First off, sorry it’s been so long since I posted. I have some good stuff coming up soon, but it’s been a busy few weeks. We’re cranking hard on some nice new features at Lijit, which should be visible to you guys (assuming you’ve heard of Lijit and are users - or employees), and I recently went to Lake Tahoe, NV, to hang out with my friend Nick, scheduled to be married sometime next month.

In the meantime, there’s a huge glut of games to play: the new Smash Bros. game just came out on Wii and there are a few Xbox 360 treats, including Army of Two (who Daniel will get to someday) and Bully: Scholarship Edition, also out for Wii. I never played the original Bully release on PS2, and never knew much about it, but it got consistently high reviews, so I decided to pick it up for 360.

And it’s fun as hell. It’s basically Grand Theft Auto, but set in a school, and without cars, guns, or really brutal violence. Or, at least as brutal as things got in high school, which, looking back, was actually pretty brutal. There are missions, minigames, factions, weapons, vehicles - the whole shebang - backed by a well-executed and very detailed sandbox (Bullworth Academy and the surrounding towns). What’s so fun about Bully, once you pick up the control scheme, is that the game is essentially an endless series of minigames. You can complete quests, make money with side missions, play games or ride rides at the carnival, spend time buying new clothes and outfits for Jimmy, the playable character, attend class for weapon and social skill upgrades, hit on girls, or just prank students with eggs, fire crackers, bottle rockets, etc. There’s a ton of stuff to do, and each individual thing doesn’t take too long, so I can pick it up for a half hour or and hour, have fun, and feel like I’ve accomplished something in-game. There’s big collection quests for people who like those things, and the icing on the cake is a good story with developed characters and consistently high quality voice acting.

There are a few bugs and framerate issues - I’ve had the game freeze on me a few times - but Rockstar says a patch should be out soon. If you’ve already played it, I’m not sure whether the added content is enough to warrant a re-purchase. If you never played Bully, like me, but like the sandbox genre, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s been a blast.