Arthur And The Invisibles

Rating: G – Suitable for General Audiences.
Genre: Adventure.
Developer: Atari.
Release Date: 9th February.

Arthur and the Invisibles is the latest movie based kids game, though the action and controls of this particular game are more suited to slightly older kids, and fortunately the parents will be able to enjoy this a lot more than the brain numbing simplicity of the Cars movie game.

It’s your classic action adventure, where by your character has to fight his way through the main story of the movie, solving puzzles along the way, much in the same vein as Tomb Raider, but on a simpler level.

Another difference to Tomb Raider is the team aspect.

Your character is not alone on his quest. After a short training level, you’ll be introduced to two other characters that you can switch between, utilising each characters special abilities to progress further along in the game.

Fortunately these characters know how to handle them selves for the most part and greatly enhance the game play.

The thing that really got me with the game however was the graphics. I’d long put my PS2 to rest, only bringing it out for Guitar Hero sessions, or for the kids to play on. Whilst graphically challenged in comparison to the 360, I was pleasantly surprised at the loveliness of the visuals.

So if you’re looking for a fun game that the whole family can enjoy, you won’t get much better that Authur.

Rent or Buy?
Buy, it’ll keep the kids busy for a while.

Bully

Rockstar felt the need to change the name of their controversial game Bully to Canis Canem Edit for the New Zealand and Australian markets. Maybe they should have been more honest and renamed it Boring.

Loosely based around the GTA game play that made them famous, Bully sounded like a winner from the day it was announced. Of course all the PC cry babies kicked up a fuss even before the game had been created, citing Rockstar’s many incarnations of GTA as proof that this would take homicidal game play to the school yard and therefore teaching otherwise good kids, to kill.

Of course as with most anti-game ranters, there was little in the way of substance to their claims, and in the case of Bully, a whole lot less than little.

Now let me say something up front. I think that Bully is a great premise for a game, and I think that Rockstar is the only company that could do the game justice. But with the delays associated with game design, they should have really jumped ship and launched Bully on the XBox 360.

You see the biggest annoyance with bully isn’t the poor graphics of the PS2, no; it’s the constant waiting around for the next part to load every time you enter a new building. Especially when entering buildings is all you ever seem to be doing.

Having the entire initial part of the campus available without load times would have gone a long way to ease my frustration. But not totally. You see what Bully doesn’t have in spades that its grown up cousin, GTA, does, is plenty to do outside of missions.

The school day exists of doing a couple of missions, attending a few classes and going to bed. Creep around too late at night, and if you manage to evade the ever-present prefects, come 11pm you’ll collapse on the spot from exhaustion.

And if you’re not good at word play, you’ll be even more frustrated when you find your self having to solve word puzzles to pass your English class.

What did make the crossover from GTA however is the humour. Walk around and listen to what the other kids are saying, and that old familiar smile will creep across your face.

And as for the bullying, sure you can go up to anyone and start a fight, but soon enough the prefects will come running and wrestle you to the ground and it will be off to the principles office.

But fighting isn’t avoidable in Bully (that’ll make the anti-game brigade happy), it’s and integral part of the game. One particular mission sees you helping a fat kid get to the toilet by walking with him and dispatching of any bullies that try and, well, beat him to a pulp.

In fact many of the missions require you to be someone’s guardian angel.

But it’s the fact that there isn’t a whole city to explore at will, and that there is next to no option what order you do missions in and the repetitive nature of the game that saw me give up in utter frustration and boredom after three hours of game play.