First Impression Friday for May 17, 2019 - my first impressions of "Mistress of the Ritz" by Melanie Benjamin! @MelanieBen
First Impression Friday is hosted by J.W. Martin. Apparently, it has a brand new theme, but this is the first one I’m joining in on, so…
First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther.
Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.
New Post! First Impressions on The Yankee Candle Scenterpiece!
Hello Everyone!
Today I thought I’d do my first impressions post a little differently, and by that I mean I’m going to be talking about my Yankee Candle Scenterpiece. As you may know from my 20th Birthday Haul video, I got this for my birthday and it got me super excited.
I have a love of all scented things! This is literally one of my favourite presents because I love wax burners. They always…
I missed Bayonetta when it first came out. For whatever reason, I never picked up the game, and it was not until my friend lent me a copy for the Xbox 360 tha I even gave it a go. I got through the first chapter or two, enjoyed it immensely, and then never fired the game up again. I always meant to, but got distracted by other games. Now though, Nintendo has given me a second chance. I picked up a copy of Bayonetta 2 for the WiiU a while back, and it comes bundled with the original Bayonetta.
Bayonetta opens strong with the protagonist and some other witch lady riding a shattered clock tower down the side of a cliff and fighting angels. Not bad. The game takes this opportunity to dump some exposition on the player about a war between the Umbra Witches and the Lumen Sages, two magical clans who used to maintain a balance of darkness and light in the world. Apparently the Lumen Sages lost this war, but not long after, humans began hunting the Umbra Witches down using the power of their faith in God to wipe them out. All but one, which I assume to be Bayonetta,
This segment works wonders for a number of reasons. Firstly, while exposition normally sucks to listen to when trying to play a game, this segment allows the player to get a sense of the controls and battle some cool enemies in a cool scenario. Secondly, Bayonetta does not have a health bar. The player can mess up and take a ton of hits without dying. This means that I could take my time and learn the basic controls and feel of the game in a consequence-free environment while still progressing the story.
After the falling clock tower segment, I am transported to a graveyard for the proper opening cut scene. Bayonetta stands over the grave of someone called Eggman (Sonic reference?) and prays for his departed soul. A mobster named Enzo paces around her, doing his best Goodfellas impression. As the segment goes on, angels attack and Bayonetta leaps up to fight them. A demon named Rodin busts out of a coffin to toss her some guns, and she performs an extended fight sequence to a remixed version of Fly Me to the Moon. This scene is very long, but funny, well choreographed, and I like the music. I appreciated that the game let me play for a bit before making me sit through it though.
This cut scene does highlight some of the strange visual design in Bayonetta. I enjoy the character design of Bayonetta, Enzo, and Rodin, and the angels look fantastic. The environment though is pretty standard, and kind of clashes with the characters. All of the characters are pretty colorful, and very quirky, but the world around them looks like a slightly exaggerated New York City. The first chapter after the graveyard sees Bayonetta in a more fitting environment, but it does sometimes look weird to have these very cartoony characters in a realistic feeling environment.
After Bayonetta finishes kicking butt, the game throws a short tutorial at me. I am told how to do basic attacks and combos, how to dodge, and how to go into Bullet Climax mode. It is a fairly inoffensive tutorial, but I feel like the game could have taught me more fluidly. Bayonetta is also invincible during this segment, so I could have experimented with the controls a bit more to learn how to fight. That said, this combat system has a lot going on, and it is nice that the game teaches the player quickly and efficiently how to fight.
I take out the angels in the graveyard, and they drop halos, which look like gold rings (definitely a Sonic reference). The cut scenes that follow mostly take place in this weird freeze frame format. The screen is mostly taken up by this film reel effect and the characters are posed comic-book style as sound effects and dialogue play. I am not sure if they did this instead of animating due to budget or time reasons. These freeze frame scenes look alright, they stylized them well enough that they do not feel cheep, but the moving cut scenes look so good that I am a bit sad that not every scene looks that way.
While driving Enzo’s ruined car back into the city, a plane crashes onto the highway. Bayonetta slows down time to fight the angels infesting the plane, and the other witch from the opening scene helps out. This is another awesome set-piece, and here I am taught how to use Torture Attacks by filling my magic gauge. The enemies here are easily dispatched as most of them are slowed down for the whole fight. Bayonetta resets time as the other witch escapes, and Enzo and her return to the Gates of Hell Bar to figure out what to do next. Bayonetta gets some fancy new guns from Rodin, and follows a tip from Enzo to a city in Europe. After flying from the East Coast of America to Japan and then Europe, Bayonetta hops on a train to the city of Vigrid and the title card drops to some fancy music.
First Impressions: This game has style. Every scene is framed interestingly, so that even when I have no health bar and the stakes are low, I can enjoy the visual spectacle of the game. While I will not go into my experience in Chapter 1 here, once I get into the main game and can die, it offers a nice challenge. Some of the cut scenes feel a bit stiff, and the environment art is kind of jarring, but none of that can detract from the solid combat system, and the personality that this game leads with. It draws the player into its strange world of angels and witches, and I cannot wait to see what else it has to offer.
