My ThoughtsI recently finished and completed the PS2 rerelease of Canis Canem Edit, aka Bully. As stated in my previous blog this was the first time that I had played the game as I missed it first time round so I was looking forward to the chance to actually experience it. Now that I have finished it I have mixed feelings about it. Whilst I really enjoyed the play through and the trophy hunt (well mostly, but more on that later), I can't help but feel that there was something lacking, a slight sense of underwhelmingness about the whole experience.
The story is basic but still very good. I found the odd sense of morality within it quite humorous and enjoyed working my way through it. The over-the-top view of boarding school and corruption was exactly what I had expected from this and wasn't disappointed. What I did find lacking was the games length. I know it's an old game and I didn't expect it to be some long epic blockbuster but I did feel it fell short. It would have been nice to see the addition of the extra content that was added to the Scholarship Edition on Xbox 360 just to add a bit more to the game.
I also stated previously that I am a bit of a mini games addict when it comes to games, and this was no exception. I could have done Chemistry and Shop classes, not to mention gambling my life savings away with games of keep ups for a long time had the game required me to, and I definitely already did more than the required amount. Let's not get me started on paper rounds, arcade games and mowing lawns either. This side of the gameplay I rather enjoyed, hit the right button at the right time, complete a challenge in a certain amount of time... brilliant, right up my street. What I didn't like about the gameplay was just how clunky the controls felt and the horrible camera angle changing by itself all the time, consistently making me wipe-out off my skateboard or bike. And seriously, whoever thought tapping a button to sprint/move faster rather than just holding it down was a good idea? Some of those longer bike races gave me some serious thumb cramp. Again I know it's just a port of an old game, and nothing is perfect but it would have been nice to see that smoothed out even a little bit. This is something I find with Rockstar, I am currently playing GTA V and find the controls similarly lacking so perhaps this is just me or me being picky.
I wasn't a massive fan of the errands side quests, especially the escort so and so from a too b due to the snails crawl walking pace and the just waiting for people to approach you to give you them. Which for me seemed to consistently happen right as I was getting to a timed piece of story or right near the passing out stage of 2am on the clock so I didn't have the time to accept them. But again perhaps that's just me being picky, overall there isn't anything inherently wrong with them.
The Trophy HuntWith the story out of the way it was on to doing all the nitty gritty bits to complete the game. Now I did complete the story with around 75% of the trophies under my belt so there wasn't all that much to do... clean up the collectables lying around, finish the odd side mission, complete a few repetitive tasks, no problem. I spent a large amount of the time between classes and travelling for story missions giving kids wedgies, vandalising anything in sight and trying to evenly spread out my choice of transport for the distance travelled trophies so I was either done with most things or well on my way to finishing them. Again, enjoyed the trophy hunt, not to complicated and most can be done with little to no effort as they just come up through general gameplay, provided you remember to be a little monster of a child in the process. Now for my favourite and least favourite trophies in the game.
FavouritesI just thoroughly enjoyed the story and working my way through this, there isn't really much more to this choice than that.
The Dual Nebula trophy in Bully worth 22 pointsAchieve a high score on Consumo, Nut Shots, and Monkey Fling arcade games. The choice of a mini games addict for sure. Pump all you're change into arcade machines until you can revel in being on top of that leader board, sounds just like my childhood. Unfortunately I did find the games pretty simple once you get used to the pattern of things so when I put my mind to it this one was a bit of a doddle but especially enjoyed the Consumo game. Still enjoyed the little break from tormenting little kids and harassing adults.
Least FavouritesNow there is nothing inherently wrong with this one, this is pretty much a personal choice. I am not a big fan of shooter games, I am a terrible shot and don't find them all that fun a lot of the time so the idea of having to shoot something 300 times made me cringe. I was lucky to hit between 10 to 15 bottles a round until I had played the shooting range at least a dozen times and even then I never once hit even 20. This made this very tedious for me, I had to pump lots of my hard earned cash into this and never once got a ticket to go towards purchasing bits from the souvenir store.
Again, just a tedious one for me, not only had I wasted lots of money in the fair as previously stated but the fact one of the clothing stores only shows up on the map as a barbers threw me off for a little while as I wasn't interested in getting a haircut so why would I go in there (in the end to escape some cops). I also assumed that this would essentially be purchase all clothing items in the game so spent a lot of money on items in the Aquaberry store when if I had been a little smarter I could have probably got this much quicker by only purchasing the cheaper items in the game.
Conclusion & RatingOverall I did enjoy the game despite my little gripes as I know most of these are just personal and don't really have anything to do with the game itself. My only real problem is still the length and lack of content, had there been more I would probably rate the game a little higher (I mean it already exists so why not throw it in there to make it worth the while?). I think if they ever make the Scholarship Edition backwards compatible for Xbox One I would get that to see if it altered my opinions.
Overall Score - 6.5/10 3.5