Here’s Bully according to the Telegraph:

The game, called Bully, features a shaven-headed pupil who torments fellow students and teachers at his school.

Coz shaven-headed pupil = EVIL, right? Just like kids wearing hooded tops are all gangsters. Please, get over your fashion prejudice.

And no, protagonist Jimmy Hopkins doesn’t torment anyone. He’s tormented by his fellow students. Most of the plot centres around helping other kids who are being bullied. Even if you wanted to, it’s actually quite difficult to pick fights with the prefects, teachers and policemen around every corner.

Players gain extra points by terrorising other pupils with a range of physical and psychological abuse, including dunking children’s heads in lavatories and firing catapults at teachers.

Extra points? Bully doesn’t even have a points system. Unless buying candy for girls in exchange for a kiss is now considered “psychological abuse”, the authors of this article are talking crap. A lavatory-dunking scene wouldn’t surprise me but if the first half of the game is anything to go by, the other kid deserved it.

Rated for children aged 15 and above, the game is being released for the XBox 360 and the Nintendo Wii, a games console on which players have to physically act out the movements they want their character to perform.

Physically acting out the movements… Good lord, people, at least TRY the Wii before you comment. Vaguely flailing your hands about with no resistance isn’t acting out a fight, as anyone who’s played Wii Boxing will know. I haven’t played the Wii version of Bully but it wouldn’t surprise me if the closest it came to acting out real life was the Workshop class on bicycle maintenance where you “turn” the pedals using the PS2 left analog stick.

And the game is rated 15 for heaven’s sake. 15! You know why it’s rated 15? Because BBFC professionals think it’s appropriate for 15-year-olds. If, as Jimmy, you fail to attend your classes, you’ll have fewer skills and abilities to get through the game. Each class is a series of non-violent minigames. Your days are spent collecting rubber bands, solving your teachers’ personal problems, safely escorting geeks through a violent schoolyard and standing up to gangs. Your nights are spent on nefarious deeds like panty raids on the girl’s dorm.

Yeah, I can see how this might undermine a charity’s efforts to stop kids joining groups that pick on others. Showcase a kid who doesn’t conform to the herd, fights for the underdog and stands up for himself and his friends? Heaven forfend…

Sure, Bully does feature weapons like a catapult, stink bombs and firecrackers. You can start fights and throw stuff at people; the only in-game reward is the privilege of being pursued by prefects and having your gear confiscated. Fighting other kids can be an entertaining diversion but without GTA’s validation of FBI helicopters and tanks, it quickly becomes tiresome.

Read the full Telegraph article: Video game glorifies bullying, say critics

Bully: Scholarship Edition (hopefully still featuring Monkey Fling) will be released in the UK on March 7th.

There were about two hundred people at the event. HMV had encouraged cosplayers to turn up, so the audience was a nice change from the black-metal-t-shirt-wearing unwashed masses that I normally see at this sort of thing.

The drill was pretty simple:

1. Turn up early.
2. Buy a copy of Final Fantasy XII, and/or associated merchandise.
3. Put on a wristband in sight of the cashier.
4. Wait around for hours in the queue while they do the cosplay awards and a superficial interview and sign stuff for the 197 people that arrived before you.

I missed out Stage 1 so I have no idea how they selected winning cosplayers. I also missed out on the posters they were giving away. It’s okay, I made up for it by surreptitiously detaching one from a wall when the staff weren’t looking…

Lots of photos are below. I do apologise for not getting anyone’s name. If I were a proper journalist I would probably be fired on the spot for such superficial coverage. Lucky I own and run this site myself, eh? I really should get some business cards printed up so that I can get in touch with people without all that awkward business of trying to conduct interviews in the aisles of a very busy HMV.

A black mage and one of many Clouds present. Is it just me or is his hair attempting to climb away from his head?

Sephiroth Kadaj from Final Fantasy: Advent Children and Lulu from Final Fantasy X.

My Final Fantasy knowledge is woefully lacking. I’m not sure who any of these girls are meant to be. I’m thinking blonde Yuna That’s Princess Ashe from Final Fantasy XII on the right. A Google Image search is strongly suggesting Penelo from Final Fantasy XII for the girl in the middle. Well, I just bought the game so I’ll find out tonight. I really don’t have a clue as to what the moogle-rabbit person on the left might be. The girl on the left is a moogle. Apparently they have giant rabbit ears these days.

I like the way this photo of fans illustrates the international appeal of Final Fantasy. Entirely intentional of course. Honest!

Okay, no. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

A close-up of female Sephiroth Kadaj, because her contact lenses are amazing. Okay, I’ll admit it. I had no idea what was what in Advent Children. I didn’t know who anyone was nor what was happening. I am a bad Final Fantasy player.

Executive producer of Final Fantasy XII Akitoshi Kawazu, kindly signing my ill-gotten poster.

Finally, co-director and visual designer Hiroshi Minagawa.

The Q&A was conducted through a translator, so I presume neither of them spoke much English. From my vantage point of being the third-last person in a queue of two-hundred-odd the only interesting fact I managed to glean was this: Akitoshi‘s favourite Final Fantasy game is Final Fantasy II because he got to work very closely on it. Thanks to both of them for graciously agreeing to let me take photos as they were signing.

Comment if you recognise any of the cosplayers, please. I’d love to publish their real names.

Edit: She’s playing Kadaj, not Sephiroth.
Also, check out Weirdo’s blog, We Are As Gods for the cosplayer insider’s view on the FFXII launch at HMV.

Update 20th Feb 2010: Check out the details for the official launch event for Final Fantasy XIII.

So when I heard that there was a Little Britain game coming out next week, I was a little intrigued. But mostly I’m afraid. Very afraid. You know why?

Screenshots like this:

Here’s a less disturbing picture to blot the previous one out of our minds:

Apparently it’s a series of minigames based on sketches created by the genuine duo, Matt Lucas and David Walliams. It’s snappily-entitled ‘Little Britain: The Video Game’, not to be confused with the interactive DVD, ‘Little Britain: The Game”. The video game sounds interesting, but I don’t enjoy minigames enough to justify a price tag of £16.99.

A PSP version will be out in spring but ‘Little Britain: The Video Game’ comes out in the UK on PC and PS2 this Friday 2nd February. Very convenient if you’re researching Valentine’s Day presents for the Little Britain lover in your life.

(Note to boyfriend: Don’t even think about it.)

Related links:
Little Britain: The Game

I fire up the game and I’m greeted with this gem of an instruction screen for Monkey Fling:

Sadly, the mini-game isn’t nearly as entertaining as it sounds.

The ceremony was a fitting tribute, with poetry readings and celebrities in attendance.

There’s a distinctly evil glow in some of those mourners’ eyes…
The coffin was solemnly carried in by some lovely pallbearers for cremation.

“Slash” played a moving tribute of popular rock solos.

By the end, Air Guitar’s weeping widow had be gently led away from the burning coffin by a kindly monk.

If you would like to leave your own tribute to the late Air Guitar, its descendant Guitar Hero II is available for the PS2 from today.

Edit: Woo, I’m famous! Check me out at you NEWB, where they’ve posted the press photos of the air guitar funeral. I’m the one with the bandanna in the last picture. A small version of the same pic was also used at GameSHOUT. Must be coz I’m so cute in my fluffy coat, right? Heehee…

Features of the game include:

• Cute, colourful and appealing cartoon styled graphics.
• 5 adorable species/creatures to care for and all fully animated.
• A delightful and fascinating fairy tale world that will captivate young minds.
• 5 exciting bonus games: Fish-o-matic, Hopscotch, Mole-o-matic, Shoot-the balloons and Find the Tweet-Tweet.
• Huge Replayabilty.
• Rewards to keep young minds focused.
• Statistics and help screens.
• Calm and relaxing ambience, with 25 minutes of orchestral music.

“Find the Tweet-Tweet” sounds interesting!

Ok, ok, the game is aimed at 4-8yr olds and is due for release in Q1 2007.
Just think, if it’s any good it then it might just keep those ankle-biters quiet for a few hours. You can but hope.

What is it?
3rd person shooter based on the 2000AD comic strip.

Is it fun?
Yeah

Is it worth the money?
At £25 from play.com, yeah.

Tell me more please:
Aw, ok :)

Rebellion, the company who made this and who also bought 2000AD a few years back, also made the turd of a game otherwise known as Judge Dredd. So my hopes for a decent outing for Rogue and his Biochip buddies seemed bleak.

But hey, having played through the game I have to say it ain’t half bad; not bad at all. On normal mode it’s not too taxing, but definitely fun to play through. In the story you play a genetic infantry soldier fighting for survival on a futuristic war torn planet, so war-torn that the atmosphere is farked by all the chem gas so making it poisonous to humans. You are immune to it, thankfully. Your buddies all die due to a traitor general selling you out so it’s revenge time!

Heres a quick list of good points:

• Salvage – you pick this up to upgrade weapons and create ammo/medpacks. This works really well, like a constant shop you can dip into.
• The giant drills that emerge from the ground (enemy Norts follow) are just like the comic!
• Your biochip buddies (implanted in your hardware) work well to push along the plot and give hints and tips.
• Controls are good and you get a decent spread of weapons to muck about with.
• Loading screens are cool – a map of Nu Earth with your route path drawn as the loading progresses.

And some bad points:

• The story is kinda skimmed over, not clearly setting out what the war is about, why it is where it is etc…
• The traitor general’s face looks nothing like the comic, more like some laughable marshmallow. Not scary at all.
• Not enough specifically-designed situations in the levels to try out your unique weapons. I only deployed the sentry gun twice in the game, both of which were prescribed.
• Some of the vehicles designs are poo; they just dont have the style and finesse of the originals from the comic and look very derivative.
• When Rogue cuts the chips from his buddies’ skulls, he should be using a las-scalpel, not a blimmin’ knife! (I could go on…)

All in all really quite good, though 2000AD purists may be dismayed that it doesn’t look closer to the comic.

Screenshots:

Age rating: 12+

What is it?

Adventure, action, but not really enough puzzles.

Is it fun?

Yes, for the most part.

Is it worth the money? £29.99 (from Play.com)

Yes, but the game is a little short (…I am seeing a theme recurring here)

Why?

Now Tomb Raider Legend has been released, the first Tomb Raider game in a long time. I heard Angel of Darkness (the most recent TR title before this) was utter pants, and was even blamed for the poor box office showing of the second film (which was a tad harsh, I wasn’t keen on either of the films) – I never played it though, having mostly given up on the franchise after playing TR3 (too much mucking about with flares for my liking).

I was really keen to see the new game regain the franchise’s former glory, and have just played through the PS2 version. How does it fare then?

My first Tomb Raider experience was playing TR2 on my old Playstation1 – it was the first PS1 game I bought (released a month after I bought the console – so I had to endure the games on the demo disk in the mean time). When it finally arrived I thought it was faaaan- flippin – tastic! A real 3D game that made you look in all directions, back in the days when many games were still only 2 dimensional in actual gameplay (although the art was 3D).

At the time of its release some would fault its choice to allow you to save at any place and reliance on urban locations, but I really didn’t understand until I played the original TR game. In that you had to find and stand in save crystals located within the levels, they asked you to take more of a risk – “Do I save now, or leave the crystal for later in case I cross back this way?”, much more fun than just saving anywhere at anytime. Also as I remember the locations were mostly outdoors, raiding tombs (as a tomb raider should do) which is something the sequels forgot as time went on. Shooting angry killer animals and mummies is always more fun than facing up against faceless swat teams – it’s part of what helps to make the game stand out from the competition. Half-Life 2 went down that same path to some degree. I found taking on the Combine (in their various iterations) far less fun than the huge range of unique enemies that the original delivered. Anyway, on to the review!

The controls are very good once you get used to them (I kept wanting to press R1 to look about), you now have a commando-style grapple wire to help you swing about and some binoculars with a built-in hint mode (for dummies only really). You also get a torch, but it’s rarely used.

PRETTY
On the art front the game delivers 100% – This is a very pretty PS2 game. Lara’s climbing and acrobatic animations are far more organic than ever before (with great tiny details like the falling dust and rock fragments coming from your hands as you shimmy along a rock crevice). Everything is generally very polished and detailed. The enemy agents you tackle look a bit bland, sadly, like nondescript James Bond baddies – and there are only two real animals in the game, leopards. They look wimpy and unthreatening, I even ran past the first one hoping for some sort of bonus for not hurting endangered animals. More animals in the next games please – piranhas/dinosaurs etc – bring it on!

EAR PIECE
You have a 2-man support team now back at base – always chatting into your ear, giving hints and encouragement. I wasn’t too keen at first, being a purest who enjoyed all the lone trekking about of the first two games – but I see how they help let things tick along, and stop less hard-core gamers getting stuck.

BANG BANG FIZZLE
The combat is a real let down. Very boring, and never feels that threatening (apart from when they start flinging grenades at you). Enemies in this sort game work best when they chuck visible projectiles at you that are then dodgeable, or need to get close to take a bite out of you – that way you have a real challenge of trying to tackle the enemy whilst dodging. Enemies with guns are no fun as their bullets can’t be dodged in the same manner, so when you beat them you don’t feel as rewarded.

HOME SWEET HOME
The old Croft manor is one of the best bits of the game. With no help from people chatting into your earpiece you need to work out the puzzles on your own – it feels most like the original games and is a real challenge. The manor space isn’t that large overall, probably so they can scale it up in games to come (there is no outdoor assault course and no hedge maze – but the new indoor gym is fantastic).

MAKE ME THINK!
The game is not as long as the old ones – levels feel very short, but they are solidly constructed. There just aren’t enough puzzles for my liking, and most that are there are just far too easy. On the penultimate level things just start to get more interesting from a puzzley point of view, but it’s a bit too late. This game is very much aimed as modern day mass market entertainment, not terribly taxing or long, something you can switch on and off quite easily. This isn’t a terrible thing but had they kept things a bit more puzzley then I think it would have been a better-rounded product.

DRAGON’S LAIR?
There are reaction-based sections of the game that I really didn’t like one bit. Resident Evil 4 did them well; they always felt relevant and never too annoying.

Here’s and example of one in TR Legend – you walk into a large room. In front of you the floor is made of large tiles. Some have fallen away leaving gaping holes – I thought “This will be fun – I’ll have to traverse the floor and it’ll be like a puzzle where certain tiles will fall away” – but just as I get near a cutscene takes over and Lara navigates the floor space by herself – only requesting the odd button press at specific moments. Very dull. At least Resi Evil changed the button sequences on each attempt, but here they ask you to press the same ones for each replay of these reaction-based events.

I think the big problem they made is that in most of these sequences Lara creates her own peril, so you feel less concerned for her safety (making it a chore instead, having to save her dumb neck rather than feeling like you are along on the ride). Only two really work well as they are direct consequences of the players actions – the one with the water creature and the other when you are in the crashed plane. If they use these reaction-based sections in future they really need to put more work into them.

HOLLYWOOD INFLUENCES
It feels like they wanted to make it play out more like a short TV movie. After completing the game it does all feel a bit like absorbing a 1 hour TV special. By that I don’t mean it had cheap production values, rather that the gaming sections were a bit like interludes to the story – which is in contrast to TR1 and 2 where back then the FMV sections were the interludes to the game. They probably wanted this game to re-ignite interest in the film franchise too, which no doubt affected how it has turned out (the inclusion of the support team chatting into your ear from back at base and so on).

GET BONUS!
By collecting items hidden throughout the levels you can unlock bonus concept art, 3D models to view (no zoom function sadly) as well as new outfits for Lara. Apparently by collecting everything you get to unlock a swimsuit outfit (woopidoo) but that will take you some time, as finding them all can be quite tricky. There is also a time attack mode to try out on each level, which is pretty tough and adds value to the product (as long as you want to go replay the game again that is).

IN CONCLUSION
Very nicely made relaunch to the game franchise, if a little short. Hopefully to be expanded in future sequels with more puzzles and improved combat.

Is it fun?
Once you get past the first few levels.

Is it worth the money? £12.99 from Amazon
Only because it’s cheap now!

Why?

Manhunt? What – isn’t that game a bit old? Yeah, you wouldn’t be wrong. But is it any good?

Well for one thing it isn’t scary. I was expecting some sort of Silent Hill level of jumps and scares, but the game is more comical shlock than edgy terror. The game premise is simple enough; you play a convicted criminal on death row, who at the last minute is pulled from the electric chair and dumped into a kind of ‘Running Man‘ scenario where you must kill your way past gang thugs to gain freedom.

From early pre-release hype I wrongly got the impression that the game involved you trying to record killings like some sort of snuff movie. Well, really all that happens is that when you perform a special kill (think Metal Gear Solid sneaking up from behind but with shards of glass/baseball bats etc.) the in-game camera just shows the kill in close-up.

The gameplay at its core is pretty much lifted from Metal Gear Solid with lots of sneaking about and hiding in shadows – and as such its actually pretty damn good (well not a patch on MGS of course, but not bad all the same). But you need to get past the first 3 or 4 levels (just after the zoo if I remember correctly) to really enjoy the game. The early levels suck both in terms of visuals and design.

A lot of elements let the game down unfortunately: Ropey-looking enemy characters that look lifted from GTA, weak early levels, some awful cutscenes, excessively nasty kill cutscenes that get tedious quickly, some enemy line-of-sight bugs, sometimes a LOT of patience is needed to get through levels, crappy dayglow obvious highlights on item pickups and the final boss encounter is rubbish.

Some good things are: Most of the later levels are good fun (wait till the enemy get torches on their guns!), basic core gameplay is good, it’s a BIG game and it’s so old that it’s cheap now!

In conclusion, it’s a decent game but you have be tolerate a fair amount of duff bits to get to the good stuff. One for the determined only! (I only played through it because it was related to a job interview)

This is a fairly crucial release for Eidos as the previous Tomb Raider games have been pretty poor in quality and lacking in gameplay innovation having stuck to the tried and tested formula of the original. Whilst this style of gameplay and character control worked in 1995 it quickly became boring and frustrating in the subsequent incarnations and reached its nadir in the quite frankly awful Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.

I’ve played (and completed) Tomb Raider I, II and III but with IV I just became bored of the same gameplay and Lara’s continued lack of responsiveness. Skipped V as a result and then lasted about 2 levels of Angel of Darkness before selecting “uninstall” and wondering why I’d even bothered.

However, with a new developer (Crystal Dynamics) in charge and the original designer/artist of Lara Croft (Toby Guard) involved for the first time since Tomb Raider I, Tomb Raider: Legend might be worth a look. If not, might this be the last Tomb Raider game we see?

Screenshots (xbox 360 version):