Title: Bully

Date: 10.27.2006

Genre: Action

Platform: PlayStation 2

Developer: Rockstar Vancouver

Publisher: Rockstar Games

I can't think of a game in recent history that has caused as much controversy as Bully. I mean, damn. Not even Manhunt, which was straight-up about murdering people in the most violent manner imaginable, got people as hot-blooded as this game. Why? The reason is simple: it involves Rockstar (famous for violent games and raunchy humor), and it takes place in a fictional high school. With children. You can see where this is going.

Touted as everything from "GTA for kids" to "a Columbine simulator," Bully is actually none of those things. Instead, it is a surprisingly deep, funny, and quirky little game that is entertaining and unique from beginning to end. It has its problems; not surprisingly, these are the same problems that tend to plague MANY Rockstar games. But as is par for the course with them, the overall package is worth the cost of admission. Class is in session, children. Take a seat and learn why Bully is such an excellent game.

The Story

First and foremost, let's get this out of the way; this game in no way even remotely resembles being a Columbine simulator or anything else the media wants to portray it as. There is no blood, no disfigurement, and absolutely positively NO death at all in this game. Your character, Jimmy Hopkins, is dumped at Bullworth Academy, a right dump of a school filled with, as Jimmy calls it, 'bullies and maniacs.' His mother, after marrying a much older and richer man, has decided to take a year-long honeymoon and leave you there. Having been expelled from seven other schools, Jimmy is determined to make this one work. The school's population, however, has other plans... the game has less to do with being a bully, and more to do with standing up to bullies and protecting weaker kids. Everyone from the students to the teachers seems out to get Jimmy, as he does his best to reign-in the school's warring social cliques and stop the chaos.

The story is quite well done, as is many of Rockstar's titles. The characters are wonderfully quirky and memorable, especially the local whipping-boy Pete Kowalski, and the friendly neighborhood sociopath Gary Smith, as well as the leaders of the school's cliques, who are essentially the embodiment of various stereotypes. The tale unfolds in typical episodic fashion, divided into 'Chapters' each of which focuses on taking over one of Bullworth's several social cliques. The proceedings are highly comical, and watching it all goes down feels like watching a really well-done satire on high school life. It all seems good up until the very end, where, in typical Rockstar fashion, the ending feels forced and sudden, as if they had to hurry up at the last second and meet some sort of deadline. It's rather disappointing, really, and one of the few reasons the game did not get a perfect score; a dissatisfying ending to what is otherwise such a well-told tale leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, if only for a moment.

The Graphics

There isn't really much to talk about here. The PS2 is showing its age, and being that this game runs on the GTA engine, the graphics seem dated. That said, Rockstar did well with what they had to work with: the various characters (and there are TONS of them) are unique and easily identifiable, the setting is nicely rendered, and, in nice twist, you actually go through the various seasons at Bullworth, starting at fall and ending in summer. You even get to experience a couple of holidays, namely Halloween and Christmas. It's a nice touch to see Bullworth Academy and the surrounding areas transform as the seasons pass, especially during the winter, when the entire setting is covered in a permanent layer of white snow. The graphics aren't incredibly impressive, but they don't need to be. They more than get the job done.

The Sound

Sound in Bully is stand-out fantastic. The voice actors are spot-on for the entirety of the game, and each character feels really and truly alive thanks to nigh-perfect delivery from some truly excellent voice actors (most of which you will have never heard of). The students, the teachers, and everyone in-between and outside are wonderfully done. Again, of particular mention are Pete Kowalski and Gary Smith, as well as Jimmy Hopkins himself, who has to deliver an outlandish amount of spoken dialogue and does so without ever ecoming tiring or annoying, a great feat indeed. The music is an entirely original score, and is one of the few stand-out game soundtracks I've heard in recent memory. It is entirely instrumental and ambient in nature, but it sets the game's mischievous high school tone perfectly. No particular sound effects stood out to me as being either good OR bad, which I suppose is fitting, since those are just for ambiance anyways. Overall, the game's audio is fantastic, and greatly helps to draw you into the Bullworth world.

The Gameplay

Ah, but all is for naught if the gameplay is lacking. Fortunately, such is not the case. Rockstar has created a wonderfully nuanced little world here, opting for depth as opposed to width, and doing a bang-up job of creating a living, breathing school setting.

The game is set at the Bullworth Academy and the surrounding towns of Bullworth, Old Bullworth Vale, New Coventry, the carnival, and the local industrial park. It is free-roaming, but as a 15-year-old kid, carjacking is not exactly an option for you. Instead, you get around as a typical teenager might; skateboards and BMX's, with the occasional scooter thrown in for good measure. The setting is nowhere near as expansive as the massive state that San Andreas gave you to explore, but what it lacks in width, it makes up for in depth, especially where the school is concerned.

The game takes place over the course of a school year in Bullworth. The game is divided into days which are governed by the game's clock. As in a real school environment, attending classes is required by the authorities; you have a morning class from 9AM to 11:30AM, and an afternoon class from 1PM until 3:30PM. Attending class basically amounts to completing a short mini-game that involves everything from DDR-style button pressing to playing a dressed up version of Qix. The mini-games are never boring, though they can be frustrating at times, and there are tangible gameplay rewards for completing your classes. Attending classes, however, is NOT mandatory in that the game makes you do them. You are free to skip if you want; just be on the lookout for the school's disciplinarians, Prefects, who will take you to class by force if they catch you skipping.

When not attending classes, you are free to run around the campus and towns, doing errands for the cliques, collecting things, or doing odd jobs for money. The goals of these missions range from standard fetch quests, to stealthily sneaking around and avoiding authorities. The majority of your quests will bring you into some sort of combat, however, and combat is what Jimmy is best at. The game's combat controls feel similar to another Rockstar game you may have played; the Warriors. L1 locks onto an enemy and blocks, Square attacks, triangle grabs, and O can be used when the enemy's health is low to deliver 'humiliations' which are wonderfully bully-ish ways of finishing off your adversaries. Again, there is no blood or death in this game; your weapons are slingshots and stink bombs, firecrackers and eggs. Though you can pick up bats and other sticklike objects to beat your enemies with, at most, you will leave your opponents on the ground, whining for their mommies. Combat is fun and there are a number of ways to go about it; up close and personal with fists, grapple-heavy, or at a distance with your slingshot or other weapons. All of these strategies can be effective, and its fun to work out your own way of trumping your opposition from the options presented to you.

Beware of making too much violence, however, or the school's prefects will be on you like a kick-me sign on a nerd's sweater. There are a number of things you can get in trouble for in this game (in contrast to GTA, where violence either physical or vehicular was generally the only thing that would get the cops on your tail). Bullying other kids, violating dress code, skipping class, staying up too late (curfew is at 11PM), vandalizing property, trespassing, stealing things, and a bevy of other charges can be leveled against you in your adventure. Get caught, and you'll likely be forced to serve detention, which is a mini-game like the classes, but without the reward. If you need to get the heat off your tail, you can hide in a locker or a trash can until it blows over. Or you can just outrun your pursuers, who are generally older and more out-of-shape than young Jimmy, and will quickly become exhausted should the chase continue for any long period of time.

Of the aforementioned cliques, there are 5, and each one is unique; all of them you will come into conflict with at one point or another. The majority of your missions will be for these cliques, and either gain or lose you favor with them. If your favor is high, they will greet you cordially and even offer you protection for a small fee. If your favor is low, they will attack you on-sight. The Bullies are the first you'll come in contact with; they fight with fists and the occasional slingshot, but aren't very bright or tough. The Preps are the rich kids, and while you might expect them to be pushovers, many of them have formal boxing training, and will dodge or block your punches with surprising frequency. The Greasers are would-be tough guys who like to dress in leather jackets and slick their hair; they like to grab you and rough you up, and occasionally toss a firecracker your way.

The Nerds are physically the weakest of the bunch, attacking with feeble slaps in melee combat. But what they lack in brawn, they make up for in sneaky-bastardism; the Nerds have the game's best projectiles, attacking from a distance with stink bombs, firecrackers, bottle rockets and potato guns. The Jocks are the strongest of the lot; they like to football tackle you and generally fight you in fairly large groups. They are notoriously hard to knock down, but easy to take out from a distance. Each clique has its own look and feel, and generally, members of each are heavily and hilariously stereotyped, with notable stand-outs being the leaders of each clique (especially the Bully's leader, Russel, who talks like the Incredible Hulk if he were just a mite dumber). Interacting with them on friendly or unfriendly terms is usually quite entertaining in its own way.

These cliques combined with the occasional normal kid make up the student population of Bullworth, which is amazing; within the school, there are no 'generic clone students.' Every kid you see is a unique creature with their own name, their own voice actor, their own lines, and their own personality. There are a TON of these kids, both big and small, boy and girl, and it's great to see and interact with them all. Outside the school, the typical GTA clone-citizen atmosphere takes over, but even the city feels deeper and more alive than many GTA atmospheres, with all manner of buildings you can enter, and various unique personalities that appear there as well.

The above doesn't even begin to cover the amount of content within Bullworth; you can go to the Carnival and play games to earn tickets and use them to buy prizes, you can collect rubber bands and game cards to unlock special rewards, you can do odd jobs around town to earn money to buy clothes or to spend on chocolates and flowers to give you the girl (or even certain guys) of your dreams in exchange for a health-fortifying kiss. You can go for high scores on various arcade games, spray-paint your tags all around town, smash garden gnomes, exchange radio transistors for combat lessons from an old Korean war vet, engage in boxing matches, bike races... and more, if you can believe it. There is a ridiculously huge number of things for you to do in this game, so its bound to keep you going for a while. Which draws no complaints from me.

The Bottom Line

All-in-all, Bully is one of the most unique gaming experiences you'll find this year. The game is deep and rewarding, and does a great job of drawing you into its little microcosm of a world. Like a good class clown, it is clever and mischievous in all the right ways and will likely win your heart with its antics. Other gaming companies could take a few semesters of game design from Rockstar in creating a unique and clever gaming experience, while the media attempting to paint this as some sort of unholy Columbine simulator needs to sit in the corner with a dunce cap and write "I will not jump to conclusions" until they learn what journalistic integrity means. As for the rest of you, just sit back and enjoy the ride. Bully is an easy A.

Game Score

A-

Reviewed By: Contributed