Saturday 12 January, 2008

Summary:
Bully is a game in which you play a 'troubled' kid starting at a private school for children of rich parents who don't want to deal with their kids. The came consists mainly of running around and hitting other students while avoiding being caught by the prefects. The game is from Rockstar (think GTA).

Gameplay:
If you've played any of the GTA games in the past few years (San Andreas, Vice City, etc.) then you're already familiar with the gameplay. The main part of the game involves completing missions, of which there seems to be three main types. The first is protecting someone, the second is beating a certain person up, and the third is retrieving an object. These types of missions are fairly common and nothing new, and, just like in GTA, you fail if you're caught by an authority figure--prefect--at any point during the mission. While this is all old hat, it's still pretty fun.

Where the game really does well is in the minigames. There are numerous classes that you can attend (or skip) including math, english, art, gym, science, etc. Each class has its own minigame and doing well gives you a new ability. The minigames are both simple and enjoyable and are so far my favorite part of the game. Unfortunately, classes can sometimes be difficult to get to, as you aren't told where they'll be until the class starts, and they last for about 3.5 minutes and you have to find them. However, if you're lazy you can let a prefect catch you outside of class and he'll "bust" you and take you to class.

Something Rockstar brought back in this game is factions, however, each set of missions seems to increase for only a single faction and decrease another faction. I'm reminded of GTA2 which let you do missions for one of three factions to change how much each liked you, but you don't get to choose missions from different factions in Bully (at least not yet). Instead, you do a series of missions for one faction and then move on.

Very nice entries. Has everything what the grader is looking for but perhaps next time, possibly be more organized. Focus more on your game play when writing in the game play section of the entry. When reading that section, especially in the first one, I am given more of an in depth design analysis of the game rather than what the player have accomplished. Your design section is great nonetheless. Keep up the good work!

-Theodore R. (Grader)

After a while I decided that it was easier to let the prefects bust me rather than have to make my way to whatever class I had to go to. :-) More efficient.