Bayonetta 2 (Wii U, published by Nintendo)

[mollipen]

Just beat it a few hours ago. Time to beat was 11:38:00, and that was a straight run-through without finding all of the award scenarios, not beating a couple of the challenge rooms, and not going back to get better scores on any of the chapters.

Really, really liked it—remembered why I fell in love with the original Bayonetta. Which is better? That's hard, but I guess on the Wii U, it doesn't matter, because you get both. I tend to like origin stories, and there's nothing like your first time, so I guess I'd say the first has a bigger place in my heart. That's nothing negative meant toward Bayo 2, though, as I enjoyed almost all of the game. (There's one chapter that definitely felt weaker than the rest, but it's not a big deal.)

The two-player mode also seems to be really interesting, and there's far more fun unlocks this time around.

Also, Bayonetta is definitely one of my favorite game characters. She's a strong, sassy bitch who never plays second fiddle to any man, who kicks WAY more ass than any man in the game, and who doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks of her. I don't know, if all you can see are the playful sexy moments and miss all of that, that's a shame. I'd put Bayo way above most other videogame females any day.

Edit: That's not to mention that two of the game's three other strongest, most badass characters are both female.

[Mzo]

Sounds great! Getting really excited!

[James]

I've knocked points off in a review for some RPG being pedo-tastic, although I forget which one. If a game element makes me want to put the thing down and walk away, it's a valid reason to lower the score.

Bayonetta 2, however, I'm really looking forward to.

[bVork]

I tend to get pissed off when games try to walk the tightrope. Conception II is a great example: a strange enough premise to be off-putting, but tame enough to really make it all worse thanks to the subtext. Had they gone one way or the other (kept it as pure and squeaky-clean as they could, or just gone all-out and taken the child creation thing to its obvious conclusion), I might have liked it. As it stands, I think it's a turn-off, no matter what you want out of it.

Meanwhile I am perfectly okay with Lego games bowdlerizing their source material, because they're fucking Lego games and you should know that a kid-oriented game is not going to contain swastikas. And on the flip side, you should already know what you're going to get when you play Mortal Kombat: totally gratuitous violence. At some point you just have to accept that a game is what it is, and judge it on its own merits and how well it achieves what it sets out to do. Complaining about Bayonetta being sexual is like complaining about the Satanic imagery in Doom: you can have a good argument for it being a problem for certain groups of people, but at the same time it simply doesn't matter BECAUSE THAT'S AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE GAME.

To put a personal spin on it, there's Prison Architect. I have extremely strong beliefs about the correctional system (short version: rehabilitation good, punishment bad, for-profit prisons extremely bad. Go read The Lucifer Effect.) that make playing the game an very uncomfortable experience. It's a great management game and it makes its political points very effectively, but at the same time I simply cannot play it for more than sparse, short periods of time. But I wouldn't dock it points in a hypothetical review for this.

[Diff-chan]

Why wouldn't you dock points though? It's perfectly acceptable to criticize a game's subject or tone or context in a review.

I know we are used to just reviewing games as a checklist against a bunch of hypothetical mechanical ideals, but that's not all games are.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Those things do not fall under GRAPHICS, SOUND, or FUN FACTOR. They are not eligible for critical evaluation.

[Frogacuda]

But I wouldn't dock it points in a hypothetical review for this.

Anyone arguing about the number at the end of a review instead of the content is an asshole anyway.

[Diff-chan]

Those things do not fall under GRAPHICS, SOUND, or FUN FACTOR. They are not eligible for critical evaluation.

[Joust Williams]

doesn't really fit into CONTROLS or CHALLENGE either though

oh well, we tried

[Yoshi]

The Polygon reviewer is challenged, but in a more politically correct and less gameplay-related way.

edit: Maybe it's less "challenged" and more "handicapable" or "differently able."