I keep seeing glowing reviews of Bayonetta.  You might have seen it advertised, the game with the “witch” that looks like Sarah Palin, who uses her hair as both a weapon and her outfit, has guns on the heels of her shoes and features in a game that has a button for “dance / taunt”.  This game has unanimously been receiving 100% or near reviews from practically every major game publication.

But you know what, I really don't understand this game.  For a little context, I play everything.  The well reviewed stuff when it first releases, and then the mediocre games when the price drops to around £20.

But I'm just not interested in this game.  The pre release hype is tacky, it looks terrible (I don't mean the style, the style is reasonable but playing the demo, it looks noticeably rough around the edges) and the game play appears to be extremely repetitive.

I downloaded the demo and just didn't quite get to it until the game released, gave it a shot and was mildly entertained at best, and bored with it's "not retro, just not sophisticated" game play within minutes.

I just don't understand the heaps of praise people are giving this game.  Sex sells, and that aside (because actually the sexuality in the game is very comic-book like and gets annoying fast, like, during the duration of the demo fast), the game play appears to be simple, repetitive, and if it's 16 hours long, probably outstays its welcome.

I picked up Wet recently, a game that sells itself on roughly the same premise of "hot girl on a vendetta" for £20 and found it repetitive, gratuitous but a fun 10 hour game.  It wasn't a good game, but it was cheap and short enough to execute what it was attempting effectively.  It got panned.  Bayonetta was made by an influential game designer but suffers all of the same flaws of the former game, whilst suffering an uncomfortable character premise.  It's been widely acclaimed.  I just don't understand why.  I’d honestly pay no more than about £5 for this game, and I’d probably give up playing very quickly.

These impressions are obviously all based on the pre-release hype, marketing material and the (terribly named) "First Climax" demo.

A friend of mine quipped "if I was playing Bayonetta and somebody walked in, I'd turn it off and pretend it was porn".  I can't help but agree with that sentiment.