Bully: Scholarship Edition: School's Never Been So Much Fun
Se7entySe7en
90% score
I had the great misfortune of missing Bully when it first came out for the PS2. I had heard that it was a fantastic game, but at the time I just didn't have the money to pick it up. Now that it's come around again on the Xbox 360, I couldn't pass it up a second time, and boy I'm glad I didn't. I understand that there were a few issues with the game that Rockstar needed to fix. I was lucky enough to not experience any of these issues as I started playing the game about a week after the patch had already been released. So I'm basing this review off of my experience with the game which was phenomenal. You begin the game as Jimmy Hopkins, a trouble maker who has been expelled from every school he's ever attended. His mother, at her wits end and about to leave on a year long honeymoon with her 5th husband, drop Jimmy off at the gates of Bullworth Academy, a rich boarding school located, you guessed it, in the town of Bullworth. Jimmy is immediately ridiculed for being the new kid. He's beat up, picked on, and quickly makes enemies with not only the kids, but teachers and the overzealous prefects as well. The game follows a typical Rockstar sandbox formula, giving you free reign of the school grounds (including the main class building, 3 dorms, the library, the gym, the auto shop, and the football field) and eventually the entire town of Bullworth (consisting of a residential area, 2 downtown areas, a carnival area, the beach, an industrial area, and a slums area). Needless to say the environment that Jimmy finds himself in is massive and he can use his feet, bikes, skateboards, and mopeds to get around. As the game progresses Jimmy learns new fighting moves and gains new weapons (slingshots, stinkbombs, fire crackers, and a potato gun to name a few). Not only must you complete missions for various characters (taking a page from the GTA handbook). But you must also attend class (Art, Geography, Math, Biology, Music, English, Gym and more). If you skip class or break any other rules (violence against other students, being out of uniform, and various forms of mischeif) you can be sent to detention or worse yet, back to class. Like any Rockstar game worth it's salt, the main story is only part of the game. There are so many activities to take part in in Bully that there's always something to do. Whether you want to start a paper route to pick up extra money, get involved in a boxing tournament at the local boxing club, race bikes or go karts, or head down to the carnival and play games or hop on some rides, you're never without something to occupy yourself. Jimmy controls, pretty much like a carbon copy of any of the GTA characters and it works just fine in the game. Anyone who's played a GTA game will feel right at home here. The only place where Bully falters is in the graphics department. While improvements have been made over the PS2 version, the game still doesn't look on par with the rest of the 360's offerings. Pop in, clipping are evident (more so with NPC's than Jimmy) and the collision detection is a little bit off, but no more so than GTA San Andreas. Is it noticable? At times. Does it get in the way of the gameplay? Absolutely not. With a funny, interesting and well crafted story, solid controls, and outstanding gameplay, Bully: Scholarship Edition is an amazing game. I highly recommend it for anyone that wasn't able to play it on PS2 and for those looking to give the game another go.
