Press Pause Radio - Not Your Everyday Podcast

Wednesday

20Jan2010

Quarter Circle Forward Review: Bayonetta

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 03:12AM

Toast here with your Quarter Circle Forward review for the week of January 10, 2010. I reviewed Bayonetta, a stylish action game for the Xbox 360. You can read the full review below, and if you have any comments about the game, I ask that you leave them here or on our forums. Enjoy!

Platinum Games may be a fairly new developer, however their legacy and pedigree of games is very well known. This team is comprised of men and women responsible for such games as Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe and Okami. The company's latest release is Bayonetta, a sexy and stylized shoot 'em up that may be one of the best games to be released in this current generation of gaming.

The story of Bayonetta can be very convoluted and sometimes hard to follow, with its tale of witches and sages that harness the power of the moon and sun. Bayonetta is a Umbra witch who has been made an outcast by her own clan, losing her memory in the process. Twenty years afterwards, our heroine is trying to piece together her past while battling an angelic horde of heavenly warriors. Bayonetta lays waste to her haloed enemies with some of the best combat ever featured in a video game.

This game features a combat system reminiscent of games such as Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, only it is improved and more accessible. My personal experience with this genre has never been this enjoyable strictly because of the combat. One move that makes fighting as the long haired bullet witch fun and enjoyable is the dodge. Dodging an enemy attack at the last moment will begin Witch Time, which will allow Bayonetta to dish out large and punishing combos.

Bayonetta's arsenal includes her trusty handguns, as well as guns attached to her high heels. She can also upgrade to other weapons like a katana and gauntlets. Perhaps the most impressive weapon the underworlds hired assassin possesses is her hair. You read that correctly, she can actually use her hair to summon demonic monsters that can destroy everything in her path. Thank you Platinum Games, for designing something this insane!

In conclusion, Bayonetta is the perfect mix of style and substance. The story and characters are completely over the top and the developer is well aware of this fact. The games script even pokes fun at itself numerous times throughout the twelve plus hours the game will take to complete. If you own an Xbox 360, you owe it to yourself to play this game. Its the best action game to be released in years.

Press Pause Radio Episode 13: The Almost Lost Episode

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 01:28AM

Greetings everyone, welcome to a new year and a new Press Pause Radio! We have many great things lined up to start this year off right including our end of the year podcast, episode thirteen. We at Press Pause Radio got together right before the curtain closed on 2009 to discuss our individual top ten games of the year, as well as what we were looking forward to in the next year.

However releasing this episode was temporarily delayed due to issues with audio compression. The issue of course being that I'm an idiot and do not understand audio compression (this is Toast, by the way just so we all know who to blame). The episode is our longest yet, clocking in at almost three hours of remembrance and reflection on the year that was 2009. Due to the large size of the file, we were unable to release the episode via iTunes.

Therefore we are releasing it exclusively on the website! (hopefully on iTunes eventually, whenever I can learn how to use a computer) Enjoy the episode, and look forward to episode fourteen, where we will introduce the fourth chair of the podcast and discuss the difficulty in video games.

The End of the Year Extravaganza!

Press Pause Radio Crew |

NSMBWii....what is he comparing it to again?

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 01:51AM

I'm not even going to address just how late this entry is (Fuck...I just did though) Press Pause Radio is coming back into full swing though, & there's no more R&R, we should be recording our end of the year episode before we next record into 2010. I figured that before we go & release a new episode, I figured that I go ahead & release the piece that I have been working on in corraspondance with the comparison I made in episode twelve of Press Pause Radio where we discussed New Super Mario Bros.Wii & I compared it to another game that most people would never expect me find kinship in when place side by side each other.

So who reading this has played Knuckles Chaotix? granted I'm one of the only other three people that I know of that owns a Sega 32X & even then, own a copy of Knuckes Chaotix, also to point out that the game is available on Gametap for those of you that have a Gametap account. Now moving on to the featured info at hand, The biggest common factor between these two games is the Hidden emphasis on Multiplayer where the game is made for a Multiplayer experience even though the game is more than capable of standing on it's own as a Single player experience. Though not grand in such a scale as New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Knuckles Chaotix required Local & I stress to you VOCAL cooperative gameplay as well, whether you were trying to climb vertically across the stage or rubber banding back & forth, just as easily as partner can become your worst enemy in NSMBWii the same if not worse in terms of ultimate betrayal in KC.

The major component that can lead to your success or your doom in Knuckles Chaotix is that you're constantly attached to your Partner, the only point in which you're not attached is if one of you dies, & to those of who didn't know that you can get a negative ring count in Knuckles Chaotix because there is a move that calls your partner to your side at the cost of Ten rings & you'll use this move in the circumstances of either A. you're fellow friend who happens to be playing with gets lost within the game more than a dyslexic Puppy/beached whale hybrid & you must summon the mentally challenged one to your side or B. you would do so pushing the 10 ring cost that you take on your collection of rings into the negative range in which we all should know is the life force of any Sonic the Hedgehog game spin off or not & fun fact if you get -100 rings you will die in the same vain you would earn a life if you gathered a hundred ring you would earn a life (except this game is it had unlimited lives), anyway moving on, you can grab your partner & throw it at a enemy within the game & enjoy seconds of unbound partner less freedom until your partner eventually comes back in a "Tails" like fashion. If you're partner wasn't plotting to kill you, He/She would just simply make any progression within the game difficult to sheer impossibility depending on whether your partner just got stuck in some sort of weird platform nook fucking you up sometimes in the process as you hang helplessly until you push the "A" button to stop the madness or the butt hole partner ends up going the opposite way keeping you dead center with no progression yet again.

Now let us compare. In New Super Mario Bros. Wii, you can pick up any of your partners for any reason you see fit in some pointless attempt to Justify it, you throw Him/Her into a bottomless or something lethal otherwise. A carefully planned jump can be thwarted by your ill-chosen partner as He/She uses your skull as a Mid-Air stepping stone & get's the extra off of your potentially doomed plummet to shit storm that may lay below you, a Koopa-Troopa shell to the face or Bobomb up the asshole only strengthens the hatred that will boil between you. Now will I go over the contrasts, no, not at all. These games are obviously incredibly different just by mere side by side visual comparison. My goal was to find the incredible similarities that these two games, that are over a decade apart in terms of age,brought about the same Positive & negative feeling that I have harbored in Cooperative-centric gameplay. so what do you guys think? comment on the Blog or post any opinions you may have on the Forums on www.presspauseradio.com & to re-iterate once more....Fuck Alien Soldier so.....much.

Press Pause Radio Crew |