Canis Canem Edit
Extensive hands-on with what looks like Rockstar's best game since GTA.
Proficiency in combat, for example, grows from various sources: wrestling in gym class teaches you new fighting moves; pursuing a prep called Davis, who pelts you with eggs for sucking up to the headmaster, reveals more about how to use projectiles; going off with Gary to torment the homeless man who lives behind a knackered old school bus reveals a method of unlocking advanced moves, by hunting down radio parts lurking around the school (think hidden packages) and handing them over when you've got a moment to spare him.
You gain more tools, like a skateboard for getting around faster, a camera, and a slingshot, and the ways by which they're introduced is often a more compelling part of the world than the plink-instruction-plink-instruction-plink-mission approach of GTA. Gain the slingshot and the next thing Gary wants to do is smash windows, before he sends you up a tree next to the football field - another useful skill to know about - to shoot at practising players.
The learning's fun, then, which is an achievement - goodness knows how much we all hate games that throw you into a classroom when you first fire them up - but there's fun to be had elsewhere too. There are 75 rubber bands (no wait, now think hidden packages) to uncover, humiliation moves to experiment with (used when an enemy's on their last legs - you can even do that "why are you hitting yourself?" thing), and a huge variety of extra-curricular activities. A basketball court offers a "penalty shots" mini-game - bet some money, and then try to use five available footballs to hit a student dancing along the goal line, winning or losing based on how much of his health bar you can break down. (Actually, I spent a good 15 minutes on this alone, and lost all my money - pay attention Jack Thompson, Rockstar's teaching us the folly of gambling.) A girl might ask you to escort her safely back to her dorm after lights-out. And, as we all know, "Once a girl likes you, she will always accept your gifts and want to kiss you." Other students will ask you to run errands for them if you introduce yourself, which nets you some extra pocket-change; useful for buying drinks from vending machines to top up your health.
Because of the way the day's structured, with periods of great peril separated from freedom by the shrill blast of the school bell, it rips between styles with aplomb. On Halloween night, dressed as a skeleton (Gary appears to have found an SS officer's uniform), you egg other students and set off fireworks, and ultimately have to stealth your way to the teacher's lounge, where you set a bag of crap on fire and pull the alarm bell. Even the stealth's quite entertaining - somewhere between Metal Gear Solid's run-and-hide and the Beano.
Narrative's where the game bears closest resemblance to its sister-series, with colourful, fairly stereotypical characters (the big fat nerd whose flies don't do up properly, with a weak bladder, and thick-rim glasses, and buck teeth, and so on) and that urgency of dialogue that always felt a bit contrived, but the jokes are often good, and the portrait it paints of Jimmy himself makes for a bit more empathy than the brutal selfish/haplessness of the usual protagonist. When he helps up the misguided bully he's just floored in the final scene of chapter one, and tells him there are plenty of people worth picking on at Bullworth and he's going after the wrong people, it's hard not to like him. A bit. Although he's still a bit of a runt and a skinhead. At least you can change his haircut in town.
Part of the town - the map itself has plenty of areas you won't be able to access until later chapters - opens up with the conclusion of chapter one, and although we weren't allowed to spend much time there (not least because it was about 7pm by then, and Rockstar wanted to go home), we did get a feel for how the game might blossom. The school cook sends you on an errand to pick things up, which gives you a chance to try out a bicycle and head to the butcher's, hairdresser's and clothes store - of which there'll be several. You can also ride the bus for a quick way to get home - bound to be handy when the hours are dragging on after curfew. Meanwhile a prep gym in town gives you a grounding in boxing - punching from first-person, dodging with X and swinging with square - after which you earn a boxing outfit and a Beach Clubhouse, the latter pointing to a bit of empire-building.
But naturally you won't leave the school completely behind, and one of the first second-chapter missions has you helping a drunken old English teacher to clear out his stashes, smashing up a trophy cabinet and delivering the evidence to a sympathetic colleague out by the old school bus. There was no sense attempting another mission with the bell about to toll, I thought, as I trudged back toward the dorm room - but there was some fun to be had tripping up prefects by tossing marbles, found behind the bus, into their gormless paths on the way home. "I wonder if the army processed my application yeeaaarghhhh."
Considering the amount of controversy that Canis Canem Edit has courted without even peeping out of development, it's always been quite interesting to note that the game's original announcement, way back in May of last year, was met with virtually zero fanfare. Beyond GTA, Rockstar's other action games have rarely done more than flirt with the sort of critical success and notoriety that its breadmaker has - and were it not for the cottage industry of morally-indignant talking heads its frivolous relationship with violence has helped to cultivate, this one probably wouldn't have caught our attention either. So we probably owe the Thompsons of the world a debt of gratitude - because, actually, Canis Canem Edit looks a bit good. It's a Rockstar game in all the good ways, and on this evidence, it's going to have been worth the hassle. As my own school motto used to go, "Ad astra per aspera".