Ahh yes…it is all coming back to you now. The cheese wagons packed with our precious youth chuckling along to school. The school bell tolls at 8:00 a.m. and the home room class is packed with students waiting to go to their next class. Soon enough 12:00 p.m. rolls under us and it is lunch time the meeting area for every child of Bullworth Academy. With your geeks, freaks, jocks, loners, some of the prissiest girls, and a list of other kids and their clichés; then there are the bullies, in all shapes, sizes, and ages ready to take you for all that you got!
The nostalgia and nausea of my high school daze came back at full force when RockStar announced a new edition to their ESRB targeted games "Bully" to be released in October 2006. "Bully" has already started to receive great reviews from gamers alike starting at the E3 conference this past May, but also has started a ripple affect through peace advocate groups about the title and storyline for the game. Before we get into raged parents and the negatives of bullies, let us talk about the adventurous days of Jimmy Hopkins.
Bullworth Academy, the last and final wake up call for Jimmy Hopkins, who has been expelled from every school in his district, will have his final show of excellence with the preps and jocks and of Bullworth Academy. After his mother abandoned him to drift away on yet another honeymoon, Hopkins will have to fend for himself against bullies, pesky teachers (we have had a few of those!) and snitches. Among all that, he has deal with the love triangle of high school life, playing pranks on the student body and a list of other shenanigans that go with a high school student trying to make it in their anti-social world. Jimmy H' will have to serve a slew of tactics from various people of the student body and handle a little bit of mischievous from his fellow classmates. Can his adolescents keep up with the roaring tides of "tongue-n-cheek"? Throughout the game, the player will have control of which direction Jimmy will go. Will he be disobedient and cause havoc across the campus, or will he drop his rough boy act and try to make it up the social ladder as one of the elite? The choice is yours, but I know which route I will take.
"Bully" was supposed to feature two versions of the game for Xbox and PS2. In recent news Xbox was dropped from the production crew and ownership has been given solely to the PS2 system. The production drop for the game came after a lack of support was seen by publishers from Microsoft towards the Xbox system. With the hype of the PS3 and the release of Xbox 360, developers did not want to take a chance with Xbox. More news has continued to surround "Bully" when parents and advocates for peace and violence for/against video games started to flap their jaws.
Bullying Online is an organization that is devoted to ending all forms of bullying on school grounds, which is based out of the UK. The group is hoping to ban the game from the UK markets. The organization's representative Liz Carnell has said that "This game should be banned. I am extremely worried that kids will play it and then act out what they have seen in the classroom…". Peaceoholics, a group based out of Washington D.C., recently held protest at the RockStar Games NY offices carrying signs and chanting that the Take-Two and RockStar developers are felons. In addition, they stated employees need to be arrested for the games that they produce, and also calling for a complete foreclosure of both companies. In my personal opinion I see "Bully" as a way for children that are being bullied to open their eyes and not take what these punks are doing to them. I see more of a stand up for the average kid than a downfall in "Bully". The game is based on a delinquent that is trying to fight the system of crooked kids and faculty, and the best way to solve that problem is to bully around a few folks.
Stay with MyGamer for our review of Bully on the PS2.
by: Teschia L. Blakley