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Bayonetta and I have a complicated relationship. When I first heard about the game, I thought it sounded so silly that there was no way it could be good. But my early hands-on time with the game made me change my tune. Then the demo convinced me that Bayonetta had a shot at greatness. Now that I've had a chance to play through the game, my final verdict is in. My take? Read on to find out.

Before I get back to Bayonetta, I'd like to take a moment to talk about reviews in general. I haven't run many reviews lately, largely because many of the triple-A games over the holiday season were such large, time consuming affairs. But one of my New Year's Resolutions is to get back to regular reviews, and it seemed like a good opportunity to try some new things with them. I'll be experimenting with a few different formats in the coming weeks, starting with this one: the long-form unscored review. I've always hated scored reviews - complex experiences like games can't fairly be summarized by a mere number. Since Bayonetta is such an odd, experimental game, I felt like it was a fair place to start with this project.

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If you've been following the game at all, you probably know a little bit about the plot: The title character is a witch who fights angels. After you finish the game, you may not have a much better understanding of the story than that. It's not that the game doesn't have much plot - you could argue that it has too much. Bayonetta's story is weird, ambling, incomprehensible and cliché all at once, but I mean that in the best way possible. From a story perspective, Bayonetta is like a fever-dream mashup of Devil May Cry and an Italian horror movie. It's filled with memorable set pieces, genuinely funny jokes and bizarre otherworldly creatures, but I challenge you to keep straight who is doing what and why.

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Of course, nobody plays games like these for the story. The start of Bayonetta isn't the plot or even the main character, it's the combat engine. Bayonetta combines two well-worn gameplay mechanics (dodging and slow motion) and melds them together in a completely new way. Dodge an attack at the last possible moment, and you'll trigger "Witch Time," a few seconds of slow-motion that allow you to unleash hell upon your opponents. We've all played action games with dodging before. We've all played games with slo-mo before. But the way they're tied together here, they're like chocolate and peanut butter.

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Along with the Witch Time feature, Bayonetta's combat engine features a host of other features that makes the core gameplay shine. Like creator Hideki Kamiya's earlier action franchise Devil May Cry, Bayonetta can seamlessly transition between melee weapons and firearms. Her combos can unleash devastating "Wicked Weave" attacks that summon giant fists and boots made out of her own hair. Filling the magic meter allows her to use "Torture Attacks" that devastate enemies with magical torture devices. There are a lot of aspects to Bayonetta's combat, but what makes the game work so well is how seamlessly it all flows together. After a little warmup, you'll be unleashing massive combos that have you bouncing from enemy to enemy, pummeling them with punches and kicks, shooting flying enemies out of the sky, dropping into slo-mo to dish out extra damage, and finishing it up by kicking an angel into an iron maiden. It's fast, it's furious, it gets your pulse racing and it's a hell of a lot of fun.

The core of Bayonetta's gameplay doesn't change up much over the course of the game (save for a few forgettable vehicular and turret segments late in the game), but fortunately it dishes out memorable setpiece after memorable setpiece. With levels that are generally pretty short and bite-sized, you'll never go long without a change of scenery or a new massive boss to fight. Special praise is deserved for the creation of Bayonetta's strange, wonderful boss battles. These are some of the weirdest, most enjoyable boss fights I've experienced in a long time. Most are multi-stage battles that require to you to take your enemy out a piece at a time, with tactics that switch up as the fights unfold. Unfortunately, I thought the effect of these fights was slightly diminished by the reappearance of several bosses in weaker forms late in the game.

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Bayonetta is a game bursting with so much character and has such a refined combat engine that I can't imagine that it won't develop a devoted fanbase. On the flipside, it's such a strange game that I'm sure it will put off many players that just don't "get" its appeal. I fall into the "loved it" camp, but even I found several things that irked me a bit - none are big enough that I'd call them glaring flaws, rather minor annoyances. The camera (like many action game cameras) didn't always focus where I wanted it to. I thought the second half of the game lost a little of the game's initial energy. For a game that's clearly designed for multiple playthroughs I thought the campaign was a bit long (12 to 15 hours for most players) and had a little too much filler (repeated boss battles, vehicular segments). The health system is a bit unforgiving. Fortunately, for every little thing Bayonetta does wrong, it does ten little things right: Pauseable/skippable cutscenes, the ability to replay earlier levels to earn extra cash and goodies, hidden challenge rooms, online leaderboards and power-up items that you can craft from raw ingredients to name a few. To summarize, Bayonetta is a strange, oversexed, intentionally cheesy game with an incomprehensible plot. But when you've got a combat engine and boss encounters this good, I'll take all the strangeness you've got and ask for more.