At first glance, Bully seems a lot like “Grand Theft Auto: The High School Years”, but once you dig a little deeper you find out that it is much more than that. Bully is wickedly funny, offers a surprising variety in the gameplay, and is simply one of the most enjoyable games to come around in quite some time. Bully: Scholarship Edition adds a few new tricks to everything that made the PS2 original great, and even though there are still some kinks to work out, it is worth picking up.
Quick Hits
- Title: Bully: Scholarship Edition
- Platform:Xbox 360
- Publisher: Rockstar Games
- Developer: Rockstar Vancouver
- ESRB Rating: “T” for Teen
- Genre: Third-person open world
- Pros: Very funny; tons of stuff to do; just a fun and enjoyable experience all around; great music
- Cons: Graphics only so-so; music class is awful; glitches/bugs (which, hopefully, will be fixed)
- Achievements: Great list. Semi-easy 1000.
Story
RockstarYou play as Jimmy Hopkins, a tough kid that has been kicked out of every school he has been to so his mother and step-father dump him into the Bullworth Academy boarding school. Jimmy is a mean spirited, foul mouthed, disrespectful jerk, but the other students are just as bad and push Jimmy a bit too far. He doesn’t want to be bad, you see, and would rather everyone just left him alone. But when every other kid in school, from the nerds to the jocks to the greasers and the preppies, hates him simply for being the new kid, he befriends the sadistic Gary and they hatch a plan to try and unite the various cliques and take over the school. Things don’t go that smoothly, though, and that is where the real story in Bully starts.
All in all, Bully tells a very relatable, very entertaining story. There are some somewhat strange things, like the fact Bullworth Academy is supposed to be this horrible place where everyone that attends the school ends up as a felon but there are little kids and (fairly) innocent girls and harmless nerds roaming the halls and they all seem really out of place at the school. And I also find it somewhat hard to really get into the character when, even if you are as good as possible, everyone still considers you a horrible evil monster. The story does require you to do questionable things, but outside of the story missions you are almost always far better off being good rather than being a jerk, so the disconnect there between what you actually do and what people say you do is rather annoying.
It has to be noted that the real meat of the game doesn’t start until you finish Chapter 1. You can’t leave the school and the cliques all hate you and you are fumbling to find your way around. Chapter 1 is easily the worst chapter, so please don’t give up on the game if it doesn’t gel with you right away. It’ll get better, I promise. Once you get into the rhythm of where and when your classes are, having to actually go to bed at night, and generally just how to behave without being busted, the game is simply awesome.
One thing that I want to mention that I really love is that there aren’t any just generic clone characters in Bully. You don’t see five identical characters walking down the street like you do in GTA. Instead, everyone has a name and is recognizable and is distinguishable from each other. There are 61 students at Bullworth Academy, and in town each shop or house have characters associated with it. Everyone has a home and a routine and it is very cool to see it all play out. You actually care about the other students because you see them all, literally, every single day.
Missions
The real joy in Bully doesn’t come from the story, though, it comes from the huge variety of stuff there is to do. There are ten classes, math, geography, English, photography, art, music, chemistry, gym, shop, and biology, and you have to pass each one five times. The classes range from simple rhythm game-style button presses, to having to actually know some real world knowledge in classes like English, math, and geography. The only class that gives us any trouble is music class, mostly because the input window for pressing the buttons is so tiny and, for whatever reason, the controls seem rather unresponsive during that particular class. Every other class is pretty easy and some are even quite fun.
After the first chapter of the game, the school gates open and you are allowed to explore the nearby town of Bullworth, and that is where the game really opens up. There are bike and go-kart races. A carnival complete with rides, a freak show, and games. Paper route missions. Lawn mowing missions. A boxing gym. Hidden collectibles to find. Yearbook photos to take. And errand missions that people on the street give you. The story missions also have a nice variety to them, and it is nice to go from “Beat up Student X” to “Help Student to the Library” to “Steal Clique Leader’s Girlfriend”.
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