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Is it strange Bayonetta outsold Vanquish?

The internet was suffocated with Bayonetta hype/coverage for a year before release. All I've seen about Vanquish was the one reveal trailer.
 
Bebpo said:
Even after playing through Bayonetta on all the difficulties and loving it (how can you not love a Kamiya game?), I still think the reason why so many people looooooove Bayonetta and crown it the game of forever or what not is because it's a top-level Japanese action game dumbed down for a casual audience like how CoD is for FPS. Imo DMC/NG are much deeper and better action games but they have far tougher learning curves and require fighting game like dedication and skill and most people just don't want to put the effort in and write them off.
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It's more than that IMO. The gameplay just feels perfect to me. The response you get both visually and the immediate feedback from hitting a button, going from move to move flawlessly, using dodge offset, never being hit from an enemy off camera, the cues for every enemy attack, instant switching between 2 sets of 2 weapons, running in Panther form seamlessly in and out of combos, etc, etc.

I can confidently state that controlling Bayonetta is every bit as fun, and responsive as controlling Mario in the 3D Mario games, and that is something I just can't say about any other game out there. Vanquish is very close to doing the same thing as well, the "FEEL" of the game is so good.
 
Shig said:
No. No no no no no.

Every game having online dilutes the player base, turning everything except the top 5% into total ghost towns shortly after release. One of this gen's biggest tragedies is how much time devs have put into multiplayer modes that only stay populated enough for anyone to care for a month or two, if at all, and how much better or full of content those games' single player components could have been if the time were devoted to that instead.
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Bingo. It's one of the most focused and polished single player shooting experiences I've played in ages.
 
7Th said:
Sold.
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I'm not making it up either. They had it, but they took it out.

http://blogs.sega.com/europe/2010/08/05/vanquish-blog-5-the-ars-system/

4862135227_d2e6a67813_o.jpg
 
duckroll said:
I'm not making it up either. They had it, but they took it out.

http://blogs.sega.com/europe/2010/08/05/vanquish-blog-5-the-ars-system/
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This is the most heartbreaking shit I've seen.

I still adore the game, but with this...

8D~

Edit:

i would gladly welcome multi if i can play as those fucking giant mechs :lol
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No joke, right? Maybe it would work if one person had the suit and the rest played as enemies and such. But still, how annoying would it be to play and then... Slllloooooow mooooooo.
 
Net_Wrecker said:
It's more than that IMO. The gameplay just feels perfect to me. The response you get both visually and the immediate feedback from hitting a button, going from move to move flawlessly, using dodge offset, never being hit from an enemy off camera, the cues for every enemy attack, instant switching between 2 sets of 2 weapons, running in Panther form seamlessly in and out of combos, etc, etc.

I can confidently state that controlling Bayonetta is every bit as fun, and responsive as controlling Mario in the 3D Mario games, and that is something I just can't say about any other game out there. Vanquish is very close to doing the same thing as well, the "FEEL" of the game is so good.
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Bam. Got it in one.

Bayonetta was designed straight off so that you would feel like you are always in control, and imho it freaking nailed it.
 
ZoddGutts said:
And online.
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No it didn't; see above.

The online fixation is really misguided at this point.

Every online game on consoles that isn't Call of Duty or Halo dies out fast except for a few small communities of hardcore fans huddled around a couple of secondary tier games.

Everyone says online is a must, every reviewer docks points if a game doesn't have online, yet online /isn't really used/ in the real world by most game buyers. They poke at it for a week then go back to the two big games.

In point of fact, half of what makes Vanquish work wouldn't even be functional in online multiplayer - why does nobody realize this? You can't have bullet time in multiplayer. Doesn't work. Little of what makes Vanquish strategic or exciting to play would translate into yet another generic deathmatch game - even co-op doesn't work because again, you can't let each player's time frame drift out of synch. It's why a lot of cool effects and game mechanics in single player modes of games are missing in multiplayer when the game has it.

Now, if Americans look at Vanquish, see it doesn't have Teh Online Fragging, and say "That game sucks, it doesn't have online" they're the problem, not the game. They wouldn't even play the game for long /anyway/ if it did have frickin' deathmatch. They just complain about it because they've become conditioned to do so. (Remember - look at what people do, not what they say. People /say/ every game needs online. People actually /play/ a handful of games and don't care for online in everything else after they have it.)
 
Net_Wrecker said:
It's more than that IMO. The gameplay just feels perfect to me. The response you get both visually and the immediate feedback from hitting a button, going from move to move flawlessly, using dodge offset, never being hit from an enemy off camera, the cues for every enemy attack, instant switching between 2 sets of 2 weapons, running in Panther form seamlessly in and out of combos, etc, etc.

I can confidently state that controlling Bayonetta is every bit as fun, and responsive as controlling Mario in the 3D Mario games, and that is something I just can't say about any other game out there. Vanquish is very close to doing the same thing as well, the "FEEL" of the game is so good.
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Bayonetta is smooth and feels fluid, yeah. And that makes a lot of people happy. DMC is a deep technical game and you can feel that in its precise and less smooth movements. NG is somewhere between the two. But in Bayonetta, I feel you gain smoothness at the expense of depth and variety. Shared movelists across weapons made it really easy to be constantly linking combos across multiple weapons, but it also took away their uniqueness that made having actual separate weapons be a selling point. There was no Nevan in Bayonetta. Bayonetta reminds me very much of Kamiya's DMC1. That game had great atmosphere, great gameplay concepts, but is very limited in actual combat options compared to DMC3 or even NG.

Do I think Bayonetta 2 could be the game of forever? If he improves on weapon uniqueness, adds more core combat systems, and makes some decent level design without re-using set pieces over and over, sure. But the first game is still a few notches behind the kings of the genre, namely DMC3 & NG:B imo.
 
I'd argue that Bayonetta had a better release date when it came out here compared to Vanquish. With Bayonetta, it came out in January, after the onslaught of games for the Christmas rush, and so could carve out a little place for itself, and garner a bit more attention after people were sated on what came out in the three preceding months, and were looking for something else to do.

In the case of Vanquish, it came out in the midst of the Christmas rush, and as such found itself hitting store shelves around the same time as CoD: Black Ops, Fallout: NV, Fable III, Civ 5, Dead Rising 2, Castlevania: LoS, the Kinect, and a ton of other gaming stuff. Most gamers only have a finite amount of money to plunk down on a game in this time, and there's no guarantee that it'll be used to get Vanquish.

Releasing the game during Q4 is very risky, and it looks like Sega lost the bet bringing out Vanquish at this time. I wouldn't be surprised if the game sold better if it had an early Q1 release like Bayonetta did. Let gamers plow through the Q4 releases, and once they're bored of those, and have a few bucks in their pocket from Christmas presents, they could have bought Vanquish in January. =/
 
Bebpo said:
Bayonetta is smooth and feels fluid, yeah. And that makes a lot of people happy. DMC is a deep technical game and you can feel that in its precise and less smooth movements. NG is somewhere between the two. But in Bayonetta, I feel you gain smoothness at the expense of depth and variety. Shared movelists across weapons made it really easy to be constantly linking combos across multiple weapons, but it also took away their uniqueness that made having actual separate weapons be a selling point. There was no Nevan in Bayonetta. Bayonetta reminds me very much of Kamiya's DMC1. That game had great atmosphere, great gameplay concepts, but is very limited in actual combat options compared to DMC3 or even NG.

Do I think Bayonetta 2 could be the game of forever? If he improves on weapon variety, adds more game systems, and makes some decent level design without re-using set pieces over and over, sure. But the first game is still a few notches behind the kings of the genre, namely DMC3 & NG:B.
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The weapons ARE unique though. Just because everyone of them doesn't have a completely different "dial-a-combo" style movelist doesn't mean WHAT the weapons did were the same. 360 on the stick + P with a Sword, Pistols, Whip, Rockets, etc. etc. all provide different results.

And if you feel that the depth of the combat system is sacrificed because of the fluidity, that's a sacrifice I'll gladly take because Bayonetta feels perfect to me.

But w/e, this is a Vanquish thread. Agree to disagree.
 
I bought both games and I felt Bayonetta to be a better overall game than Vanquish

Vanquish is that fast action gun game yeah but Bayonetta is the DMC destroyer on speed+.
 
Kaijima said:
The problem with people saying "Vanquish is trying to be a western game, Japanese devs shouldn't do that" is that Vanquish blows the holy venerated fucknuts out of western-made, Gears-style cover based shooters. In every way. Graphics. Performance. Technology (!?!). Design. Controls. Bosses. Enemy AI. Even its goofy story and cutscenes are more amusing and over the top than western games that try to be "manly funny" and are just stupid.

The only thing Vanquish doesn't have is exploding giblets and fountains of blood, the American specialty. Oh that, and multiplayer, which isn't a flaw in any way. It doesn't mindlessly follow the fad of shoving multiplayer into every game possible because "it's the year 2010 and everything needs online multiplayer" when the truth is that's a waste in 90% of games on the shelves because nobody really plays anything but CoD and Halo.

It's true that Vanquish is trying to be American style, and by definition that makes it harder for it to stand out on American shelves full of military shooter guys. However, the developer didn't do a bad job or hobble themselves because they chose to make an American, or rather, international style game. If anything they schooled Western devs at their own game, badly.
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Well someone is bitter...
 
Man I just realized I've bought a lot of Sega games this year. Vanquish, Bayonetta, Valkyria Chronicles 2, Resonance of Fate, Alpha Protocol and Yakuza 3. Most of these games didn't do too hot. I wonder how Sega keeps afloat. They publish some good stuff though. Maybe they save money by not marketing them.
 
Rahxephon91 said:
Man I just realized I've bought a lot of Sega games this year. Vanquish, Bayonetta, Valkyria Chronicles 2, Resonance of Fate, Alpha Protocol and Yakuza 3. Most of these games didn't do too hot. I wonder how Sega keeps afloat. They publish some good stuff though. Maybe they save money ,but not marketing them.
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Wow, yeah. You just reminded me that Resonance of Fate AND Yakuza 3 was released this year too.

What an incredible company.
 
Rahxephon91 said:
Man I just realized I've bought a lot of Sega games this year. Vanquish, Bayonetta, Valkyria Chronicles 2, Resonance of Fate, Alpha Protocol and Yakuza 3. Most of these games didn't do too hot. I wonder how Sega keeps afloat. They publish some good stuff though. Maybe they save money by not marketing them.
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They save money but also lose potential sales from lack of hype. Sigh
 
Vanquish's biggest problem wasn't a lack of multiplayer, it was a lack of post-game content.

Bayonetta is one of the best games of the past couple of years. It's everything an amazing, traditional 'Japanese' game can and should be, whereas Vanquish is only half-way there. No (well, very little) post-game content, no real customization and a piss-poor ranking system.

Hell, not even a New Game +? Damn. It's a shame because the game does straight-up 'fun' better than most games. It's just over so quickly and doesn't really make the most of the systems it has in place.

(If you haven't bought this game or Bayonetta, do it now. Vanquish is easily one of the best games of 2010 and Bayonetta is a Nintendoesque classic.)
 
Rez said:
Vanquish's biggest problem wasn't a lack of multiplayer, it was a lack of post-game content.

Bayonetta is one of the best games of the past couple of years. It's everything an amazing, traditional 'Japanese' game can and should be, whereas Vanquish is only half-way there. No (well, very little) post-game content, no real customization and a piss-poor ranking system.

Hell, not even a New Game +? Damn. It's a shame because the game does straight-up 'fun' better than most games.
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I loved upgrading my weapons in RE4. I havent played Vanquish (I guess I'm just not in an action mood) but I had hoping it would have something similar.
 
Yeah Vanquish just really needed a simple fun mode. Where scoring doesn't matter and I can use AR and max out my guns all I want. I mean it does have its arcade replayability, but I just want to screw around a bit and do crazy things.
 
HK-47 said:
I loved upgrading my weapons in RE4. I havent played Vanquish (I guess I'm just not in an action mood) but I had hoping it would have something similar.
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See, what really bothers me is the game HAS the capacity to do this built in, but it is triggered through an odd upgrade system in-game (via upgrade-pickups and picking up a weapon ammo when a gun is already at max-capacity) that doesn't really carry-over across playthroughs, imbalances playthroughs where you start from mid-way through the game and promotes NOT using the weapon you want to upgrade, when I feel like it should have been the opposite.
 
Rahxephon91 said:
Yeah Vanquish just really needed a simple fun mode. Where scoring doesn't matter and I can use AR and max out my guns all I want. I mean it does have its arcade replayability, but I just want to screw around a bit and do crazy things.
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yup,
the lack of Game + with the upgraded guns on replaying new chapters really put the dent on my replaybility aspirations

in Bayonetta, I enjoy going in Climax difficulty with my arsenal and upgraded bars, just wished I could have done the same in Vanqusih by retaining the upgradedness of the guns I spent time upgrading
 
Look at the time of year each game came out.

Now look at how many other games each game was going up against for attention and dollars at that time of year.

There you go.
 
ghst said:
vanquish is just another body in the ever deepening trench between <$10 downloadable games and proven AAA megafuck releases.

this generation is overseeing the death of gaming's middle class.
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Clearly if they wanted it to succeed, they should have made it an 800 point release on XBLA. Definitely not worth 1200 though. Even if it is the greatest game evar! I won't pay 60 because it doesn't look like Uncharted nor have mulitplayer

=[

canova said:
Bayonetta is a bit overrated. NGB and NG2 are still the best
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NG2 was 6 months away from being the best. Pity it's just an unfinished title that could have been great, except they released it early.
 
Rez said:
Vanquish's biggest problem wasn't a lack of multiplayer, it was a lack of post-game content.
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umm, for clarification's sake, I'm not talking about sales here, I got side-tracked.

that would have been... a dumb thing to imply.
 
Bayonetta had sex appeal, more advertising, and more hype. Whereas Vanquish had less advertising and less hype, it also has no multiplayer. People in the west pretty much expect multiplayer to be an obvious feature with shooters. One of my best friends didn't buy vanquish precisely because of that reason and honestly that mode missing definitely took away some of my interest in it.
 
I thought they did a good job with the Bayonetta ads, given how completely unmarketable the game is.
 
Rahxephon91 said:
Well Bayonetta's tv ad was pretty bad. Would have probably turned me off if I didn't know better.
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What? That's like the best game ad of the last 5 years. (The longer version anyway, which for some reason is very hard to find)

Anyway on topic, Bayonetta had basically no competition in that space, Vanquish has a million competitors. Yeah, FPS/close TPS is a popular genre but not popular enough to support the number of entries.

Personally I don't like Gears, I'm not looking for another take on it, even if it's a cool take.
 
And now that we're speaking of ads, I'm sure we can all agree that DMC4 did ads right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDGERPdLYVk

Shit got me so pumped back then.

Edit: wait, was this even an ad? I remember seeing this one on TV.
 
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