Sunday 13 January, 2008

Gameplay:
After playing a few more hours of Bully I am starting to get bored of it. While the dialog is well written and entertaining, the inflexibility of the missions doesn't fit well with the rest of the game. It may be that we've been spoiled for a while with games that let us make decisions about what type of actions we take. In Bully, each mission has a very limited solution set and doesn't seem to give you any options about whose side you want to take.

Rockstar did add a few touches to make the game feel more like a school and less like GTA, but mostly they are cosmetic changes. For instance, instead of picking up hookers to regain health, you give presents to girls to get a kiss. Also, instead of an assortment of high powered weapons you get bricks, firecrackers, smoke bombs, and trash can lids. Still, since nearly everything takes less than 20 minutes to complete Bully makes for an excellent casual game, and the minigames effectively break up the normal gameplay.

Design:
Bully is a well designed game, as it should be, since GTA3 was also a well designed game. The graphics fit very well with the atmosphere of the game, and there are lots of small touches that add atmosphere to the game as well. There were a large number of common models to complement the custom character models and gave the school a more realistic feel. Also, the non-unique chars had some basic behavior beyond just walking around, as well. When the bell rang you'd see most of them run off to class.

The biggest disappointment to the design of this game was its unoriginal play. It really feels like GTA3 with a different set of graphics on top of it. From a design point of view this likely saved a lot of time and it's not uncommon for a game engine to be reused, however, most of the time this is accompanied by enough changes or something creative enough to not leave it feeling like the game that first used the engine.

Another design choice that irked me in Bully is that they give the player very little personal choice during the game. I've seen, at most, two available missions at a time, and I had to complete both of them before another mission would become available. And each mission has a very straightforward goal and way of accomplishing it.

All in all, this is a fun game to play, and has some very entertaining cutscenes, but it's nothing new.

But, more than the graphics, don't you feel that the setting makes it a completely different game experience? I agree with your appreciation of the fact that the gameplay is essentially the same (and I think I wrote as much in one of my early GameLogs), but after a while the setting and story really started to make a difference for me.