Gamers are used to bizarre names for their weapons of choice, so the Latin Canis Canem Edit (translated: Dog Eat Dog) rolls off the tongue. This is just as well, as its previous name, Bully, was such an effective magnet for controversy that Rockstar Games felt the need to change it. The misconceptions and presumptions that bred from that first name nearly melted the damn thin ice that Rockstar are constantly breakdancing all over. A game where you play as a ruthless bully, terrorising your school and committing heinous acts of cruelty and criminal behaviour? The protestors came out, understandably, in their droves. While the reviewer does not wish to deride their beliefs and even agrees that such a game would be ridiculously responsible and would need some bloody good justification, the reality of it all meant that this was never the case. Canis Canem Edit is about a young, ostracised boy trying to survive in a hate-filled boarding school. There are fisticuffs, but nothing more heinous than a headbutt. Weapons are limited to stinkbombs and catapults. Compared to 90% of the games out there, this is pretty tame. The game plays like an American remake of Grange Hill. The Bully moniker simply sent out the wrong image.
Canis Canem Edit still got its fair share of abuse, but the evil geniuses behind the Grand Theft Auto games managed to get away without a massive beatdown this time round. The gaming world has long since grown weary of controversy and complaints about its hobby (remember the Pokémon Satanist debacle?) and now has only one question to ask of the products supposedly rotting their brains – is the game any good or not?
This wouldn’t be much of a review if I told you straight away, so I’m going to drag it out for a little while. The game puts you in the shoes of young Jimmy, a skinhead with an attitude who has been dumped by his lame-o parents at a boarding school. Bullworth Academy is a bad school, divided into various factions – Preppies, Bullies, Nerds, Jocks and so on. For little Jimmy to survive, he not only has to work through the curriculum, but also has to win the favour of as many people as he can. He manages this by completing various missions and running errands for members of each of the groups – escort a nerd to the toilets and you’ll incur the wrath of the Bully faction while making friends with the Nerds, for example. All the while, you’re collecting countless different types of items, driving vehicles around, trying out a host of mini-games, getting jobs, discovering new weapons, chatting up the locals and running from the authorities.
Sound familiar? It should do. Canis Canem Edit plays like Grand Theft Auto Junior – not Junior in the inferior sense, but Junior in the sense that it’s a lot tamer than the joy-riding, prossie-pushing, gun-toting tales of Vice and Liberty Cities. It’s a lot more fun throwing Chinese burns and fire crackers around, and then legging it from a peeved teacher, then it is gunning a host of pedestrians down and scavenging their remains. Call me old-fashioned.
The main game is broken up by the lessons that Jimmy is required to attended. You can skive off and break into some lockers, play on your dorm’s arcade machine or pop into the local town, but don’t let the authorities bust you or you’ll be mowing lawns in detention. The lessons include English (which is a series of anagram games similar in style to popular quiz show Countdown), Art (a reimagining of classic arcade game Qix), Chemistry (a press-the-buttons-in-time game) and Gym (wrestling and dodgeball minigames). These are fun and very different, and also help you unlock loads of bonuses and extras.
This game is, once again, a masterwork in the sandbox genre, crammed full of so much that it may seem intimidating for a while. I was a mere 10% into the game when I had already played a couple of sniper games (with my slingshot, naturally), dodgeball, some arcade mini-games, wrestling, a boxing tournament, a Halloween Night prank-a-thon and a penalty shoot-out style game where the objective is to hit the goalkeeper with the ball. Rockstar have once again imagined a fully-realised world, this time set in one of the locations we all know, love and hate, the school. You will feel for Jimmy as he is snubbed by peers and superiors, bullied for no reason by teachers and bigger kids, and generally given very little of a chance. However, with you in command, he can fight back – causing mischief and pain in equal measures. Your nostalgic urges may try to persuade you that images of marble bags and stinkbombs are your own memories, but the game draws from an imaginary image of the classic school world, a common pool of recollections, both real and created by TV and the media, that we all somehow share. The nostalgia is broad and non-specific, but the atmosphere and the feelings it causes will remind you of many (good or bad) school time exploits.
There’s very little to say about the negative sides of this game. The strict structure of the day (lesson, lunch, lesson, curfew at 11pm, bed before 1am) might irritiate you, or for the beginner, it may intimidate. Once you get used to it though, you learn to plan your day around the timetable, and fit in missions and jobs between lessons and so on. It’ll teach you a sense of time management, too. The days go by a little too quickly at first, but you’ll eventually learn how to break into the school and make the most of your social time.
Jimmy is also impossibly cool. Perhaps it would have been nice to play a flawed, somewhat nerdy character, but Jim is cold as ice, smart and tough in equal measures, and despite being thrown out of every school in the world, is somehow unwilling to cause trouble unless provoked. Obviously Rockstar wanted to give us a protagonist who we could identify with and defend (he’s just misunderstood!) while still making him a bad ass, but it feels like he’s a superhero who can do no wrong and is powered by his contempt for everyone else. Ever.
But then again, wait until he tries talking to girls.
Canis Canem Edit (PS2)