For most people, high school sucked. This is pretty much a given at this point, right? The endless questioning and self-doubt, the lack of control over your own schedule, dealing with the impossible mysteries of the opposite sex while navigating the often treacherous shoals of what amounted to a four year, walled-in social experiment. Yeah, high school sucked. More »
Lots of people loved Jimmy Hopkins, the squinty-eyed protagonist of Rockstar’s Bully. The academic open-world title didn’t set the kinds of records that a Grand Theft Auto game does but it’s remained a favourite in the hearts of many gamers. More »
Whipping rain the dots your screen in a firefight. Fog that hides lingering zombies. Sheets of ice that cause you car to spin out of control. Weather can be an important part of video games. Over the years there have been some amazing takes on gameplay-impacting weather. More »
Rockstar released sandbox title Bully on the PlayStation 2 back in 2006 and later ported the title to the Xbox 360, Windows and the Nintendo Wii. Set in a school environment, the PS2 version sold 1.5 million copies. More »
I peruse columns on Sundays and today found myself cracking up over Emily Short’s GameSetWatch column, ‘Homer In Silicon’: Communicating Character. More »
For me, it was one of the last console generation’s finest hours. With Bully, Rockstar managed to focus the GTA formula inside a smaller, tighter environment while also benefitting from a fresh setting and plenty of humour. More »
31 complaints against a TV ad for Take-Two’s Bully: Scholarship Edition were dismissed by the Advertising Standards Authority. The complainants said that the ads “glorified and trivialised” bullying, but the ASA found that the ads themselves were not in violation of any standards.
According to GamesIndustry, the ASA did find the game distasteful, but was not glorifying violence because of its “comic and exaggerated” nature:
“Although many might find the name and content of the game to be in poor taste, the content of the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence”, it said.
ASA dismisses Bully advertising complaints [GamesIndustry.biz]
