Even four years of production and the massive unlikelihood of a sequel even being funded hasn’t dulled the inspiration of the game’s heroine from those pens you turn upside down to make the cartoon woman’s clothes fall off.Įven with the addition of the Umbran Climax special moves that can bring screen filling, sin coloured griffons and demonic toad gods into your battles with the heavenly hordes and hellish hosts, completed combos always end on a close up of a scantily clad Bayonetta. The supposedly unprecedented change in the balance of power between the angel controlled Paradiso, the human world of chaos and Inferno that caused Bayonetta’s summon to go out of control has surprisingly little impact on the early gameplay, which is almost identical to that of the original Bayonetta. Promising each other co-operation on their journey to the revered arctic mountain of Fimbulventr that grants access to either Paradiso or Inferno to whoever scales it’s heights, the snarky distance between them slowly levels into a respectful unity as they set about saving Jeanne and, eventually, THE WORLD ITSELF!!!!1! As Bayonetta quests to save Jeanne’s spirit before it is completely absorbed into the mires of hell, she is joined by Loki, a young androgynous amnesiac wielding a magical deck of cards and a shockingly unconvincing voice actor performance. The blow separates her body from her soul, leaving her essence to be dragged away by the opportunistic and hands-y demons of Inferno.
Out of nowhere, Jeanne, Bayonetta’s sister-in-witchiness, takes the hit instead.
#JEANNE UMBRA WITCH SUIT FREE#
There’s barely enough time for Bayonetta’s hair outfit to re-cover her (yes, that’s still a thing) as the ‘Gomorrah’ breaks free of it’s trans-dimensional portal and claws at it’s conjurer. Thankfully, the beast falls before her glamorous guns before being sent careening into a high rise tower block and being eaten alive by a dragon demon summoned by her magical hair.
Even paying them in kind for cutting her out of her dress with her quadruple, jewel spangled pistols (one in each hand and one on each high heel), she is then confronted with a baby faced stone colossi with a solitary spiked tentacle on it’s left side. However, if I and other male players are expected to find some level of maturity alongside Bayonetta, the developers need to fully commit to these joyously flawed creations in all their convoluted, baffling glory to maintain their dissonant chaos and relevance to their changing audience.īayonetta’s Christmas shopping is interrupted when air show jet fighters are set upon by flying angel horses dual wielding sabres and gigantic, golden, razor taloned sky serpents.
#JEANNE UMBRA WITCH SUIT SERIES#
Seeing her take this strain with characteristic swagger, I realise the closest I can get to a clear, certain reaction to this series of games is how close I feel to her as a character. As much as I want the series to change to definitively be one of these, I still want it to stay exactly how it is and not to fit into either.įittingly, Bayonetta comes up against just such a desperate and unresolvable duality and becomes a more balanced individual over the course of the story. If you ask Ria Jenkins in The Guardian, my fragile masculinity is being threatened by an image of a self-loving, hyper-feminine ideal that is ‘presented as about and for women’. If you ask Polygon reviewer Arthur Gies, I’m struggling to make the ‘mental compromise’ to enjoy the game despite the egregious sexualisation of it’s female lead for an assumed audience of straight, sexually frustrated men.
Still, this possibility doesn’t provide the certainty I was hoping for, since critical reactions to the series as a whole is as conflicted as I am. Should I really have spent £200 on a Wii U specifically to subject myself to yet more internal conflict with Bayonetta? In attempting to achieve any kind of stability or justification for my financially and emotionally expensive commitment to playing Bayonetta 2, the next instalment in Platinum Games’ fairly insulting but weirdly enlightening action series, I first discovered that it’s humanly possible to lament it’s continually exploitative gameplay and direction that have passed from the first game with not one sign of reconsideration. ‘Yes, no more boob window! What an amazing outfit, the stars and the shoulder pads and the cape and the…diamond butt cleavage? *sigh*’
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