number of figures that can be sculpted per day to a matching twelve. To some, the Nintendo Gallery might seem like a silly distraction, but I always found it to be one of the most entertaining and rewarding sidequests in Wind Waker.

Conversely, my single least favorite leg of the original Wind Waker adventure was the process of collecting all the Triforce charts, having them deciphered for an obscene sum of money, and then having to track down each Triforce shard thereafter. It was such a boring routine that really threw off the game’s pacing, especially after the revelation of Tetra being the heir to Princess Zelda’s bloodline and the search for the two new sages had significantly boosted the excitement and intensity of the narrative. Lo and behold, Nintendo also improved upon this by asking players to seek out a mere three Triforce charts, while many of the remaining Triforce Shards have been allocated to the treasure chests that previously housed their respective charts. Those few Triforce shards that still lie at the bottom of the sea are immediately visible on Tingle’s In-credible chart. This particular fetch quest feels much less a chore, as it requires approximately half the time and effort than in the original Gamecube version.

I would not say that I am quite as blown away by this updated version of Wind Waker as I was by Ocarina of Time 3D – as I previously mentioned, the character models and environments of Wind Waker HD look largely the same as before, save for better lighting and a clearer filter for the game’s presentation. Plus, even though it is two console generations removed, this HD remaster is still on a home console as opposed to a handheld. But it is certainly flying higher than I anticipated during my first journal post. As of a few hours ago, I started my dive into the Wind Temple, and as such, I would expect my review of Wind Waker HD to be posted sometime by the end of next week, as there isn’t a whole lot left ahead of me before I take on Ganondorf and finish this adventure… once again.