• Darksiders
• Army of Two: The 40th Day
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (again)
• Bayonetta (and how much she looks like Sarah Palin)
• Jet Set Radio
• Farenheit
• Dante’s Inferno
• The upcoming DLC for Resident Evil 5
• Mass Effect 2
• Final Fantasy XIII
• God of War 3

Enjoy

For the most part I find them tedious button-bashing affairs and, whilst a good majority of them look rather good, there’s just something about them that never wins me over.

Bayonetta is something of an exception.

Taking control of the title character the story starts off with Bayonetta fighting alongside Jeanne against some strange angelic creatures that are wielding spears and have a somewhat fiery temper.  Oh, and they also have a two headed dragon on their side.

As you fight your way through the hoards of angels, a narrator explains the backstory – informing you that many years ago, there was a war in Europe between the Umbra Witches (an ancient clan of powerful and magical women) and the Lumen Sages (a group of men who worshiped the light and drew power from the heavens).

500 years later Heaven (Paradiso), Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio) and the human world are in balance, and Bayonetta wakes up at the bottom of a lake with no memory of what has happened to her or who she is.

The only thing she is aware of is her magical ability – it’s a bit like The Bourne Identity, but instead of a controlling highly trained spy with amnesia, you’re controlling a witch.

As your progress through the game Bayonetta begins to remember more and more battle combos. These are brought to you with a mini-tutorial in the first few levels, giving the gamer a welcoming introduction to the proceedings.  Also, as the level loads, it gives you the opportunity to test out a few combos in an empty arena.

Equipped with guns (which are completely customisable – two on the heels of her stilettos and two in her hands), Bayonetta is all about the action, and it’s game mechanic is flexible enough to accommodate both the casual gamer and the hardcore elitists.

Whether you the type of person who likes to master fighting combinations, or the sort that just likes to bash buttons and hope for the best, the game proves to be quite satisfying on the action side of things.

Being a witch, Bayonetta can also call upon magic. She does this by using her hair as a conduit to Inferno (aka Hell) and summoning some big bad demons to devour the various bosses she’ll encounter.

She also has the ability to walk on walls when in moonlight – this bring a unique perspective to the action, but can at times be a little confusing.

Other strange abilities include the various torture and punish attacks.

On several occasions I managed to throw an angel or two into a magical iron maiden.  It’s also quite satisfying to throw them on the floor repeatedly.

Bayonetta isn’t just about the action though.  In between the action there are puzzles to solve, keys to find and doorways to open.  This brings a bit variety from the all out action sequences and greatly improves the pacing of the game.

One minor drag about the gameplay is the camera, which is constantly fixed and cannot be moved.  On occasion it can work against you and will position itself somewhere totally unhelpful.

Having that said, it’s a minor irritation and doesn’t happen anywhere near enough to ruin the proceedings.

Graphically, the game is as strong as you are gonna get on the 360, it’s sharp, vibrant and very rarely suffers  from any lag – quite an achievement when you consider how much is going on at times.

The environments are vast and whilst at times you may feel a little isolated, wandering around Bayonetta’s world is a constant pleasure to the eyes thanks to the level of detail that has gone into the game.

Bayonetta herself, despite bearing an uncanny resemblance to Sarah Palin, looks fantastic, as do all the other characters that crop up in the cutscenes.

Speaking of which, the cutscenes themselves are a bit hit and miss. This is mainly because a few of them are presented as static film strips, and I can’t help but feel that had they been fully animated this would of added to the experience.  Nonetheless this is a minor flaw and is easily overlooked.

The fully animated scenes on the other hand are fantastic – put together with some very impressive action design, decent voice acting and a fair amount of humour and innuendo, they are very enjoyable to sit back and watch in all their tongue-in-cheek glory.

The sound design is also spot on.  As already mentioned, the voice acting is pretty decent, even if Bayonetta’s overly sexy English accent is somewhat cheesy.  The action is also represented well on audio side of things, with every explosion, bullet, kick and punch accounted for.

One of the most striking things with Bayonetta is the music. It varies from dramatic orchestral numbers, to easy listening pop songs – including an amusing version of “Fly me to the Moon” which is sure to bring a smile to your face.  It’s a quirky little trick that demonstrates the game’s sense of humour, and it works perfectly.

Overall, Bayonetta is an extremely well crafted game that has set the benchmark for all future hack-and-slash action games.

Well done, Sega, this game has bewitched me.

9 out of 10

The Good:
Great fun
Accessible for those that aren’t fans of the genre
Impressive graphics

The Bad
Fixed camera can irritate
Plot is a bit chaotic

Surrounded by hundreds of costumed manga fans, my counterpart and I checked in, grabbed our shiny press passes and hit the expo floor.

First on the agenda was Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction, which was being shown in action by a Ubi rep.

The action on screen seemed faster than previous titles, with an increased feel of playing ex-Third Echelon agent Sam Fisher as more the aggressor than sneaky spy. The rep quickly grabbed one enemy, before using the ‘mark and execute’ trait to shoot two others in the head, breaking his captive’s neck and shimmying up a nearby pole.

It remains to be seen whether any of the earlier title’s stealth-based sneaking has remained intact in Ubi’s interesting reboot of the series, but I’ll certainly be happy to see Sam’s return in early 2010.

Right across from the Splinter Cell zone another rep was showing off a build of Avatar: The Game.

Avatar

Donning a pair of 3D glasses I studied what appeared to be a decent recreating of the upcoming movie’s lush worlds and brutal firefights, with the rep starting out in a helicopter-hunter-killer-flying-thing before hitting the ground and burning the hell out of a massive, slavering beastie.

The 3D effects were excellent, but I was assured by Ubi rep Phil Brannelly that the effects could be turned off for those of us without a 4,000 inch TV screen. Appearing to be a decent cross of Cameron’s world with a Gears of War-style shooter, it remains to be seen whether Avatar will break the trend of rubbish film tie-in games.

Bayonetta

Across a busy street of massive sword-wielding manga fans I spied the raven locks of Bayonetta, Sega’s latest slice-em-up, which features a witch who carries a sword, user her hair and clothing as a weapon, can conjure up a giant boot to kick anything into the distance and has a gun strapped to each limb.

Playing very similarly to Devil May Cary, I was quite drawn with Bayonetta’s outlandish attacks and artistic style, but I fear the game is too similar to Devil May Cry to really stand out on its own. But, from what I played, it hasn’t ruined the simple ‘slice things, shoot things, repeat’ method of the DMC games, and so will no doubt be a riot of action in early 2010.

Hidden away in a nearby metal container was a build of Valve’s necrotic flesh-em-up Left 4 Dead 2, which will offer more missions, more guns, and more of the brilliant co-op action the series does so well.

Though I didn’t get to play it (there was a large queue of spiky-haired ninja in the way) it looked like as much fun as the last game, and a representative promised me it will lay fan’s fears to rest after the ‘boycott Left 4 Dead 2’ campaign took root in a disappointed fanbase.

The queue for Left 4 Dead 2

Leaving the zombiefied remains of new Orleans, we swung by Lego Rock Band’s stall, where a team of confused-looking people dressed as anime animals were trying to pull off the Kaiser Chief’s Ruby while little Lego versions of the Chiefs danced on the screen – this is just more of the same old Rock Band I fear, just with Lego – it will be interesting to watch the sales figures for yet another Rock Band title, and whether or no the public have cottoned on to the money making scheme yet.

2K was up next, who were showing the E3 video of Bioshock 2 – in all its art deco loveliness – on one wall, and had about 30 gamers blowing enemy after enemy away on Borderlands on the other four.

Though reviews for Borderlands have been overwhelmingly positive, I took the time to ask PR director Alex Bickham why the 2K team decided to do away with the realistic feel of the game and instead replace it with a cel-shaded, cartoon style for the wasteland shoot-and-loot experience.

“It was an insurrection.” He told me, furiously handing out posters to the game’s many fans, “the team took the build and went off and added the cel-shading behind the developer’s back, then they came back, showed it to the team and the bosses and they were like ‘wow’, so we decided to go with that.”

Not one for cel-shading myself, Colin thinks it’s sure to be a fun title to play, and was wondering if the wasteland scavenger approach (which brought back memories of the excellent Fallout 3) might have had something to do with Borderland’s makeover? Either way, the game looked like a fast-paced shoot-em-up with a decent co-op experience tagged on, and we’re sure to have a review of that for you soonest.

Wandering amongst the katanas and bunny ears, we came across the final gem MCM had to offer us – Star Trek Online, the MMORPG sensation which has got every Trekkie jumping up and down at the chance of becoming a starship captain – including Colin.

Star Trek Online

While I settled in to play a decent build of the space combat section, happily blowing away Klingon ships with my starship’s weaponry in a very pretty space theatre, Colin asked an assistant (whose name he forgot to write down…) a few Trekkie questions:

Who can you play as?
“You can play as a federation officer, a Klingon, Vulcan or a Romulan.”

What about the Borg?
“You can’t play as the Borg yet, but we are considering that for DLC.  The Borg are definitely going to feature in the game – in a mission you will have to defeat them in a space battle.  They are going to be huge and it will take about 20 players to defeat them”.

What is the plot?
“It’s set 30 years after the movie Star Trek: Nemesis, and there is a big political struggle around the Neutral Zone.  It’s an endless universe and there will be various missions for you to check out.  It will be presented in episodic form to give the player that typical weekly TV impression”

Does the JJ Abrams vision of Star Trek feature in that at all?
“There’s a funny story about that.  The development team went to see the film last summer, by which point the game had been in production for 3 or 4 years.  As we watching it we all gasped in horror when Vulcan was destroyed – but by the end of it we all like ‘oh ok, this is a new timeline, so it shouldn’t affect anything. But yeah, since the game is a MMO there is plenty of scope for sending players to different timelines – a recurring theme in the Star Trek series”.

Personally I found the space combat bit to be a little tricky to master, with a difficult and unruly camera that was, I was told, able to be clamped to the rear of the starship – I just couldn’t find the option to do it. Other than that it was great fun, shooting phasers and firing torpedoes into wave after wave of Klingon ships. The ground section, which was a ‘rough build’ (in the assistant’s words), was a bit jagged around the edges, but judging by the commitment the team have put into the game I’m expecting Star trek Online to be something special – so watch this space.

And so, our business done, Col and I made for the Jubilee line, dodging dozens of manga fans, people clutching signs offering ‘free hugs’ (what’s all that about? Answers on a postcard please), and made our escape.

Expect a report from next week’s Eurogamer event soon!