I couldn’t imaging owning an xbox360 without having a subscription to gamefly. At $60 for every new game, and a bludgeoning plethora of shit releases endlessly churning from the depths of every development house a man could indeed break the bank in a few short weeks only to discover none of the games he purchased were even worth owning. The beauty of having a multi-game subscription on gamefly is it seems to give you top priority on new releases, especially once you time out the shipping patterns and release cycle. With the recent economic conditions many publishers pushed back releases of what should have been fall holiday launch titles to the first quarter of this year. What we have now is a virtual onslaught of big titles coming out nearly every week through the winter which almost makes up for the barren wasteland that was this years fall release cycle.

Having nailed down the aforementioned gamefly distribution system I’ve been driving through some new titles in my free time, primarily Bayonetta and Darksiders. Darksiders is a topic for another day. It’s striking parallel to Zelda is as unmistakable an homage as I’ve ever laid eyes upon, something the xbox catalogue desperately needed, but I digress.

First impressions with Bayonetta were definitely mixed… for about 5 minutes. The combat mechanic is stellar, the enemies are stunning and the backgrounds are graphically delicious. It is truly a button mashers wet dream. Without ever playing before the average masher can string together a multitude of devastating combos with relative ease, yet the enemies are balanced enough that while the combat mechanic fits like a glove ( a rawhide, mashers glove of course), it never feels easy. But then the music starts, and other non-enemy characters arrive, and the euphoria cools. The music is terrible, I felt like the sound team stole the nearest 12 year old japanese girls ipod, translated the worst tracks they could find into english, and looped it over and over again during all combat scenes. I really, truly honestly don’t care about whatever the hell the music is trying to tell me about Jupiter and Mars or some shit like that. It’s terrible. Match that with the fact that every NPC looks like it was ripped straight out of the latest JRPG and the enjoyment level begins to decline severely.

Then about… I don’t know, 3 minutes in you begin to realize that the sexualization of the main character is at a much higher level than you would expect of a game pandering to sell discs to 14 year old boys. It’s something bordering the perverse. It’s not just there, it’s THERE, everywhere, inescapable. Flaunted at a level that makes you feel dirty to play it when anyone else is around. Then you discover her costume is made of her own hair, which she uses as a weapon, and does not have enough to do both at once. Whenever you break into a cycle of wicked weave attacks against multiple mini-boss type enemies you feel the need to watch over your shoulder lest Chris Hansen should sneak up behind you and ask you to “take a seat over there”.

After a couple hours of this I gave up on the game and went back to Darksiders, but as the week of it’s release progresses more and more debate sprung up over the sexploitation aspect of Bayonetta. Many have made the claim that she is the female equivalent to Marcus Fenix, with freakish traits providing an over the top form for an over the top character. I can understand this point of view, yet with the graphical design being so perfectionist in the way every individual piece appears to have been crafted and placed with the utmost care, I find it hard to believe the design was over the top for the sake of being over the top.It still felt like a game directors quiet masturbatory side joke.

Over time, however, the combat mechanic draws you back in, being a very GodofWar-esque game for the xbox. Also, with the release of Mass Effect 2 fast approaching, Darksiders appearing to be a very deep game and Army of Two: 40th Day sitting on the shelf as of yet untouched, Bayonetta seemed the quickest game to finish and get back in the mail. While grinding through chapter after chapter the discomfort subsides, and eventually you succumb to the gameplay itself, despite the plot’s relentless efforts to drive you away. You almost forget the pervese nature of the main character design, that is until you find yourself fighting a mirror image of yourself. Upon defeating said doppleganger, it transforms into a mini-boss angel called ‘Joy’ that appears on screen, scantily clad, spread eagle, moaning and masturbating while blinding white light springs forth from her vagina. Re-read that last sentence a few times. This is not embellishment nor is it exaggeration, but rather a plain statement of fact. Over the Top my ass, this game is truly Hideki Kamiya’s way of sharing his personal masturbatory joke with the world. ‘Nuff said, back to gamefly you go.

-J

And if you didn’t believe my statement of fact I present Exibit A:

Dear Spartan Fans,

You’re having a rough season, I can dig it, I went through it last year and the story remains to be told for me this year. So I can understand completely why you’ve been fussy lately. This is exactly why I have chosen to bow out every time one of you has tried to bait me into a flamewar after a tough Spartan loss. Each and every time I have taken my leave, and reminded you that during football you are our rival for but one week, and that at the moment it was not your week.

Congratulations, it is now your week. Keeping with the spirit, I would like to respond to a couple recurring themes I have noticed coming out of Sparty land over the last few weeks:

1.) You are not our top rival, Ohio State is, get over it. I only root against you the week we play each other, and the last week of the Big Ten season if your loss helps us. Other than that, I would prefer you to win, especially during non-conference play. It’s good for the state we share, and good for the Big Ten as a whole. You can continue to send your hate my way,  I don’t care. You only matter to me when we play each other, you can still play the crazy stalkerish unrequited lover the rest of the season while I tune you out.

2.) Stop complaining about Michigan not taking you seriously. Winning forces people to take you seriously, thus for now we take you seriously, as you won last year. For that matter, the only reason anyone fails to take you seriously is because Sparty fans do not take Sparty seriously. When you lost to CMU, I heard and/or saw at least 30 Sparty fans claim that it didn’t matter because Michigan would lose later that day to ND anyways. I was speechless when I saw that, because I don’t understand how that matters. Shouldn’t your goal be to win every game, regardless of what we do? When we lose, if Ohio St. loses as well, it doesn’t somehow make it all better, a loss is a loss. every loss should be unacceptable to fans of a program. Believe me, I’ve sat through the pain of enough of them the last couple years. You want us to take you seriously? Start taking yourself seriously. Oh, and mix in a win against a Div 1-FBS team somewhere this year. That would help too.

There you go, it’s your week. To quote the incessant southwest commercials that I have been forced to sit through during this weekend of football, “Grab your bag, It’s on!”

Love,
Wolverine Fan