Review: BAYONETTA & VANQUISH 10TH ANNIVERSARY BUNDLE Brings Lots of Guns and Smiles
It is pretty amazing that these games came out 10 years ago. Bayonetta was a revolutionary step in over-the-top action games with really fast-paced killing power and an even greater sense of style. Vanquish was a powerful game filled with guns, powersliding, and slow motion kills. Both of these games brought a jolt of life to action games; hack-and-slash or run-and-gun. The bundle brings both titles to PS4 and Xbox One for the first time, allowing players to relive their demon witch and super soldier suit sides again.
Bayonetta is bursting at the seams with ludicrous story ideas of demons, witches, guns, angels, betrayal, love, resurrection, and more. This is literally all seen within the first 15 minutes of the game. Along with a crazy story, absolutely insane cutscene action, and characters that ooze personality in every moment, the actual moment-to-moment gameplay is super fun and engaging. There are many combos, ways to shoot, and an ability, “witch-time,” that slows down time to allow for massive damage. The purchases in-game are a little too costly at times, which means that buying new abilities, weapons, or combos can take a long time which makes some battles seem somewhat mundane and slowing the general pace down a little. But overall, the game is just as entertaining as it was 10 years ago, still delivering engaging and power driven combat and story.
Giant lasers, disc cutters, armor piercing pistols all while sliding in slow motion towards the enemy, killing squads in one fell swoop, that is Vanquish from beginning to end. The gunplay feels great a lot of the time. The characters are so serious that it can often feel silly, but it doesn’t detract from the slick and empowering gameplay. Sometimes the camera can get pretty messed up, and players can die somewhat unfairly or without warning, but overall the game is still a lot of fun as it was before.
Now, both titles retain their quality from before as great action games. The smooth gameplay for both of them is just as good, if not better with more the consistent frame rate and faster loading on modern consoles. But, I am surprised that there aren’t really any major additions to the games, like time trials, extensive art archives, or in-game costumes/additions. There are a few minor changes, but not enough to amaze players from before. This includes the visuals. As much style, fluid motion, and passion there is in these games, they look almost exactly like their versions from 10 years ago. It would have been nice to have much better lighting, higher texture quality, and smoother animations here or there.
All these requests/wishes don’t detract from the games. However, being a 10 year anniversary celebration of these two, it would have been nice if a little bit more effort and love had been given to make them extra special versions. These games are great for newcomers and veterans of the action genre, the only misstep of this bundle and re-release is the lack of extra content or graphical improvement that would really serve the fans of the games.
