Rockstar has an amazing catalog of games that exist to shock, and exist to emulate realism, but to me my favorite game of theirs will ALWAYS be Bully. I don't care what anyone else says.
This game is what happens when you get adults who are really good at writing to write really flawed and awful characters, all with seemingly the express purpose of making the already flawed and messed up protagonist seem like a good guy and it's done well in spades. The dialogue is great, the missions are all really fun and interesting, the gameplay is super satisfying, the minigames and collectables are fun to do and mostly give lovely rewards, and the story is really satisfying to play through even with it only taking about 15 hours compared to the usual Rockstar length of 30 or more.
Only complaint I have to throw up here is playing this game on modern hardware leads to a lot of crashes, but there's a number of fan patches that fix the game up to be something a fair bit more playable. If you only have the choice of playing 1 Rockstar game, and you don't want to play GTA because it's way too controversial, pick up Bully. It's just messed up to be entertaining while not pushing that to an uncomfortable point...usually.
This game is what happens when you get adults who are really good at writing to write really flawed and awful characters, all with seemingly the express purpose of making the already flawed and messed up protagonist seem like a good guy and it's done well in spades. The dialogue is great, the missions are all really fun and interesting, the gameplay is super satisfying, the minigames and collectables are fun to do and mostly give lovely rewards, and the story is really satisfying to play through even with it only taking about 15 hours compared to the usual Rockstar length of 30 or more.
Only complaint I have to throw up here is playing this game on modern hardware leads to a lot of crashes, but there's a number of fan patches that fix the game up to be something a fair bit more playable. If you only have the choice of playing 1 Rockstar game, and you don't want to play GTA because it's way too controversial, pick up Bully. It's just messed up to be entertaining while not pushing that to an uncomfortable point...usually.