OrtizGames

Last post, 2 days ago, I mentioned Play This Thing and Fantastic Contraption in the same breath. Well, Play This Thing went ahead and reviewed Fantastic Contraption, and instead of giving you a link and telling you to go ahead and play it, they wrote up a nice summary and analysis of the game.

Happy coincidence.

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I would be writing about Monster Hunter right now, if for the fact that the game is too long and I have simply not even reached Hunter Level 3 yet because I’ve been too busy playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. All week there’s been a regular storm of controversy wrapped around the so-called last episode of Solid Snake’s life and series. It seems that either our sneaky protagonist has gotten either a great deal of love or a great deal of hate with few in-betweens. I’ve heard any broad number of both ecstatic and disgusted takes on the game, so I decided to share my own observation and try to be what I seldom end up being: a median.

I loved MGS4. Let’s start out honest. I adored it. It was gorgeous, and exactly the kind of thing I want to see in a game. At the same time, I understand exactly why some people were more than disattisfied with acclaims from all over calling this a “Near Perfect” game, not to mention IGN’s PK Rockin’ Omega score of 10/10.

For a great number of people, MGS4 felt like a huge cutscene: a very pretty, very lovely cutscene sometimes lousily voice-acted with occasionally very tacky dialogue. The actual gameplay takes up maybe half of the game, while the other half is comprised of immovable cutscenes that pull you through a gargantuan action story that drags on and on. Were you to be able to compile Metal Gear as a movie you would easily have an 8 hour action adventure epic that would be very difficult for the average moviegoer to understand.

That makes a lot of people turn their noses up at the new Metal Gear, insinuating that it feels a lot less like a game and more like a big movie story you seem to have no hand in. However, what I realized as I was playing and feeling more or less the same along those lines was that there’s nothing really dictating what a game should or should not be comprised of. It was at that moment that I saw MGS4 as something quite different than what I had picked it up as–not as an intricate stealth game but an entire interactive experience, immersing me in the world of Metal Gear so deeply that when the cutscenes rolled around, I still felt like I was experiencing the action. Not to mention that occasionally the movie aspect was enhanced by gameplay aids, like the opportunity to “flashback” every now and then during cutscenes and change the camera’s POV in order to get different takes on the action and foreshadowing for future events.

The actual sneaking gameplay outside of the cutscenes is just as exciting and challenging as ever, with an even more fresh look and feel thanks to a great deal of Western adoptions by Eastern developers. The over the shoulder view, the ability to play through the entire game as Rambo as you like; all those things add a new flavor and style of playing the game that I couldn’t have expected. I’ve watched people barely using the OctoCamo, Snake’s brand-new, nifty equipment which lets him hide out and blend into his surroundings, and instead avoid enemies like mad by hotfooting their way behind obstacles and diving into cardboard boxes and drum cans. I’ve watched people take out enemies one by one, silently, using snipers and knives and a great deal of patience. My buddy Squall is trying to go through the entire game without killing anyone or being spotted once in under 5 hours on Extreme Mode, and after having ripped through most of the game with guns blazing and seeing his careful, precise art of sneaking, I decided to attempt to emulate his dedication. You can play this game in three dozen ways, and that’s just beautiful design to me.

To counter Tycho’s somewhat aloof stance on the game, I believe MGS4 can be just as much, if not more, a game about remaining undetected as any Splinter Cell or Assassin’s Creed, if not more so. You can even remain undetected to bosses if you’ve got your wits about you. The thing is, Metal Gear does not demand you play a certain way. It does not demand you kill or knock out–it encourages you to stick to Snake’s roots, but does not reprimand you for not doing so. You can actually unlock a few interesting bonuses if you go on a few killing frenzies. I think Metal Gear’s openess for gameplay and intricacy in its execution is spectacular. (Note: Tycho recanted a little earlier this week, so he’s been grudgingly let off the hook.)

But to go back a few steps, I have to agree with a few things being put out there. There’s nothing wrong with Metal Gear being over the top in story, but when it seems like the entire story is a gargantuan plot twist, the player ends up feeling a little bit alienated and confused, as if he or she has been led on a massive wild goose chase. Not to mention the fact that a lot of it is tackily written, which I tend to blame on localization. It also doesn’t help that we have some great English voice actors who are incapable of displaying certain emotions.

The game is still very satisfying to me, but not everyone has the intense analysis and following of Metal Gear characters I do, and therefore they wouldn’t be able to understand as much of the plot. It’s why Kojima very cleverly released the downloadable Metal Gear Database. But even the Database doesn’t give everyone what they want out of a Metal Gear game, and unfortunately there’s a crowd out there who just doesn’t like movie experiences in games, like Yahtzee, for example. There’s people who want the game to be strictly that, a game. As someone who loves literature and film and graphic novels, I have a slightly different focus in what I try to achieve with games. But that’s fine–nobody’s saying anyone’s right or wrong, we just have different end goals. MGS4 just happens to be one of the things I want as an end goal, with a few tweaks.

If you have a PS3, just get Metal Gear. It’s a great PS3 exclusive and most people bought the damn console for the game. I mean, even if you don’t like it, Metal Gear Online is the multiplayer shooter of the moment aside from COD4. Just get Metal Gear. Skip the cutscenes, if you like. You don’t have to watch them. Do yourself a favor and don’t be the guy who has a PS3 and doesn’t have MGS4.

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Instead of posting anything about recent news over the past couple of weeks I have been busy avoiding all contact with the outside world, since I have simply needed a break. However, I can’t continue running forever and sooner or later I would have to come on and talk about the recent explosion that has happened this summer in the form of So Much Cool.

The first stage of So Much Cool came when I got my hands on Monster Hunter 2 Freedom for the PSP, which I will be reviewing promptly–as soon as I can stop playing World of Warcraft again, since I could not resist the grind and already have a new Warrior up to level like, 15. MH2F is an amazing game. I have been geeking out over it for the past two weeks. If playing online wasn’t such an ordeal (especially with my absolutely shoddy connection down here in Mexico where I get 4,000 ping in World of Warcraft–I mean, come on) I would be giving this game Grade A points. But I’ll talk about MH2F later this week.

Part 2 of So Much Cool was the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Sons of the Patriots. I have never seen the Internet this excited. Well, I have, but over a game, never. Post after post on blog after blog is about MGS4 and IGN’s perfect score rating for it. I, unfortunately, am not one of those lucky enough to have a copy of the game since launch date, but my good buddy Squall assures me after having beaten the game last night that it is spectacular. His only worry is that it is a great deal of servicing the fans, and he wonders whether a non-fan would appreciate the game in the same way.
Luckily, I’m not a hardcore MGS fan–I’m absolutely awful at sneaking and I have never owned the games–though I did try to play Squall’s MGS1 copy on my computer only to have it fail epically. I do know the entire storyline after having analyzed and researched the whole thing along with Squall, but I’m pretty sure there’s things I don’t know and I’m definitely sure it’s not the same as playing the game. So depending on how I react, we can make some safe assumptions about how accurate 10/10 may be.
I’ll be getting the game sometime in the last days of June, so we’ll wait and see.

The last stage of So Much Cool has been the release of the SPORE Creature Editor and the upcoming demo release on June 17. Details:

I don’t want to be an advertisment here, but download the demo on June 17, for your own sake. The Creature Creator is a ten dollar buy and it’s just indescribably awesome, but considering the demo is released in two days you might as well wait for something free, especially since you can already preorder the game from EA’s Online Store. Launch date for SPORE: September 7, 2008.
The game works on my computer–and not only works, but works on a decent resolution with pretty stellar graphics and I was able to make a lovely number of different creatures. I am just thrilled. I was so afraid I wouldn’t be able to play the game on my computer. But Will Wright loves me, I keep forgetting, and would never let me suffer that way.

This is such an action-packed summer, and already up ahead are the release of the In-Game XMB for PS3, Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, SPORE for PC and Final Fantasy XIII and XIII Versus.
Slap Gran Turismo, GTAIV and Metal Gear at the beginning of that, and this is my favorite year ever.

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Facebook recently initiated “Facebook Chat”, a messenger concept people have been dying for since Facebook exploded from a college thing into the next MySpace. It’s become apparent to me within the first twenty minutes of poking at it that the thing is pure evil, since my feed shows up live on everyone’s chat list if they happen to me talking at me (I don’t answer back being the Facebook dissenter I am, of course) so now if it even occurs to me to download some stupid application for the day, even if I hide it on the mini-feed, everyone who happens to be staring intently at me will be notified.

Of course, it’s also unlikely too many people will be interested in me. I am, after all, somewhat boring–particularly on Facebook. But I somewhat dread a game designer contacting me randomly after having seen me on someone else’s site and walking in on me taking a personality quiz for little girls. Not that I do that, or anything. I just might some day. You never know.

And no, I’m not giving out my Facebook on here. Why would I? There’s nothing of interest on there. If you really want to find me, go ahead and try to find me. You know who I am and where I study. It can’t possibly be that hard.

So now you’re thinking, “All right, Andres, how does this tie into games?” Yes, I know I’m a game designer and I should be focusing on things like Metal Gear Online and GTAIV, but instead I decided to talk about Facebook–because believe it or not, in-game communication with players isn’t all too far from what Facebook just integrated.

And since you’re all so picky about MGO and GTAIV, I will talk about them–in context with Facebook.

The thing about most games–and this is mostly when dealing with the online multiplayer aspect of any genre–is that communication is crucial for anything to work in an online setting. The reason Facebook is so successful is because it centers around the idea of communication and connection between human beings. Video games in an online setting have had a hard time hitting the right formula in order to thrive because they haven’t been able to find the appropriate balance of communication versus play. (Brenda Brathwaite would be so proud of me.)

In the instance of Rock Band, you have an absolutely gorgeous system for playing your favorite songs with friends, rocking it out and sharing the moments through an online setting–but the connectivity is so limited you might as well just get together at somebody’s house and play there. There’s no real connection to be made outside your little group of friends. When people go online, they want to be connected to the World Wide Web. In that instance, online play has been dramatically downplayed and remained a disappointment for those hoping for a richer, expanded experience.

To open a little on MGO before we get into the online communications versus play idea, I have to say I love this game. Metal Gear Online is a gold shooter–it feels natural to the touch and very different from so many FPSs I’ve played. While I love first person, I have to say that MGO’s beautiful third-person action so far trumps any Halo, Counter-Strike or Unreal you throw at me. The transitions between shooting and CQC and laying traps is so efficient and quick that someone with the absolute upper hand can be devastated by a few small mistakes, allowing the dark horse to burst out of nowhere with a smack to the face. Not to mention that they have something called “Sneaking Mission”, in which you get to be Snake. You get to be Snake. That’s enough said.

In case anyone ever wondered about why AI seems so stupid in MGS4 for not seeing Snake lying camouflaged on the ground, trust me–I can’t see him either. It has nothing to do with stupidity. He’s just hard to see.

In MGO you have different issues–on the connectivity side, the fact that at any given time there may be no more than 2000 people logged on to the MGO server and all of them are in different closed games makes matchmaking becomes incredibly difficult. You might find yourself trapped in a game with a range of skill levels between 0 and 7, ensuring that if you’re lower level, the game will be too hard and if you’re higher level, the game will be too easy. Communicationwise, MGO seems to have no issues–other than the fact that your email can only hold so many messages and that there’s no private chat, so talking to your friends while on the menu and deciding what you want to do is somewhat difficult. It has many ways of talking while within an actual match, including keyboard, microphone and predetermined communication commands. Of course, once you have a mic you’ll usually just be shouting into it whenever anything happens, since you’re on a private channel with your team. Interestingly enough, Kojima Productions made the interesting choice of disabling your communication when you are no longer capable of speaking–for example, when stunned, asleep or dead. It makes dying all the more frustrating because you can’t comment on it, but it stops a great deal of raging over the communication channels as an amazingly efficient fix. The communication versus play, however, is a tad unbalanced in this scenario, since while MGO plays beautifully like a completely non-standard shooter with different dynamics from any other FPS I’ve ever played online, it needs to have a lot tweaked in order to function correctly–mainly the issue with how easy it is to get a headshot, and how difficult and one sided it makes the game. Getting close to someone is now an art, and relies on a great deal of luck and patience–both of which are not exactly prime elements to focus on in any FPS. You want skill, timing and precision to be the elements to focus your gameplay on. We’ll see if Konami lowers the headshot ratios by when MGO comes out in June–I will most certainly be playing it because it is simply a true pleasure and just amazing fun when your team and you really coordinate.

GTAIV has its own version of gameplay–but I keep feeling after playing it that the entire thing seems somewhat tacked on, like an addition to gameplay merely created to compete with the upcoming release of Metal Gear Online.

First, however, the main game. The game itself is pure gold, and I’m enjoying it very much–though I’m a little disappointed with how the new features of the game don’t really switch up the gameplay. They make gameplay more interesting and efficient and dynamic, yes. But in terms of “new”, nothing fresh really comes to the table. To be expected–it’s another GTA game, and GTA is simply GTA. The story is lovely, however, and I’m enjoying it when I’m not busy working or on my last days of MGO.

Returning to the multiplayer, it seems to be very much the single player game with more players in it, shooting each other. It’s really not as glorious as I expected, and the fact that contacting your friends is practically nonexistent and gameplay modes are nothing short of a repeat of Unreal’s and Team Fortress’s match modes makes it rather disappointing. It’s still kind of fun, but some modes are somewhat pointed or biased and people playing them are downright stupid. I think there were several mistakes made in the GTA multiplayer, and that makes me wonder really if it was in the original plan of the fourth game or if it was put in to try to sell more and build more hype versus the looming colossus of Metal Gear Solid 4.

To close on GTAIV, the game is already starting to stale a little bit on me–and of course I’ll beat the whole thing and enjoy it, but I realize it’s just like playing another GTA, and because I know the gameplay so well I feel like I can’t get anything more out of it other than story–of course the story will be good, with Rockstar’s witty cynicism and newfound ability to narrate. But it’s a sad feeling I’m left with because I only just got the game and everyone’s giving it such high praise. But really, people… it’s Grand Theft Auto. It’s always going to be Grand Theft Auto.

So Facebook has got the formula for connectivity versus play–but do they? I still think even they haven’t refined the formula, because nothing on Facebook catches my attention anymore. I loathe it–I just can’t become interested in wasting time on it. So we still have a lot of experimentation to go… don’t count on the perfect MMO formula just yet, folks.

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When you think of casual games, the first thing that comes to your mind is not Final Fantasy. In fact, usually you’re nowhere near the RPG genre when you’re thinking about casual play. You might consider a shooter or a puzzle game long before you even consider the remote possibility of a casual RPG, and then when you actually stop to contemplate it for a moment, you stop, laugh, and say “Nah, that won’t happen.”

But how little informed we all are!

As a matter of fact, there’s been a few attempts at casual role-playing games in the past. One of the most noteworthy is a PC game by WildTangent (makers of Lumines and Runescape) called Fate. They declare it an “Enthusiast”game (same category as Runescape, an MMO) on their website, but in truth it’s much more a casual game in spirit than a hardcore one. You can play Fate for ten minutes or ten hours, and the result is pretty much still the same experience. And it’s just as addictive as Peggle, so you might end up working it for hours on end and somehow get no sense of accomplishment but all the sense of enjoyment.

There’s been other experiments in the casual/hardcore mix market for RPGs recently in even AAA titles–at least, what I perceive to be triple A. Not only triple A, but the very game we’d never expect to be a casual game. Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (which I have to say I enjoy immensely) is very much a traditional RPG in the sense that it has a long, spanning story mode that has cutscenes and choices and menus and running around collecting lumber to build flower wagons. But Square Enix and the Kingdom Hearts team therein that was responsible for this amalgam of a game decided to put casual elements into gameplay and allow short, playable bursts of fun for two to five minutes at a time like any good portable game should, and I applaud any PSP title for achieving this standard instead of being a ported PS2 title. This effect is achieved through Missions, a mysterious menu option never before seen in any Final Fantasy game.

It works beautifully–you choose a mission from the Missions menu, complete it, and usually you’ll get another mission to do until you run out of them and need to seek out more through the regular story mode. Missions consist of running around a map and seeking a particular enemy while fighting baddies of differing skill levels (depending on the mission) and picking up treasure chests along the way. You can only access Missions while at a save point, making the transition between missions and saving seamless, quick and effective. It takes about two minutes to run one, and they’re addictive, despite their repetitiveness. There’s just something about Crisis Core‘s seamless battlesystem that makes those two minutes gloriously fun. It might be the fact that in running them, you level up and acquire enhanced items and materia that beef your character and you can use through regular story mode, making yourself vastly more powerful and advantaged. Even so, the game is still challenging, and you have Hard Mode to run through after you complete it once.

Using these kinds of elements in gameplay, Square Enix has toed in on a very different market in a very different way. Remaking Final Fantasy IV for the DS is lovely, I’ll admit, but the truth is that Final Fantasy was never meant to be a portable game. It’s always been a sit-your-ass-down-and-play-that-thing-for-hours game. Seeing a Final Fantasy that has mixes of both gameplay styles makes me content, especially since I’ve noticed from watching the industry that developers think hardcore games are waning. Both elements in a big title like Final Fantasy show that there’s rooms for both styles in the industry, and there’s no reason developers should stop trusting that the epics will sell to the mainstream audience.

In that light, give both games a try. Fate is a fairly low-hardware-specs game and Crisis Core needs only a PSP to work. They’re good fun and I’ve enjoyed both in their own right. When casual games are disguised as RPGs, some interesting things are probably on the horizon. What will Final Fantasy XIII bring? We can only guess.

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I played Gaia Online for a while back in my day, and recently popped back on for a while to give it another spin and see how it had evolved. It’s certainly different from what it used to be, for sure, and the focus of the game/interactive community/time-wasting site has changed from what seemed to be an anime-lover gathering place to a chibi-person-lover gathering place. The whole point of Gaia has become to make your dude/dudette look cool within an ocean of other dudes/dudettes that look cool.

While I’m not one to bash on character customization (how many hours did I spend in the Rock Band clothing store again?) but Gaia’s focus seems to be entirely on that, making it a tricky thing to really sink into. Their secret lies in getting people to earn Gold by doing stuff they really like to do–like watch videos and play games, post art and talk on forums. Doing fun things earns you points AKA Gaia Gold, and using that Gold you can buy stuff on the market–a market which consists of stores generated by Gaia and a bidding/selling system with other players. On this market, you can get accessories and hats and dark haloes and burning swords of Oblivion–all of this can go on a little virtual representation of you (far cooler than you have ever looked in real life, of course) and you can show yourself off to the millions of other Gaia players who are all wearing similar equipment.

In the end everyone is so intricate and complex and covered in stuff that it’s severely hard to stand out anymore, and it’s gotten me to the point of slowing my insane rampage to find all the cool items I wanted.

In my experience, however, I did get to understand a great deal about this online community and why it works–particularly their market system. I’ve been comparing it to other markets in other games, and took the following examples: City of Heroes, which a friend of mine took the time to explain to me, and elaborated on the confusing market system; World of Warcraft, where I looked at the standard bidding system; EVE Online came to mind; and finally the real world Stock Market, how it works and how it fluctuates.

Surprisingly, out of all those markets, it’s most similar to the Stock Market, somehow, despite that it’s a buying and selling bidding system, with buy now prices and user-placed bidding increments. Basically, depending on the popularity of a particular item, its market value increases or decreases and people begin to buy or sell more as that fluctuates. Items like Naruto headbands, angel wings and the old-school favorite “Ancient Katana” are constantly high in the hundred thousands for cost, where items that you could purchase in a shop or that have only recently been released–even if they are special edition–are pretty much cheap buys. Usually, you’re better off buying new releases directly from the Gaia Stores–players will be itching to earn profit off their own buys and will be selling expensive on the bidding market.

The market has a few broken issues; for example, people can just pull their auctions out at the last minute if they don’t like the buy price at no penalty cost to them, and putting an auction up costs no real money, either. It’s only when you sell an item that a “broker’s fee” is applied, balancing out the market by removing money from the game, but then the prices become a tad inflated from overpricing, so people can earn back that 6k Gold they lose from selling a 300k item.

But that’s not the issue–the real problem is how difficult it is to actually get your hands on some of those items because so many people on Gaia are jerks. I’m not saying all, and if you’re reading this and agreeing with me you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re seconds away from getting an Ancient Katana for 180k Gold, and the seller decides that because their Buy Now price is 250k, they don’t want to settle for that much less, and so they pull their auction out and lose nothing.

All in all, watching the Gaia Market, predicting which items will sell and which ones won’t and collecting your own list of cool stuff is extremely addictive. I really like my little character, even if there’s probably a hundred thousand people who have characters that are very similar. It’s an interesting thing about Gaia–it’s like a game, but it’s not, and yet people play it all the time. There’s games in it. You can make a game of it. It’s just one of those quasi-existential things. Gaia doesn’t even know what it is. I used to call it an art site. I started calling it an anime site. Now, I’m just not sure what it is anymore. It’s a community, filled with all the different things communities do.

Then again, looking on that, doesn’t World of Warcraft fit the definition of a community, too?

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I’ve noticed recently that every few days I’ll suddenly get an influx of 40 people reading my EVE Online review and posts. What’s with that? Should I keep writing about EVE? Do people enjoy reading my blogging about it? I’m considering just posting every week or so about my experience on EVE, sharing what I know and what I do. It’s become the one MMO I’m playing regularly now, anyway.

Opinions?

To follow up on that, let’s actually talk a bit about EVE. My friends and I have started up a corporation and begun specializing in different fields of industry (one of us working ammo production, a few of us mining, one of us researching heavy weaponry and one of us trying to max out different builds of frigates). Having a corporation is interesting, because you really don’t have to do anything. It’s kind of like having a World of Warcraft guild in the fact that you make one and then you never really have to do anything with it. Only it’s not.

See, in World of Warcraft your incentive is to become the coolest guild on your server (if that is indeed your goal). In EVE, however, your goal is to be a successful corporation. In WoW, you PvP and get epic drops for your guildies. In EVE, you make money. You run a business. You provide a service. To real players.

That’s just amazing to me. To think that players can actually contract you to protect them while they mine–that’s an astounding gameplay mechanic. EVE Online has been called more of a Capitalist simulator than a game–and I don’t mind. Nobody says capitalism can’t be fun. Running a business can be great fun. People do it for fun all the time.

Anyway, more about EVE later. For now, I’m just going to enjoy spring break. I really need this vacation. And soon I’m going to have to start looking for internships and jobs for the summer, and we know that won’t be fun.

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Unsurprisingly, finals have caught up with me at a rather lousy time, and I’m trying to keep my head clear and myself afloat while I work to complete them. Hence, I haven’t been posting at all, and I have had barely any contact with the gaming world for a while. I’ve mostly been immersed in drawing and painting and hours of work. So, inevitably, I turn to drugs. In specific: EVE Online.

I wrote a review on EVE Online a while ago (back when I actually had game of the week reviews) and it pretty much holds true to what I experience as I slip back into the world of interstellar piracy. However, some of my friends have recently taken up the game as well, and it adds a fantastic new dynamic of starting up fleets and corporations with friends and actually getting the chance to preplan our entire endeavor. I have the advantage of having played already and having a lot of my character set up already, so as my friends begin to start up I can buy them initial equipment and advise them on fitting for their crafts, which gives them a distinct upper edge in combat during starting missions. We have, however, also come across the problem that newbies at the game don’t quite know how to handle their equipment, and therefore can’t face heavier combat and be expected to perform to the level of their gear.

What I hadn’t thought of before is that EVE has a very established learning curve to it–you actually need to scrape your way up from the underdregs in order to become “combat effective” as I’ve been calling it. Giving my friends higher tier gear and helping them pick out the better equipment may actually not be helping them at all, and instead confusing them and making it more likely for them to be shot down and lose their expensive arsenal.

I’ve decided on a somewhat different approach since we started playing. I’ll still help them with their gear, but I’ve told them to go back and do as many starting missions as they can. I’ve given them a few tips for key equipment that will ensure their survival, and have suggested that in the direst of circumstances they learn the appropriate time to run away. In the meantime, I’ve begun the undertaking for a mining barge to make money for our corporation. Once they start more advanced missions, we can worry about more advanced equipment. For now, the gear that they have will facilitate their climb, and they’ll begin to learn the game process on their own.

I’m so tired. I’m glad I have EVE as a stress reliever.

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Since I’ve been playing Bully for the past month in order to review it, I have to say I disagree with this article.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet, since I have other things to do. I’ll go more into depth next week, when I review Bully in my Game of the Week section.

Bully was a game made as clever satire to illustrate a world gone mad from the eyes of an abused and unwanted child. In the game, you play the role of a Jimmy Hopkins, a frustrated teen thrown into a boarding school while his mother marries an old hateful jerk. He finds himself surrounded by loathsome bullies and sociopaths, lousy, irresponsible teachers and a headmaster that behaves so egocentrically he’s disgusting and suffers from severe fundamental attribution error.

In this chaotic world, Bully allows you to make order. You must make the choices and help out those in need–gain respect from all the social cliques and keep your nose out of trouble while trying to pass all your classes and accomplish many assorted tasks. While it’s true you can beat up, humiliate and harrass kids, there is no “reward” to doing so. You are not given “points.” In fact, after a while of playing I realized it was honestly a joyless endeavor to try to beat everyone up–I would much rather go about defending kids that needed it, because that would earn me respect. That would move the story forward and open up more for me, which is a reward.

Bully isn’t a game designed for children. It’s a game designed for adults. It’s an exposure to high school again, so that we may remember what it was like to struggle through the darker side of education, dealing with stress from all sides and trying to find our own place in our mixed up world–even if we have to fight our way there. And the truth is, in all circumstances, nobody fights for absolutely no reason.

I might as well not review it, now that I’ve gone ahead and written all that! But in all probability, Bully will appear in the GOTW section next week, as promised.  I just have to finish it.

I can respect the article in question because of the mention (at the very end, in a few short sentences) of differing views on the game’s premise. Were it not so heavily biased, I would actually think it’s a good piece of journalism.

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I’ve started doing my Game of the Week Reviews, like I should be doing.

This week, Star Fox: Command.

I haven’t done the ones for all the old ones. If I get a chance, I’ll get around to them. If not, well… they’re still there so you can see what I’ve played.

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