So last night I finally finished Bully, then spent another hour or so wandering around trying to find the items I'd missed, yeah.

Anyone who's seen me play videogames won't be surprised to hear that during the final boss battle, my big worry was that I didn't have my camera, and still needed this guy's picture for the yearbook. What if I beat him, but find that I can't conquer the game?!?

Also, it's a small point, but when a game like this has generated a few teacups worth of controversy, it's important to step back and look at how ignorant the critics are. This critic, cited in a lousy Salon article on the topic, is typical:

Coloroso [author of "The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander"] -- who isn't a gamer, but who had her 28-year-old son buy the game and give her an account -- pointed to one scene that involves Jimmy Hopkins visiting an adult book store. Then there's the part where "in order to get some of the tools you need, you have to beat up a homeless man," she said. "You're getting a reward for doing something negative."

Sayeth the copy editor: walking past an adult bookstore does not a visit make. The Salon author correctly points out that you never have to beat up a homeless man, but I'm fairly certain that Coloroso's son and Manjoo are referring to very different missions.

(Another sad truth: even the most prominent defenders of videogames have rarely played more than a few hours. After spending thirty hours tooling around with the Bottle Rocket Launcher and Spud Gun, I, for one, thought that Manjoo's assertion that "there are no guns" in Bully was true only in spirit.)

Also, Salon: in the immortal words of Peter K Sheerin, "Hyphens are Not Dashes." You're a webmagazine, for godsakes.

The game itself is quite fun. As usual, I tended to find the game too easy — the fighting system is essentially The Warriors-lite, and I won most fights without using any special moves — but the plot was probably Rockstar's best yet. Ditto the character design.

The missions are fun, and there's a surprising amount of variety. Also, it's a huge game, but it's set in a small town and at a small school, so when you see the same character models on the sidewalk, it's not a glitch, it's just Sheldon, remember him? And unlike GTA: San Andreas, it's pretty hard to get lost, and you can get to any destination fairly quickly.

The stuff that bothered the IGN reviewer: falling asleep at 2 regardless of where you are on a mission, and the lack of structure after you finish all the classes (finish! hah! I'm still sucking at Shop!), well, those weren't really issues for me at all. I'm just annoyed that this never came out for Xbox, or, you know, one of those new systems everyone is buying these days.