I love the fact that in one interview he says Doom "trained" these kids to use weapons, he could have at least used Counter-Strike or Soldier of Fortune, rather than a completely unrealistic game which uses made up weapons on Mars. Last time I checked having a quick mouse hand doesn't train you how to cock an L96.

He's great because he knows nothing about the medium he is protesting, I mean do some research man.

Like someone who's going to burst into their school and gun down all their classmates is rational enough to consider "training" anyway.

The best thing about the Bully controversy is that no one has seen anything to do with the game whatsoever. All they have is a few screenshots of nothing much happening and the name. Despite this people are up in arms about it. Rockstar really know how to work the controvrsy-hype machine.

On Jack Thompson; I loved it when he said something about how developers wouldn't be opposing him if a game showing games developers being gunned downed was released and then a similar thing happened in real life. Quick as a flash, a mod appears on the internet allowing people to do just that.

Time to eat those words.

Looks good to me. Can't wait.

Zeden, did you get round to watching any of that Halo 2 speed run video yet?

I've watched bits and pieces of it and I'm dumbfounded. To know the levels that well and not die a single time is frankly disturbing. The amount of time and effort to do that boggles the mind. The way he beats the last boss is pretty crazy as well. A good find sir, always good to know that there is someone out there wasting their life in such a way.

Does look mighty sweet, but it is still the first thing that has been shown of it for the entire 18 months that people have known that it was in development.

Absolutely, I've downloaded a god few of the videos from the same site which are mostly for various Resident Evil games. The one I've been nosing at recently is a knife only 1 hour run through the first game on the PS. It boggles the mind how these people can spend so much time getting that good.

True. I just happened to be on youtube and the trailer was on the front page so it neatly fitted into what you had just said.



Link please! That knife run sounds like utter madness.

I got a bit like that on the original Unreal Tournament. The underwater level on the assault game mode, I used to play online and in one particular match I managed to win outnumbered by six to one (some clan) by completing all objectives in 26 seconds . I didn't even bother defending since I knew they didn't even know how to do it that fast.

here you go

1 hour 9 minutes, counting the time taken to turn the console on and all. Crazy.

Ahh, good ole UT...the game that I actually revolved my life around for a period of time (joined a clanned, planned practices, matches, etch). I still play UT2K4 every once and a while, but the hackers got so bad at one point it was not even fun playing anymore.

I was very briefly in a clan. We used to play Assault a lot but found it becoming way too easy. We could usually finish Overlord (the one on the beach with the huge cannon) in under 30 seconds with some innovative impact hammer usage*...




* One team member stands next to a ledge just below where the cannon sticks out of the wall where the cannon sticks out, holding his impact hammer vertically upwards, fully charged. Next player runs along ledge, jumps onto other player and gets fired straight up into the hole the cannon sticks out of, straight into the final objective.

M'quite interested to see how big Bully will be. I mean the actual school and grounds and the actual game length.

Im hoping for something that lasts more then 8 or 9 hours

It looks like there will be a lot of variety in terms of gameplay and I would expect that how long the game will last may come down to how quickly you plough through story without stopping to enjoy the mini-games and side objectives. I'm assuming a lot here, but it's a conventional setup that seems to fit the bill and also fits the GTA type structure.
I'm particularly interested to see what is in the game because, going by previous Rockstar games, whatever features work best from what is seen in their releases are incorporated into the next GTA in their increasingly impressive franchise. It's an interesting setup and their side releases work as a perfect testing ground for game features that might otherwise be poorly executed had they not been tested by the end consumer and been proven to work.

Agreed man. Rockstar make some really enjoyable games.
Maybe you can play in a Ping Pong tournament!

Anyone know who does the voice of the main character from Bully, I recognise it and its bugging me.

Interesting.

Thing is, it also seems to me that everyone has got the wrong end of the stick about Bully. The game is apparantly about...well let me copy and paste:
SO in the game you don't in fact Bully anyone except malicious cunts and Bullies (apparently) if thats the case then Jack Thompsons arguement is so screwed.
He reckons that the game will result in people bullying others in real life, and if he says that is true then the converse must also be held as true. As in perhaps the game will inspire the Bullied to stand up to bullies.

An interesting thought because if Thompson says "Well no i don't believe that to be true" then he has just undone his entire arguement for why it should be banned.

Another thing that makes me a bit angry but also pity Thompson is that he says the APA has proven, yes proven as if it is fact, that Violent videogames cause people to be violent. When so many other sources say the opposite, most notably the thingy Surgeon General (i forget the proper title).

I'm starting to get a bit sick of people looking for scapegoats for violent acts based on coincedences such as "He played Doom". Shit like Music (Marilyn Manson was also blamed for Columbine) Video games and movies have been blamed for inciting violence in people, more specifically kids.

It just pisses me off that people can say that a videogame makes people become violent and want to kill people, when it is utter bullshit. The GTA series is one of the best selling violent game series of recent years, yet the violent crime rate didn't surge when they were released, not everyone decided they wanted to kill someone or cause harm to someone. It's stupid.

[/Pointless Rant]

Bully seems cool.

I AM inspired by the games I play. Having tried to win the fishing competition in WoW many times and failed many times I now feel no urge whatsoever to go fishing ever in my entire life. Whereas before my adverse experiences with fishing in WoW I might have considered it as an outside possibility of something I might one day consider doing possibly if invited.

The only real conclusion about violence and video games is that violent people like violent video games. They have the cause and effect mixed up. Yes, Jack, people who are violent anyway, just happen to like violent media. Isn't that a coincidence?

<---likes Violent Video Games
<---Likes Violent Music (Slayer!!!!!!!!)
<---Likes Violent TV and Movies
<---Is not a Violent Person


Go Figure.

As Mark Kermode said, he grew up on a healthy diet of zombie flicks and slasher movies but has never so much as thrown a punch, yet football hooliganism is rife but there are no calls to ban 'the beautiful game'.

For once, the brylcreemed Exorcist-obsessive may be right. If thousands of people went to a Marilyn Manson gig, then poured out of the arena to go on a booze-fuelled rampage through the city streets, there would be outrage beyond outrage!

I think they have planned that from the get go by withholding all info about it until 2 months before release. Up until now the words ''Take Two'' and ''Bully'' have been enough to spur controversy and get the complaints brigade up in arms but they have kept their cards close to their chest and they come up with a game that looks Nintendo trying to make a kiddie GTA (in a good way). It's a genius ploy in terms of marketing and really showing up Thompson et al. for being a bit overzealous and knowing fuck all about anything. I'm sure there will be some violence in it but it looks like they overeacted just a teeny bit.

Hell yes they did.

Watched that Resident Evil speed run. Not quite as impressive as it sounds in the end. Simply a case of running away from pretty much everything and knowing where everything is. The boss fights were good though, beating the tyrant with the knife is pretty crazy.

The only game I've ever gotten to a stupid level of perfection on was House of the Dead 2 on the Dreamcast. I could finish that without being hit and save everyone on the way.
Think I'll have a look for some Sonic 2 or 3 speed runs later, should be quite entertaining.

Just been playing Hitman: Blood Money. The demo was shit, the game itself has turned out to be far better than I'd hoped for. Unfortunately after playing it for ages I'm still only up to the second full mission since I was determined to do the first one as close to perfect as possible. And I did. Silent Assassin award, not a single person other than the targets killed, no one saw me do either kill, two shots fired, both headshots, notoriety zero. Quite well done methinks .

Pfft amateur. Amateur!

The true Silent assasin score is all 0's >:



I kid. I love the game series and how you can complete most missions in a variety of ways. But Hitman is a series I became obsessed with.
On the official forums and a bunch of others, and from generally what I could tell from walkthroughs and Guides I came up with 2 unique all 0 runs of at least two missions on the 2nd game.

It was all sorts of awesome.

I think I've become bored of Oblivion.

It happens eventually. I'm just getting back into it again with my mage/archer character. I'm playing it like an FPS, just raiding dungeons, and it's a totally different experience to Zeden, my level 36, 168 power sword master. It got to a point with that file where the sheer number of high level enemies I would fight at once near Oblivion gates was silly and near impossible due to my incredibly low magika.
Still waiting on the first press release about an expansion pack. Can't wait to see what additional features they put in. It would be nice to have a massive mountain you can scale, filled with a variety of camps, forts, caves and ruins. A return of the levitation spell would be nice as well, not so useful ultimately, but being able to get arial views of places or using it for stealth purposes to get surprise attacks would kick ass.

Do you not think they slughtly ruined the scale of the game by introducing the instant teleports?

I eman I know you can walk/ride a horse if you want, and I realise they are useful. But it just sort of diminishes a lot of effort you have to put in to go places and do shit. It was one of my favourite things about Elder Scrolls 3, just taking in the whole scale of the map was really an enjoyable experience.

It's probably only temporary. I'm about level 32, and it occured to me the other day I'd better start trying to get my skills as high as possible before I get to my limit, a process which makes natural playing a little difficult.

Plus I can't find a sodding glass helmet, and it's really beginning to piss me off.

Nice, second mission done with a Silent Assassin rating now. Didn't even use my gun at all. Come to think of it I never went within about 100 feet of my targets.

It still takes a decent amount of time to get to places for the first time and certainly makes the irritating "guide so and so to/from somewhere" missions much less stressful. I used it a fair bit toward the end of my first file, but I'm holding back now and enjoying it on a true roleplaying level, sticking to missions that suit my character and just exploring the land. It's good fun because I've kept a faily low level and not upgraded much in order to maintain a decent difficulty level.




I think I got mine from a bandit somewhere in the south, provided he wasn't randomly spawned you might find one there. They are stupidly rare aren't they.

Try Rockmilk Cave north of Leyawin.

I'm not sure, really. I think it would have been best if the main towns were like any other marked location, that you couldn't jump to them unless you'd been there on foot before.

I still preferred Morrowind's method of having transport routes, because it became a part of the game, knowing the quickest way to get from A to B. It made the world feel a bit more like a world when you were thinking "I'll get a ship down the coast to this town, then walk from here to the silt strider and take that inland", rather than "I want to be here. Make it happen".

I know in Morrowind I also used the paper map all the time, to the point where it was getting quite tatty. In Oblivion, the map was so bare I don't think I ever pulled it out of the case mid game. Morrowind's map was brilliant, because you could see tiny details with no labels which made you wonder what they were, and go on a quest looking for them.

Exactly ^^.

Elder Scrolls 3 is one of my favourite games ever.

Woah, loot ahoy! Holy Jesus titty fucking Christ.

Though only one glass helmet, at that was already enchanted. Useless.

However, if I ever feel the need to equip a millipede with boots, then I'm all set.

I'm actually getting hooked on Oblivion again now that I'm playing it properly. I'm getting to be quite good at killing things without them even getting close now. My marksman skill is quite low but with a combination of a sneak attack and a quick blast with Wizards Fury pretty much everything dies.
I'm also developing an uncanny ability to spot enemies from stilly distances in the dark. Last night I was playing and my brother was watching. I stopped on a bridge in a ruined fort and looked down onto the area below. In the far distance was a slightly lighter looking piece of wall. My brother asked me what I was doing waiting around. I shot and there was someone there.
Explaining it like that really doesn't make it sound all that impressive, but I even surprised myself with that one.
It's good that I'm back at a point where just thinking about the game makes me want to play it.

Heh that shit sounds awesome.


In ELder scrolls 3 I had maxed out Archery, I used a Daedric Battle bow, it was sickness. THen up close used a Double handed Daedric axe with the sickest enchantment ever. <3 Bethseda.

I have been playing the Lego Starwars video game.

I love it, so adorable and it makes the Phantom Menace bearable as you hear no talking from Jar Jar binks. It also offers and erray of comical accessories to be wore by all your star wars heroes. Though to be honest i am eagerly awaiting the release of the new Lego Star Wars games of the orignal films. Then again i love the originals.

I rented out Tony Hawks: American Wasteland.

Shall see how that goes, the graphics look good from what i can tell. Not sure what the gameplay will be like mind as i am rubbish at Tony Hawks as it is. Either way i don't mind as it was free rental, heck yes.

Lucky girl! I used to own the Tony Hawks games, I think I peaked on Tony Hawks 3. Was that when they introduced reverts so you could just keep tricking forever? Since then, I haven't really played much, a bit of 4, but no THUG or THAW. I hear the new one is a bit more aking to the original games, so I may have to get that one.

EDIT: I mean own as in pwn rather than that I bought them. I always used other peoples copies and slaughtered their top scores

Been playing the piss out of this lately, it is quite good. There is so much more you can do in this one (bikes, you can walk around and hit people with your board, wall climb, etch). The soundtrack is not half bad either.

The revert does break the loose realism that the game once had, but it certainly isn't reason not to play anymore. Underground 1 and 2 are both really great games in the series, especially 2, but I guess the time for playing those old beasts is over.

I didn't like American Wasteland one bit. Pretty much everything about it was not as good at Underground 2 which, considering that this game came after, is a pretty bad thing. It was too easy, I finished it on Sick difficulty in less than a week,Underground 2 took months because it was so hard (this is a good thing for me as I am a self professed ass kicker on that game), the level designs were dull, the story was utter shite (worse than the older games by a very long way, incredibly) and the missions were infuriatingly stupid in their premise, I don't need to be given a bad quality joke about "hardcore skating" everytime I start a mission to justify what I'm about to do.
[/rant]

The next one looks to be the dogs balls though, with it's MASSIVE graphical increase, a true GTA style map (unlike the corredors that connect the areas in TH:AW) and an alleged return to the old school in terms of mission objectives. I can't wait!

By the way, Lego Star Wars 2 is only 17 quid over at play.com at the moment...

Think Imma unlock the Chicago typewriter in RE4.

I just don't look forward to having to start from scratch again, I like all the weapons I currently have =/

Bah i got to chapter four and then got really fucked off.
Ada's weapons are pussy, as is her ability to take any damage.

Also, I have really really conserved my ammo. And It's now coming to the point where I need to kill things as I cant avoid them and im starting to run low. I have no idea how people who shoot everything can finish this annoying as shit stupid side story >.<

Are you talking about the Gamecube version? I'm pretty sure you're talking about Assignment Ada, cuz that's how you unlock the Chicago Typewriter.
I shot at everyone I saw, and still had enough ammo for the end fight. There was only one point that I almost ran out.

Well I got me Quake 4 and Halo 2 the other day, it was only a tenner .

I've been playing Quake 4 to death and I've only just become a Strogg, also Nonus I take it back, Quake 4 wipes the floor with Prey.

Nah I'm doing the seperate ways mini game that unlocks the Chicago Typewriter in the main game.

You have to beat Assignment Ada and Seperate Ways to get it in Seperate ways for 300,000 Ps.

The seperate ways side story is actually pretty big, its like 3-4+ hours to finish which isnt bad.
I just get really fucking aggravated at how weak Adas weapons are. Some of the Ganado take 10+ shots to kill and thent hey decide to spawn a las Plagas -,-

Quake 4 arrived this morning.

First impression: poor.

Too bad I don't have a PS2