I guess, if there's anything like news at the moment, it's that I got Bully a couple days ago.
For those not keeping up on this bullshit, this is the game throwing Jack Thompson into weeping fits of rage these days, because the ESRB only rated it up to Teen status; yet it's not entirely unlike GrandTheftAuto based in a private school which is roughly the only thing in this tiny town.
Why is Thompson so upset? I can't really guess. I'm a bit upset because the game jumps back and forth between boring and buggy. There's nothing much I can do about the boring part; the buggy part could technically be partly due to my PS2, though I recentlyish got a new one to replace the really buggy one [it had about half a cat in it; it wasn't worth saving]; maybe I should, like, buy a PS3 in a couple days.
Anyway: the game has got certain clipping issues here and there. The skateboard is nearly fun, but mostly frustrating and useless. Also, it's the only vehicle apart from bikes I've been able to use, unless you count the few cars in the game which you can triangle onto to skitch about at the speed of smalltown suck.
Also, the game is in no way colourblind friendly. You can break into the lockers with the red discs, and hide in the ones with the blue discs; which is great until they're both grey, and the red ones just kinda glow a bit more. And nothing wastes time faster than trying to break into an unlocked locker, hiding it in, hearing this moron's thoughts on it, and getting the hell back out again. And, of the lockers you can break into, most of them just have textbooks, once you've already got all the useful stuff in your possession. Which I guess makes sense.
I haven't actually finished the game yet; I'm at thirtysomething percent now. I probably will finish it; but it's not really a priority, except that I really have to know what Thompson thinks he knows and, if it exists, why it might make him cry. Or whatever reaction he's having to all this.
Based on Thompson's reports, the game is a thrilling Columbine murdersimulator. As evidenced, he says, by the forced feedback rewarding me every time I kill someone to death. In fact, the only time the controller buzzes at me is when I hit the stairs on the skateboard. Apparently, Tony Hawk's into murdersims, too.
Thompson's other, later concern was the byzantine levels of gay sex in the game. Which had better fucking exist, because the lowcontact cheerleader macking is dismal. Sadly, I suspect that, if there really is anything going on between males, it'll be approximately the same animation seen in pecking these vapid geeksluts. Meaning not a hell of a lot.
Okay. Let's back up and cover this correctly for a minute.
Bully. This new game from RockStar in which you play as Pugsly Addams, Boy Fucktard. Pugs has this problem with authority. Especially when authority is a gang of raging GayHomoFag teacher types who are actually too cliched to be voiced by Mel Gibson. In reaction, he saunters about [you know that classic RockStar method of waddling by now], getting jumped by a dozen stereotypoids at once: hoods [though, in the game, they're greasers, like fucking PonyBoy from The Outsiders, and stuck in 1962], preppies [when I was in school, I think I was officially a preppy, though my general attitude was more gothpunk, maybe], jocks [the game actually got those 'tards just about right], and geeks [the John Hughes species]. For some reason, Pugs is a foot shorter than everyone in this school. I doubt that the reason is that he skipped ahead a few grades. He may be a dead ringer for Hank Hill's kid, but he's not quite that clever.
As the game progresses, there are these transparent pavlovian missions Pugs has to undertake to get to whatever the hell comes next. These stupid missions include going to classes to learn skills handy out in the real world. Like finding all the anagrams in the word DAGGER, which allows Pugs to apologise his way out of beatings; playing this weird version of PacManMeetsTron to laserscalpel a painting out of a brown paper wrapper makes him poetic enough to get his pecking on with the chicks. That sort of logical stream of events.
The only time I've seen a class make any sense against its reward is PhysEd, in which wrestling and dodgeball lead to new ways of punching people and better accuracy with a slingshot. Though, why the slingshot has a scope on it is anyone's guess; my guess is that RockStar, seeing how stupid the game was becoming anyway, thought it'd be funny.
So. Go to class. Do stupid things. Learn unlikely things from the stupid things, which then have no real practical use in the game itself. And go on missions. Because the chemistry teacher is also a botanist, and he really wants you to kill a competing flytrap. That sort of realworld issue.
So. I'm thirtysomething percent of the way into this goofy game. And all I've really worked out is that Jack Thompson is an imbecile. Really sad is that I've known that since he first whimpered about CopKiller back in the eighties.
And, like back then, when CopKiller wasn't really worth hearing, but the publicity got everyone to track it down anyway: Bully is doing pretty well, simply because the only guy in Florida Kent Hovind is allowed to laugh at has once again made something boring into something notorious. Because he's still an imbecile.
I dunno. I'll finish the game. Maybe something really cool happens at some point. I doubt it, but I'll watch for it.
More later....

Forgot to add tags for this stupid entry.