Bully
Bully is something else. When I first played it back in 06', I was pretty down on it. It felt dumb, it felt like a GTA game in a school setting, guns are replaced with sling shots, cars are replaced with bikes, at the time I didn't want a GTA re-skin, I just wanted GTA.
Obviously, I've grown up, gained new perspectives...and I still feel like its a GTA re-skin but the change in setting does so much for the game, I'm intrigued to see how Rockstar will interpret each mechanic from their GTA games to this new setting. Each little familiarity makes me think of GTA but its stylized with a very "Highjinxy" tone. Its like how those stupid animal-spy movies were kind of cool at first, you would watch the movie and think, "I wonder what a cat spy sector look like? What kind of weapons would they use?", or a parallel universe, we have these concepts of bizarro world and all that, its interesting to wonder how another world would do things, whether they would have different variations of the ways we do things or completely different concepts all together. Bully has a cool schoolyard tone to it that leaves a lot of room for variations on things we see in most GTA games, just with a light hearted feel.
The child-like atmosphere also seems to enhances a lot of the encounters I approach, when I hit some kid with a bat, for some reason, that's more shocking to me than shooting a person in GTA, maybe because it just hits close to home for me, I once knew a kid who is in court now for beating someone with a croquet mallet. But even despite that fact, certain acts of violence or innuendos to sex are so strong in this game because at first things are general lighter in tone. You know there's evil and good in the Bully world but it all feels very immature, then the game tackles certain provocative scenes with that light tone and seems to pull it off but in the back of my mind I can't help but to be disturb.
Another thing I want to talk about is the music, every piece feels...right, something about it, something I can't put my finger on, fits the world perfectly. It holds a childish yet malevolent tone, it almost perfectly parallels the world of Bully, ostensibly Bully is quite charming, childish, silly, but then you get deep into the game and notice that things are a lot darker than they appear.
Apart from a few game crashes here and there Bully has been a nice surprise to me, I'm about 50% through the game so hopefully I'll be done around tomorrow.
Devil Survivor
Devils Survivor, another addition to Atlus' Shin Megami Tensei series. In SMT: Devil Survivor you play a nameless protagonist who one day him and his group of friends have been given DS systems from their friend. Later, they are attacked by demons and find out that these DS systems are more than they appear, they give you and your friends ability to summon demons, which they need because the Tokyo area is under lock down due to "Unknown Reasons".
Devil Survivor has me feeling torn, I love it, but at the same time I feel like I should be down on it. Atlus is starting to feel predictable, a lot of Devil Survivor feels like the Persona games before hand, excluding the Social link system. You summon demons to battle and can fuse them, the characters feel similar, the art style of both Devil Survivor and Persona 3 n' 4 are the same, you play young sexy kids doing sexy things using magical demons to save the world. Its almost because of the fact that P4 was relatively successful Atlus is trying to stay to that formula. I want to see them move on back to Noctourne Territory, beyond Devil Summoner we haven't been getting much of that kind of Atlus game in a while.
That being said, I still like the game, dare I say, I like it more than Persona 3 or 4. I like Devil Survivor more on a conceptual level, the focus on the DS systems adds the unique spin Atlus is known for in their games but the way the DS mechanics are dealt with pull me into the game so well. To give you some background info, your in game DS emails you what events are going to occur in the future, IE) 50 people will die in the Ikebukuro area at 12 o' clock, its then your duty to try and prevent what ever will kill those 50 people. That part of the game alone is enough to keep me playing, there is so much mystery behind why and how these systems can tell the future and why demons are in Tokyo that I want to--no--need to continue playing to learn more.
Combat is simple and addictive, think Fire Emblem and add turn based combat to it. You're on an isometric grid and when you enter an encounter with an enemy it switches to the turn based combat screen. Here you can have up to two demons on each character in your party, meaning you have 3 to 4 demon users on the field and they have two allies each. This leaves a lot of room for strategy in terms of demon placement, what kind of demons you put on certain characters is important since it determines what skills the user gets and what monsters will protect them. Everything is easy to learn which in turn allows me to really get hands deep into the core mechanics, I've been grinding away trying to level up my demons to pick up new skills for my characters. Devil Survivor even does away of the random battle system and allows you to jump into a battle by your whim with a press of a button, really allows some easy access to grinding which equals an addictive game.
But yeah, that's been my week, its been pretty great managed to get a lot of gaming in.
Also, you might've noticed that I didn't keep my promise, I haven't updated the blog every day. To be honest, it as a dumb idea (I had a dumb idea, go figure), I can't keep up with that without burning myself out. I'm still planning on updating the blog each week with a new theme, just not every day, maybe in 2 day intervals.
This week I'll be doing straight up editorials, I got some topics on my mind and I want to put them on paper so be expecting that this week.
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