2010 has started with an almighty & outrageously beautiful bang! Simple as that. Buy Bayonetta & you will get one of the most beautiful, fluid, outrageous, creative, fun & pure videogames ever.

Its Japanese craziness at its long lost best. Plot – insane. Characters – insane. Cut-scenes – insane. Everything – insane. The game knows this, relishes from it & plays off it to epic effect.

You play as the titled Witch Bayonetta who has been awoken from a 500year slumber, suffers from amnesia & slaughters angels in the most intense & creative ways possible. With her hair. & guns strapped to her feet. Usually while performing a dance. Yeah. Like I said, insane.

To be honest im not really sure what the story is actually about past her getting her memory back & trying to save the universe from the ‘creator’. Its just completely bonkers & lost me quite early in. This in no way affected my enjoyment of the game though – to focus on the story is missing the point of the game entirely. Plus the cut-scenes remain hugely entertaining thanks to them mostly just containing huge or numerous monster-angel things getting their arses kicked in the flashiest way possible.

The focus of the game is without a doubt the most intuitive, responsive & fluid combat system to ever & I mean ever, grace a game. When you first start its one of the most visually chaotic things you’ll ever see & way even make you drop the pad while you go to the corner & whimper as it chucks hundreds of flashing effects all across the screen, moves scenery, messes with gravity, has giant portals with fists & feet striking through & expects you to fight enemies in the commotion.

But if you press the attack button, it immediately makes sense & just feels sooooo right. Suddenly you can make sense of the madness on screen. Theres a staggering amount of available combos just using punch & kick (read light & heavy) attacks. Even through just button mashing you can accidentally stumble across combos every time. Creating a feast for your senses while beating the crap out of heavenly scum. If you look into the combos though & try to learn them it becomes clear just how incredibly deep the system is. The genius comes from just how natural every combo feels though, even if you are just a button masher you will unwittingly learn devastating & punishing combos that will nicely raise you out of this simple way of playing without you actually realising. It’s the same if you want to learn the attacks, they somehow just make sense & you can pull off every combo you want – on purpose – without having to actually think about it. It really does just feel that natural I have no idea how they have done it.

Pull off & dodge enough attacks & you also build up a magic meter which will let you perform things called torture attacks which are magnificent & hugely damaging moves. Just as everything else I the game they are creative & great to experience. Whether pulling a huge spiked wheel from the air or squashing an enemy with a coffin they are consistently satisfying & entertaining to pull off.

This would count for nothing if it wasn’t for just how fluid, fast & responsive the control system is too. Theres an immediate reaction on screen for every button press you make. Theres also the fact the auto lock-on works perfectly. I never had to use the lock on button at any point in the game apart from to pull off certain moves that require it. The game always seemed to lock on to the enemy I wanted to attack. Again, I have no idea how they have done this but they have & it really is perfect, letting you focus on hitting stuff.

On top of this outstanding combo system you have a feature called Witch Time. This is without a doubt one of my favourite features in a game in recent memory. In fact im going to have to use that word to describe it again – Genius! Press the dodge button at the right moment & everything slows to a crawl bullet time style where you can freely pull off huge combos against the enemies. Including bosses. Its one of the most empowering & satisfying things you can perform. Theres no way you can understand just how brilliantly this works & how much it changes the classic hack & slash gameplay unless you play it yourself.

Its also the basis of many of the admittedly very basic puzzle & platform sections. Which nicely break up the sometimes exhausting & relentless action. Activate witch time & you can suddenly walk on water or break down specific block walls that temporarily form bridges.

Another fantastic feature is how it throws new things at you at just the right time. Perfected witch time or the combo system? How about trying to use fire & electric gloves & shoes. Or a sword? Or a Parry move that works as an alternative & more risky (& ultimately even more satisfying) witch time. All with their own idiosyncrasies, animations & combos to learn. None of it is essential if you just want to stick to what you know. But you’d be missing out on a lot if you didn’t try them & it’s the timing of which it introduces these extras – just as you’re fully confident with the original move set - which really makes them a great addition & huge draw.

Then theres the enemies & level design. These are the most creative designs in gaming in a long time & something the Japs are just amazing at. The bosses in particular are hugely impressive – good job too as theres as many bosses as they are normal enemies. Just to give you an idea, one of the first bosses is a enormous 2 headed dragon with an upside down statue face as its stomach. Brilliant! I’ll let you find out the rest but each is just as imaginative & all are great fun to fight. The way you finish them off is even better too, they're called Climax moves & are brutally funny & devastating.

All this & I haven’t even got into all the geeky references to games past such as Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Space Harrier & more, how well realised the world is (characters, settings etc.), the truly tight pacing that constantly pushes you forward & gives you new stuff to discover, the wealth of secrets or how Hard mode somehow pushes it to otherworldly levels of brilliance through small tweaks & more.

But ive wittered on for too long & to be honest I just haven’t got the writing skills (as you can probably tell by now) to truly convey just how much I absolutely adored this game. It has a couple of problems that stop it from reaching that all time high space reserved for games like Zelda OoT due to it using the age old hack & slash trick of re-using the bosses in the last few chapters which im frankly sick of. Its boring & lazy. The fact the game manages to innovate & push the boundaries of the hack & slasher to whole new levels - almost perfecting it in the process - to fall into this same old trap is really disappointing.

Ultimately though it’s a small thing & they are re-introduced in fresh enough ways & they are just that damn good that it didn’t come anywhere near to ruining the overall experience. You just owe it to yourself to play this game. Truly amazing.