The political storm that this game attracted on it's first release is well documented, Rockstar realizing that there really isn't such a thing as bad press started a fire under the tabloids and then laughed at them for hyping the game to death and the final product was in some ways the complete reverse of what the tabloids were anticipating.Sure Jimmy can deal out wedgies, but on the whole he is the voice of sanity in an asylum of cardboard caricature nut-jobs. The bully in this game is the crushing weight of mindless authority and cruelty in the name of conforming with your peers. Jimmy never lets his peers win and swims against the crowd.
Jimmy is a naughty boy with a neglectful broken family who decide to dump him for a year at bullworth academy after he gets kicked out of every other school he has been to. How will he fit in at Bullworth?Jimmy does just fine, getting in tow with Gary, who has aspirations to run the school and a nerdy guy called pete. It soon transpires that Gary is a major nutjob who is simply using Jimmy to do his dirty work. Jimmy is smarter than that and eventually Gary decides to get him beaten up thus ending Gary and Jimmy's friendship. Jimmy then goes on to earn the respect of the nerds then the greasers then the jocks and becomes king of the school. Gary is waiting however and Jimmy's rain is made interesting by a score of problems, which on investigation he find that the townies led by Gary have been working to set him up. How will Jimmy get back his respect and defeat Gary.
Throughout the story we are introduced to various carictures of teachers and students. Slutty Lola who everyone is fighting over and everyone seems to be able to have, a whole gang of stereotypes, the usual weak and incontinent nerds, the muscled but dim jocks. Thrown in to spice things up are the worst teachers imaginable, either hippies, drunks or just plain corrupt.
For the British audience it plays like Grand Theft Auto : Grease. It's not like our schools, and seems like a movie parody. Set that aside and it's a moderately funny and enjoyable story.
This is a Rockstar game, so of course it is an open world sandbox game with the usual huge well designed map. As per usual the world is broken up into smaller sections to allow you to get a feel for the map without it being too overwhelming at first. The school itself is well designed with the usual locations like gym library and the town of Bullworth has a centre and rich and poor districts. There is even a fairground packed with minigames.
Points on the radar show where available missions can be started from, the missions themselves are standard fare, go here, collect this, defeat certain people take things back to other people. You get about the game mostly on foot or by skateboard, though there are other methods of transport like bicycles. There are race missions dotted around the map.
There are a lot of mini games to play-through giving the game a varied feel. There are arcade machines to get high scores on to unlock features like safe/save houses. These vary from simple and easy to a racing game which could survive a turn on Xbox live arcade. The classes involve button pushing sequences, rhythm games akin to simple guitar hero type games and actual school type activities like putting flags on a map of europe and making words out of a jumble of letters.
The weapons are all non lethal for, example stink bombs eggs, catapults, bottle rockets spud guns. When you beat up someone with your fists they lie on the ground squirming rather than bleed all over the place. The combat has a few moves and combo's though simple one button mashing will get you through without any style, for those that want to learn roundhouse kicks etc the game has the option.
The a.i. is actually alright in this game, sure you sometimes see pedestrians getting hit by cars, but it's typical sandbox stuff with people milling around going from point to point. When you are in combat the a.i. is nothing new but never really lets itself down with obvious stupidity. There are some simple bosses in the form of one on one fights with bigger guys with long health bars, usually if you remember to carry a full spud gun these boss fights become easy matters, though sometimes you are prevented from using projectile weapons e.g. when in the mascot costume.
The biggest problem with this game is it's graphics, which is not really to say that they are bad, just that there is has been no attempt to improve on them from the PS2 original. The assets have been copied directly with no attempt to improve them. The code is the same, there are only a few cars on screen at any one time, and I mean a few, four at most it seems. The pologon count is exactly the same.
I have mixed feelings about this. In the back of my mind there is a voice saying that this is pure laziness and there should have been coded from the ground up version for the Xbox 360. On the other hand Xbox 360 owners who never had a PS2 or never played this game get the chance to play it. I fit into that bracket, I had a PS2 but never found time for this on it's first release.
I wish that I had, I might have been more impressed with it graphically. As it stands this is a lazy port. The developers should have spent a little more time making new models of the characters at least, some better textures might have made the streets look better also. As long as you know what you are getting here then it is o.k, this is a PS2 game ported as is. If you want to play that then go ahead, I am sure if you are a fan of sandbox games then this one will keep you pleasantly occupied. Just don't expect a competitor for GTA IV. One of the most annoying nags about the engine is that they haven't even bothered to load the whole map into memory, every time you go from section to section or from outside to inside you get a blank loading screen, I am sure that the Xbox 360 could have held the whole map in memory for this game.
The sound is satisfactory, good voice acting, average effects and tinkly Rockstar tongue in cheek music. There is no licensed music soundtrack which is a let down after GTA.
The game allows you to save by going to specific areas on the map, which start out sparse but by the time you have got halfway through are plentiful, you can also quick hop from almost anywhere on the map to the school by taking the school bus. You can't save during a mission which would make thing far too easy.
As far as achievements go on first play through I achieved 355 points from the game, that was completing the story mode only. The percentage game complete meter says i have only done about 58% of the game. The rest includes collecting hundreds of scattered objects and completing all side missions and mini-games. The achievements are simple with no surprises, collect all collectibles, beat 200 people in fights, egg 25 cars, pick 50 flowers, kiss 25 girls etc. Some of them are obtainable only by repeating certain actions, for example the aforementioned egging of cars is not something that you have to do in the game to progress you actually have to read the achievement list and go get eggs and go looking for 25 cars to hit.
No real multiplayer, although You can apparently challenge people at mini-games, I was so interested in this feature I never managed to try it.
In summary this is a great game it just feels like you are playing something from 2006. There is nothing wrong with that, however in this day and age graphics are a large part of the package, if you can look beyond graphics then there is something for you to enjoy here if you are fan of sandbox gta style gameplay.
Scoring
Graphics 4
Gameplay 7
Story 8
Level Design 8
A.i. 7
Overall 6.8
No comments:
Post a Comment