The Bayonetta series has gone from strength to strength.  The incredibly stylish action mixed with the absolutely insane and bonkers story lines have made all three releases so much fun when they drop.

So now Platinum has decided to take this brilliant action game, and make a strange small scale prequel that changes everything about what makes the series work.  And yet somehow, it still works!

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon drops us into the history of Bayonetta.

Cereza (a.k.a. Bayonetta) is still young and wants to save her mother. Bayonetta was born in a unique situation, her dad was one of the Lumen Sages of light and her mum was one of the Umbra Witches of darkness. These two are absolutely not allowed to make babies together, and so her Mum is imprisoned.

Cereza, being a person with feelings, wants to save her mum.

Cereza is in the process of being taught how to be an umbral witch but she has a dream that she needs to go to a forbidden forest to meet a white wolf to get the power to save her mum. So she sneaks off to follow her fate.

Since she is still a witch in training she hasn’t really mastered summoning demons. When she is in a pinch she tries anyway and pulls forth a demon she can’t control. This demon accidentally gets fused with her soft toy Cheshire and before we know it, we have our two protagonists for the game.

When it comes to gameplay, the best game with gameplay analogous to Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon would be Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.

If you played this indie darling in 2013 you will remember two things, The impactful brutal story, and the quirky gameplay where one analogue stick moves a character and the other moves another.  It is kind of weird to go that far back to reference a similar game, but I haven’t played another one like this for 10 years since.

Cereza is on one stick and Cheshire is on the other stick.

There are obvious puzzle types where one character does something so the other character can move on, but the game gets much more creative than that.

Cereza can pull Cheshire back to herself and gain additional demon powers like being able to stretch out and grab things.  The levels are cleverly designed with certain things that Cheshire can’t walk through and areas Cereza can’t climb up to. It’s just complicated enough to be satisfying, but not so complicated as to be frustrating.

Combat is fine.

It has its moments, but if viewed as more of another part of this puzzle it stacks up better. Cereza can’t do much but Chesire has a mean slash on him. Getting Cereza to hold an enemy in place with thorns while Chesire slashes the bejesus out of them is satisfying as hell. When you get swarmed with enemies trying to keep the weaker Cereza safe while attacking with Chesire can get complicated, but fun.

The art style is something that really adds to the quirky unique vibe. It has a beautiful story book vibe from the scenery, to the character design and it just oozes charm. Cut scenes are also presented like story books with some minor animations as the words appear. The whole thing is just a treat to watch and enjoy.

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is not what I expected from the latest Bayonetta game.

It’s not always perfect but it is so damn fun. It may not appeal to every Bayonetta fan, but may appeal to people who haven’t been a fan of the previous games, so potentially a win win. It’s just a damn good, damn clever, quirky prequel.

The post Bayonetta Origins: Cereza & the Lost Demon (Switch) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Currently playing sold out shows across the nation of Australia, there’s more great news for Dean Lewis with both his current single ‘Lose My Mind’ officially going GOLD and his hit single ‘Waves’ hitting TRIPLE PLATINUM status today.

Selling out shows in Fremantle, Perth, Geelong, Newcastle and two shows in Melbourne, Dean heads to New South Wales & Queensland next week for the final dates of his ‘Lose My Mind’ Australian National Tour, with only limited tickets left at these remaining shows. 

‘Lose My Mind’ has become a crowd live favourite as shown here at his recent appearance at Spilt Milk Festival in front 5,000 people.

Dean was nominated for an ARIA Award for Breakthrough Artist, Best Pop Release, Best Video and Apple Best Song of the Year for ‘Waves’ which has hit over 67 million streams and 13 million video views worldwide. Dean’s debut EP Same Kind of Different released in May 2017 continues to reach the masses with 93 million streams globally.

Last week the singer- songwriter released Same Kind Of Different (Acoustic) EP. Recorded in London and Sydney throughout the year, it features acoustic reworkings of his original songs from his debut EP of the same name.

The six track EP includes new stripped back renditions of ‘Waves’, ‘Lose My Mind’, ‘Chemicals’, ‘Let Go’ and ‘Need You Now’ with an additional guitar acoustic of his hit song ‘Waves’. On YouTube, videos for the acoustic versions of Waves, Lose My Mind, Need You Now and Waves (Guitar Acoustic) have already surpassed 7.3 million streams combined.

The post Dean Lewis’ ‘Lose My Mind’ Goes GOLD appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Being a long time fan of Transformers, knowing that Transformers Devastation was coming had me excited, albeit a bit nervous.  Platinum has a mostly good track record of action brawler games (most notably the Bayonetta series) and so the announcement of them doing a cell shaded G1 Transformers action brawler just oozed of potential.

But one cannot help but be skeptical with the way our beloved 80’s franchise has been treated (*cough* Rise of the Dark Spark *cough*).  Fortunately for aging nerds like myself, this game is for the most part an excellent title worthy of the Transformers name.

Transformers Devastation is very much an action brawler that borrows a lot of its mechanics from Bayonetta. This is most notable in the slow down mechanic (a.k.a witch time), triggered when you dodge right before you are attacked.  This is good as the controls and fighting are both very solid, fluent and work well, but by the end of the game they are a tad repetitive.

The real standout is the fanfare.

The story and the characters are exactly what I would want and the almost complete original voice cast really brings the experience home.  The cell shading looks absolutely stunning and for the most part looks like you are playing the cartoon.  The only real criticism I could level at the aesthetics of the game is the city feels a little bland and the buildings are a little generic, but that is a minor gripe about an otherwise beautiful game.

The only thing that I felt let the game down a bit was the equipment drop and upgrading system.

Weapons get dropped which can be equipped and you upgrade them at certain points in the game by deconstructing a weapon to level the one up.  Alternatively you can sell them for credits which can be used to construct power ups, or to upgrade the weapons (breaking a weapon down to upgrade another is not free).  So it is fine as a rudimentary upgrade system, but it mostly felt like an inconvenience, when a basic experience system could have been a lot more satisfying.

The story is not long. At about five hours, it is broken up into smaller Levels which are all graded, immediately adding replay value in trying to get better grades.  On top of that, as you advance the story, you will unlock challenges, which I am not going to lie, I spent much more time playing (and loving) than the story.

But the ultimate factor in the game is it is just fun.  I cannot describe the joy that beating down Megatron in a cell shaded G1 world and fortunately different playable characters have just different enough attacks that there is enough of a reason to experiment with each character and see which one suits you best.

The gameplay is simple enough that when you have finished the story it becomes the perfect game to play for 20 minutes, though one must be warned, those 20 minutes can disappear quickly and melt into an hour.

As a fussy Transformers fan, I had a high list of demands the moment I found out that Transformers Devastation would be based on the G1 series.  Somehow it managed to tick most of those boxes and a handful that I did not know existed.  A few minor annoyances aside the game is a worthwhile play.

Just put your headphones on, sit back and melt into a world dripping with 80’s Transformers nostalgia.

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