Bully Scholarship Edition (360)
Not too long ago Rockstar games released a highly controversial game for the Playstation 2 called Bully. The game received attention from people such as Jack Thompson and has even been banned in a few countries. Now Bully has been re-released so Xbox 360 and Wii owners can experience the schoolyard mayhem featured in the first game.
For those who never played the PS2 version, the game takes place in the fictional New England town of Bullworth. The game begins with our protagonist Jimmy being driven to the boarding school in Bullworth before his mom and her new husband leave for a ear long honeymoon. In the past Jimmy has been quite the troublemaker thus his parents sent him off to what many consider the worst school in the world in an attempt to straighten him out. The majority of the game is spent dealing with the many cliques at Bullworth. There are five cliques at Bullworth: The bullies, the nerds, the greasers, the preps, and the jocks. The members of the cliques are classic stereotypes, and your goal in the game is to make peace between the cliques.
You do this by completing the many missions in the game. The town of Bullworth is a fairly large area. With a couple smaller sections of the town. It's a free-roaming universe and that gives you a large amount of freedom in the game. You have tons of options while playing. You can play through the missions in the main storyline or you can complete the side missions. You can also do errands for the many townspeople or if you don't feel like doing that there are bike races, a carnival complete with carnival games, and there is a huge amount of collectible items to find. So you should always have something to do.
The combat in Bully is simple, but fun and works great for the game. All of your punches are controlled by the X button. You execute combos by pressing the button or certain amount of times or holding the X button. You start out with only a few combos, but by the end of the game you'll have a ton. Another aspect of the combat is grapples. Using the y button you can grab you opponent and throw them to the ground or punch them with out them being able to defend.
Bully also has a fairly large weapons set. The weapons are mostly teenage style weapons. You have fire crackers, eggs, potato guns, and a slingshot, along with others. These weapons aren't needed that often because your opponents can be knocked out easily enough with just punches. Though the weapons are great to use if you're just trying to have a good time.
One thing that Bully pulls off fantastically is the schoolyard aspect. There are prefects roaming the campus at all times just waiting to bust someone. When you do something that could get you into trouble such as beating up another kid, your trouble meter rises. If a prefect catches you in the act of bullying someone they will try to bust you. If they're chasing after you, your best bet is to run and try and hide somewhere.
Another great schoolyard aspect is classes. There are ten different classes each with five levels of difficulty. The classes go through a five day schedule and each day you have a morning class and an afternoon class. Attending class is optional, but I recommend going to class all the time because the classes give you valuable rewards and some of the classes are actually somewhat fun. In English class you have to make anagrams out of a set of six or seven letters, chemistry consists of pressing buttons at the right time. Art class consists of you trying to for shapes on a canvas without hitting the enemies. In gym class you either wrestle an opponent or play dodge ball. The wrestling parts are very important as they give you new fighting moves. Shop class has you press buttons or use the control sticks with proper timing, Photography gives you certain things located around town to take a picture of and you must go out and find these things.
Scholarship edition has four new classes that weren't in the PS2 version. In biology you get to dissect and examine animals, in music classes you presses the R and L triggers in time to a song. Geography has you locate countries with flags, and lastly in math you are given a small quiz with simple math questions and you must solve them.
Along with the four new classes Bully: Scholarship Edition has a decent amount of other new stuff. There are eight new missions in the game all of which blend into the storyline fantastically. There is also a two player mode where you compete against each other in mini-games. There is also the obvious addition of achievements for the Xbox 360 version. The achievements are very well done and really force you to do stuff you probably wouldn't do normally.
Sadly there is a new addition to Scholorship Edition that wasn't on the PS2 version that makes your experience not as enjoyable. The Xbox 360 version is open to a HUGE amount of glitches. This includes random game crashes, missions not appearing, achievements not unlocking, and others. Luckily Rockstar has released a patch that deals with the glitches and they are gone for the most part, but you may encounter a few still.
The graphics in Bully are pretty good. They have been improved since the PS2 version, but compared to other Xbox games they aren't fantastic. The layouts and designs of the building are great though. The building designs are different in each town and match the personalities of the towns perfectly. For example the town that most of the preps live in is full of fancy looking buildings and just screams rich snobs. The character designs in the game are great too. Rockstar really nailed the stereotypical designs. Such as the greasers with the leather jackets, the nerds with their comb-overs, the preps with their arrogant looks, and the jocks with their letterman jackets. The only real problem with the graphics are slight frame rate problems, but for the most part you won't notice them.
The sound in Bully is also fantastic. The voice acting is amazing and really makes the story come alive. As with the graphics the stereotypes are perfect. The nerds sound like nerds, the greasers sound like they're stuck in the movie "Grease", the jocks sound like brain-dead idiots, and the preps sound like stuck up snobs. The soundtrack is great too. It is fairly repetitive though. When you're just waking around you are listening to one of two fairly boring songs. However if your trouble meter rises or if a member from one of the cliques is chasing you the song quickly changes to an intense chase song. The music really creates an intense mood as you try to escape from your enemies.
The value in Bully is pretty good. The main storyline will probably take you fifteen to twenty hours to complete and if you want to complete the game 100% you're looking at another five or so hours. There isn't much replay value. After you complete the game 100% the only thing left to do is just run around and beat people up which gets old after a while.
All in all, Bully is a great game. Even if you have already played through the game on the PS2 it's worth it for the new things and the achievements. I highly recommend you play this game if you're looking for a GTA style game that switches things up and takes you to the schoolyard. Bully is for sure a game you'll remember for a long time.
