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http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=145473Canis Canem EditDue more to its name than anything else, Rockstar Games' Canis Canem Edit is set to be the most controversial game of the year. When it was first announced at last year's E3, the usual suspects (Keith Vaz among them, making a bid to become the UK's answer to Jack Thompson) called for it to be banned, in concert with anti-bullying websites (Bullying Online continues its call for a ban). Thompson, naturally, indulged in his usual frothing at the mouth, an act he has resumed recently, now that Rockstar has announced an October launch date and released a trailer and some new screenshots. Not to mention shown us the game.
Advertisement:Yes, indeed: we have seen a goodly swathe of Canis Canem Edit - down at Rockstar's Kings Road offices. And we can report that it is a rather amusing piece of action-adventure froth that majors on playing things for laughs and, after Table Tennis and the Midnight Club games, is perhaps the tamest, most innocuous effort that Rockstar has ever come up with. Not that trivia like actually seeing what the game is like would have any bearing on the Moral Majority's wish to see it banned.
So, what is it really like? Well, best perhaps to start from the beginning. The intro movie shows the game's protagonist, 15-year-old ginger teen Jimmy Hopkins, being driven to Bullworth Academy by his mother and her umpteenth husband. It is made clear that Jimmy, sulking on the back seat, hates his stepdad and is a troubled teen. He is dumped unceremoniously at the gates of Bullworth Academy (supposedly set in New England), with the words: "See you in a year's time."
LIVING QUARTERSWhich gives the first gameplay hint - Canis Canem Edit takes place over the course of a year, during which the four seasons will pass (the game has a weather engine). Jimmy's first task is to find his dorm room and change into his school uniform - prefects and teachers will bust him if he is not wearing it on campus. On the way there, a quick cut-scene introduces you to Russell, a hulking idiot renowned as the biggest bully in the school. In his room, Jimmy can change clothes, save the game and collapse onto his bed to sleep - being a 15-year-old, he needs his sleep, and if he stays out too late, the screen will blur, he will start moving slowly and will eventually pass out.
Next-door to Jimmy's dorm-room is the boy's common room, with a TV, pool table and arcade machine - which can all be used (Canis Canem Edit is packed full of mini-games) - and a soda dispenser, which restores health. Scripted schoolboy shenanigans and the odd cut-scene (for example, introducing Jimmy to his first "friend", Gary), take place there.
SCHOOL LIFEThe school campus is realistically large, consisting of all the buildings you'd expect to find at a school. It positively teems with pupils, teachers and prefects, in a pleasingly life-like manner. It has plenty of things you can interact with - for example, footballs you can kick (quite violently) at other pupils.
The teachers and prefects will bust Jimmy for any transgression, such as pinching a girl's bum or being truant from class (you're not registered as truant until half an hour's worth of game-time has elapsed from the start of the class). Depending on the severity of the offence (signalled by a colour system in the HUD), they will chase you and, if they catch you, haul you up to the headmaster's study. The headmaster will give you a dressing-down and confiscate one of the items that you have earned by completing missions. But the third time you're hauled up in front of the beak, you'll be given a manual labour task to perform, which depends on the season - in summer, it'll be mowing the football pitch, in winter, shovelling snow from around the teachers' cars. If you're busted, your best plan is to leg it, and hide in a locker or even a waste bin.
LESSONSSince Jimmy's at school, he has to attend lessons - which are basically mini-games that increase in difficulty (and therefore become more interesting) as you work your way through the five levels of learning in each subject. The subjects on Bullworth Academy's curriculum are English, chemistry, art, metal-work, PE and photography. The simplest chemistry mini-game, for example, is a rhythm action effort, and when you finish it, you acquire the ability to make fire-crackers. Each completed schoolwork mini-game brings you an ability - the first English lesson, for example, gives you the chance to apologise, which can come in handy when dealing with bullies.
CLIQUESAs the storyline unfolds, you discover that there are distinct cliques in the game, each of which generally hangs out in the same place. To be specific, they are: the Nerds (who can be found outside the library, natch), the Jocks, the Dropouts, the Preppies and the Greasers. Plenty of the missions involve defending Nerds, often from Greasers - eventually, you develop different relationships with each clique.
FIGHTINGObviously, the fighting engine is at the core of Canis Canem Edit's gameplay, and first impressions suggested that it is pretty decent. It is, of course, the game's most controversial aspect - the anti-bullying organisations all insist that bullying victims shouldn't fight back. Jimmy can punch, kick and grapple, and can chain moves together into special moves (many of which are acquired as the game progresses). He also has finishing moves. But there is not a drop of blood in the game and, like The A-Team, nobody dies - vanquished foes lie on the floor for a while and then pick themselves up and scurry off.
WEAPONSMore controversy here. Rockstar, rather cutely, has concentrated on recreating the sort of weapons you would find at all schools. Except that there are no knives or guns in the game (instantly making it more innocuous than real life - at least, real life as experienced by pupils at sink-hole comprehensives). But you do get marbles (useful when you're being chased), fire-crackers, water-bombs, dustbin-lids, slingshots.... and baseball bats. The latter are generally found in the possession of bullies (you can trigger a special grapple move to wrestle them out of their hands) and, cannily, away from the school grounds, in the town adjoining Bullworth Academy, many parts of which are pretty seedy, and which makes up about three-quarters of the game world (the town includes a Carnival area and a beach). Baseball bats also disintegrate after a few swift applications. Jimmy also has access to two basic vehicles - a skateboard and a push-bike.
INTERACTION WITH CHARACTERSYou can free-roam (as you would expect from a Rockstar action-adventure game), and interact with random characters. That interaction can be positive or negative, depending on which button you press. You can, for example, call on some classic playground moves, such as the nose-pull. But the best random interaction we saw involved Jimmy walking into a flowerbed, picking a bunch of flowers and presenting them to a girl. As she responded positively (Jimmy can also pinch girls' backsides, which inevitably leads to a swift kick to his cojones), Jimmy was able to steam in and plant a kiss on her lips. We're assured (and no doubt, this is true, following the Hot Coffee debacle) that Jimmy can't do anything less innocent to girls than kiss them.
MISSIONSAccording to Rockstar, Canis Canem Edit contains about 50 compulsory missions and 25 optional ones - which should equate to a decent amount of gameplay time, even if the missions take a while to reach any sort of difficulty level (the learning curve looks pretty gentle). The game is split into five or six chapters (curiously, Rockstar seemed unsure about the precise number), the first of which is confined to the school campus (only after completing it do you get access to the town beyond the gates).
We saw quite a few missions, which should at least give you a flavour of the game. Each started with a cut-scene featuring snappy dialogue bound to render those who had boarding school educations somewhat misty-eyed.
One typical mission sees Melvin, the fat Nerd, exhorting to retrieve his "Grottoes and Gremlins" character sheets, which have been stolen and distributed among four bullies. In the version of the HUD we saw (Rockstar says the HUD still isn't finalised), they showed up as yellow crosses on the mini-map; the mission simply consisted of chasing them down one by one, then beating them at combat.
The cutest mission we saw was entitled Panty Raid, and started with a cut-scene of Jimmy's teacher emerging from a porn shop in the town, clutching a bundle of magazines, and spinning an amusingly implausible story about forgetting to collect the dirty laundry from the girls' dorm. So it was up to Jimmy to climb a trellis into the girls' dorm, and stealth around with help from the mini-map, avoiding patrolling teachers and female pupils and picking up knickers dotted around various rooms.
Another mission involved on-rails shooting, set in the town. Jimmy caught up with Algy the Nerd, whose whereabouts you had to determine by saving his mate Cornelius from a bunch of Greasers. Eventually, you discover Algy and his geeky mate Chad, with Lola, girlfriend of Johnny Vincent, head of the Greasers. Legging it on two bicycles - with Jimmy on the back of one - you're soon pursued by Greasers and must keep them at bay using your slingshot and fire-crackers, while the pursuing Greasers chuck eggs and snowballs at you.
We also saw one end-of-chapter boss mission, involving Jimmy taking on Russell, the hulking, neanderthal king of the bullies, in the arena-like surroundings of the school gym (with most of the school's pupils cheering you on). Russell is very strong, and will knock you down with ease if you let him get close, but he is also as thick as a plank, and will launch a bull-like charge which, as long as you step aside as late as possible, will see him run into the wall and stun himself - at which point you can get in a flurry of attacks until he recovers the few wits he possesses. When you've dealt with Russell, you and he become friends, and a plot-twist ensues. We won't spoil it by being too specific.
SO, WHAT DO WE THINK?We were quite impressed by Canis Canem Edit. Hardcore it ain't - either in gameplay or its content, despite what Thompson, Vaz and their ilk might want you to believe. But the gameplay is reasonably varied, the fighting system is pretty decent, the graphics are excellent, the game world is believable, akkk the usual Rockstar touches and hallmarks are present and correct and, above all, it's consistently amusing, in a Grange Hill meets Just William meets Nigel Molesworth way. You wouldn't say it's a great game - although it's a solid effort. But the inevitable Daily Mail-reader moral outrage that will accompany it might just give it triple-A-title sales figures. Perhaps one day, one of those pompous "moral guardians" who pontificate about games will actually play on of the objects of their wrath, and wonder why they've expending all that unnecessary, self-publicising bluster. Or maybe that's what they're afraid of?
