We spent part of our weekend packing. We aren’t moving for over a month, but we are hoping to have most of it done early so the move is less stressful. We are going to hire movers to do the actual loading and unloading, but we’ll do all the boxing ourselves.
I started playing Bully: Scholarship Edition about two weeks ago and finished it up this weekend. It is made by the same folks (Rockstar) that make the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series and the game style is the same – it is an “open world” where there is a story backbone to the game, but much of the order in which you do things is up to you. To a degree, this is an illusion as new tasks don’t open up until you complete certain tasks (to keep the story flowing) but there is lots of “extra” stuff that you can do (or avoid) at your own pace. The GTA games are all M (mature) rated, and deservedly so. Bully is a T rated game and you can tell they carefully crafted it for a younger audience. It isn’t a “kiddy” game by any means, but the violence is much less brutal, nobody is killed, there is no blood. Even when you beat somebody up, they will be up and walking around in no time. You might think from the title that your character is the bully, but it is actually quite the opposite. Your goal in the game is to stop the other bullies and bring unity to the school. It isn’t all just peace and flowers, thought – you always tend to beat the bad guys into submission. Bully was originally a PS2 title and while it uses a newer “game engine” on the Xbox 360, you can definitely see the PS2 roots showing throw. The graphics are good but not spectacular. The voice work, music, and story are all top notch. If you enjoy the GTA series I can absolutely give this a recommendation. It is a much smaller, tighter world and story than Grand Theft Auto, but there is enough variety to keep the player interested and amused. I “completed” the game (getting 1000 gamerscore including the 100% “Perfectionist” achievement) in about 30 hours which is probably pretty normal. If you just powered through the game and weren’t worrying about the Perfectionist achievement, you could probably do it in more like 20 hours or possibly even less, I would imagine.
I re-watched True Romance and it was as good as I remembered (I first saw it in the theater in college). If you want a high powered action / shoot-out fest, it is a must watch.