Bayonetta

Bayonetta is essentially a sequel masquerading as an original game. It's not a "nice first attempt." It's not short. It's not a foundation lacking features and variety and whatever else reviewers like to complain about. It has the kind of heft usually reserved for the second or third game in a franchise, and deserves to sit next to Assassin's Creed 2 and Uncharted 2 rather than their predecessors.
That may sound like I'm heaping praise on Bayonetta -- and to a degree, I am -- but the footnote here is that it was developed by some of the people that created the original Devil May Cry, including director Hideki Kamiya, so these guys weren't exactly starting from scratch. And it shows: Bayonetta feels much more like a sequel or a side story in the Devil May Cry universe than I expected it to when I started playing, even though the two officially have nothing to do with each other.