Bully: Scholarship Edition is ready to roll! After being available for the PS2 for two years now, and Bully: Scholarship Edition being released on the Xbox 360 and Wii in March of 2008. All of Rockstar’s games are controversial in nature, but wildly entertaining and almost universally well-received by gamers. Rockstar’s Bully: Scholarship Edition will likely be the same.

Featuring exclusive content that never made it on the PS2 version 2 years ago, the PC release of Bully: Scholarship Edition includes new unlockable items, eight new missions, more characters, and four new school subjects (Music, Biology, Geography, and Math). Another edition to Bully: Scholarship Edition is the single system 2-player minigames that were added, which promises to make this an entertaining game for all types of gamers.

Check out Rockstar’s official Bully: Scholarship Edition site here:

http://www.rockstargames.com/bully/home/

Bully: Scholarship Edition Trailer

Bully: Scholarship Edition Problems on Wii and Xbox 360

Both the Wii and Xbox 360 versions of the game generally received positive reviews with IGN giving the Wii version an 8/10, while the Xbox 360 version received 8.7/10.

The Xbox 360 version of Bully: Scholarship Edition was found to be unstable on some players’ consoles, resulting in glitches, crashes, and performance issues. The problems included audio issues, animation issues, and inability to complete Music classes due to differences between the Wii and Xbox 360 controllers. The most prevalent and common problem with the game is the unexplained freezing of the console, but not music being played on a connected mp3 player or hard drive.

Bully: Scholarship Edition History

Bully is a third person action-adventure video game released by Rockstar Vancouver for the PlayStation 2 on October 17, 2006 in the United States, and October 25, 2006 in the United Kingdom. The game was re-released as Bully: Scholarship Edition on March 4, 2008 for the Wii and Xbox 360 and October 24, 2008 on PC. The Scholarship Edition was later ported to Microsoft Windows and released on October 24, 2008. The PlayStation 2 version of the game is also available in the United States as a special edition that includes a limited edition comic book and a dodgeball of the same style as the ones used in the game, with the word “Bully” embossed on it.

Bully is a sandbox game set in a school environment. The player takes control of teenage rebel, Jimmy Hopkins, who from the opening scene is revealed to be a difficult student with a criminal background. The game concerns the events that follow Jimmy being dropped off at Bullworth Academy, a fictional New England boarding school. The player is free to explore the school campus in the beginning and later on in the game the town, or to complete the main missions. The game makes extensive use of minigames. Some are used to earn money, others to improve Jimmy’s abilities or get new items.

School classes themselves are done in the form of minigames, broken into five levels of increasing difficulty. English, for example, is a word scramble minigame, and as Jimmy completes the level, he learns to apologize to bullies, deliver better taunts, apologize to prefects and finally to apologize to the police.

Jimmy Hopkins has a multitude of weapons available, although they tend to run along the lines of things a school boy might actually attain, such as a slingshot, bags of marbles, itching powder, fire crackers, stink bombs, and later in the game, a bottle rocket launcher and a potato cannon/spud cannon. He also has an assortment of vehicles to operate — mainly a skateboard, but also a scooter, a gokart(for racing), a lawn mower (for money), and bicycles.

Bully has caused controversy among parents and educators. Criticisms are due to the adult nature of previous Rockstar games, in particular, the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hot Coffee minigame controversy and certain aspects of the game, for example, its title.  Most of these criticisms were voiced before the content of the game was available to the public. In 2006, the United States-based Entertainment Software Rating Board officially gave Bully a rating of “T” (suitable for ages 13 and up), the BBFC gave Canis Canem Edit a 15 rating and the New Zealand OFLC restricted it to persons 13 years of age and over.

Microsoft has three basic versions of the Xbox 360 console: the Xbox 360 Arcade, the standard Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 Elite system. The base system is the same for each with added benefits to enhance gameplay and media enjoyment for each different console bundle.

The Arcade version has limited storage for arcade games. It would not be gamers first choice for a video game console. The standard Xbox 360 has a 20 Gb hard drive, which is sufficient storage for games and a few songs and a video or two. The Elite has 120 Gb of storage and comes included with a HDMI digital audio-video cable. This is for those users who expect downloading and storing many video, photos, game data or music. The HDMI cable is convenient for those that need that type of connection for their home theater system. The Elite is the only system that is all black as well.

All the systems have Silver Xbox live memberships and a wireless controller included. Game compatibility is the same for the regular and Elite consoles. They are compatible with all Xbox 360 games plus over 300 original Xbox games. The Arcade version is compatible with all Xbox 360 games.

Obviously the prices for the consoles are different. The arcade machine can be had for around $280. The standard sells for around $350. The Elite goes for $450.

The Xbox console is not that large when compared with the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3. It is sleekly designed and has interchangeable faceplates that allow it to be fitted into a home cinema rack. The wireless controller is really cool and wonderfully convenient. The Xbox console supports four wireless controller devices.

The Xbox 360 has amazing graphics. All the games are optimized for high definition output. In addition, it has USB 2.0 ports for attaching accessories. Accessories include a steering wheel for driving games and a chat messenger that allows you to send instant messages to your friends while you are playing. These accessories are not included with the console bundle and must be purchased separately. The Xbox 360 console is HD ready for games and has Dolby Digital sound to give players a complete surround sound gaming experience.

The console will play on any television, high definition or not. You just need to have the video and audio inputs for the TV or home theater system. The Xbox 360 console plays audio CDs, as well as DVDs, stores photograph and will play mp3’s. The Xbox 360 truly represents a big leap forward in next generation gaming technology.

Guitar Hero 3 is one of the world’s most popular games, but mastering it will take a bit of time. The typical guitar hero strum involves one push of the strum button while holding down the fret buttons associated with the notes. While this strategy works well for songs on the lower level difficulties, as you begin to push yourself to the next level, you’ll want to begin incorporating pull offs.

A pull off is one of the most difficult techniques to master in Guitar Hero 3. It requires precision timing and quick reflexes. Only certain song sections have pull off sections in them. The sections will be denoted by notes that have a white border, as opposed to the typical black one.

If you have 3 notes, let’s say green, red, and yellow, in order one right after another you could complete these notes using the pull off technique. When the first note hits, you’ll want to have all 3 fret buttons pressed down. This is the start of the pull off, and the only time during the technique that you will press the strum button.

As the notes ascend the scale you simply “pull off” the already completed fret notes as they pass across your screen. This type of action allows you to play songs and note combinations that would otherwise be too difficult to strum manually. If you want to start playing the most difficult songs on the hardest levels in the game then pull off is a technique you will need to add to your tool belt and master.

The most difficult aspect of nailing your pull offs is getting the timing down pat. On the more difficult songs, the note combinations are quite literally flying by you on the screen. You’ll have to slowly memorize the location of the pull off note combinations to really make this technique effective. But with a little bit of practice and persistence there’s no question you can start nailing those pull off’s and shredding the scales.

Another technique you may consider is the hammer on.

A hammer on is basically a pull off in reverse. Instead of pressing all of the buttons initially, you simply hold down each fret button as the new note comes onto your screen. Much like the pull off, this allows you to play increasingly faster and more difficult note combinations.

While it may take you some time to get accustomed to these new techniques, once you have them mastered and burned into your muscle memory, you too can be a guitar hero!

That’s right, a game of strategy with frickin’ lasers. Mine eyes have seen the glory.

I bought this game years ago, maybe in 2003 or so, and I believe it was called “Reflection” or something like that. I bought it as it was being produced, I think, and it was available from this tiny little site. One of those where you’re not really sure if you going to see anything after you make the purchase.

The concept is still the same, but it’s been given a story line, and is now available at Think Geek, one of my favorite retailers. The story goes that Khet was a popular ancient Egyptian game, so the object of the game is now to eliminate the competing pharaoh. You do this by aligning the mirrored playing pieces so that the frickin’ laser you shoot from your home base bounces from mirrored piece to mirrored piece, and ending up on the opponent’s pharaoh. In the way of your frickin’ laser are non-mirrored pieces, but one hit from your frickin’ laser, and those pieces are removed.

Simple and fun. Think Geek also offers an expansion pack: Eye of Horus Beam Splitters. So now you have to track multiple beams. Sort of like Tridimensional Star Trek Chess.

ThinkGeek Khet Laser Game

I consider this one of my must-have games, but it’s not what I would call a party favorite. It tends to be slow, quiet, and intense, and generally appeals to analytical and technical types, though I’ve found that the best competitions comes from the creative types. Better spacial reasoning, pattern recognition, and maybe intuition, I expect.

Each card in the SET deck contains one of three symbols (squiggles, diamonds, ovals) in varying numbers (up to three), colors (purple, green, red), and degrees of shading. At the same time, players try to create sets of three cards by creating various patterns or anti-patterns. Patterns must share a characteristic, and anti-patterns can’t share any characteristics. Three patterns, three anti-patterns, or a combination of three pattern(s) plus anti-pattern(s) is required to create a set.

First one to recognize the set shouts it, points it out, then collects the points.

It’s actually easier than it sounds, and there are two levels of difficulty. You can remove one of the decks to start with, which leaves fewer set possibilities. One or two quick runs through the deck, and you’ll have it.

Available via Amazon.