Pack your bags, but don’t forget your school uniform. It’s off to your first year at Bullworth Academy, the toughest boarding school around, and what will be the home of one of the greatest adventure games the Playstation 2 has ever seen.
I don’t often write about games, but not because I don't play them. I’m a huge fan of gaming, stemming back to the classic days of 8-bit goodness from the NES and Sega Master System. I follow the industry pretty closely, and though recent consoles offer rich adventures and extraordinary 3D graphics that look a million times better than what I played as a kid, I rarely find that game that truly captivates my interest long enough for me to finish it, or at least enough to drop $50 to $60 dollars of my hard earned cash to play it when it first hits the street. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of great games out there, but I normally wait for them to wind up in the $19.99 bin before I pick them up.
So what was it about Bully that made me break my “bargain bin” rule and pick up a copy the week it was released? For one, the $39.99 asking price seemed reasonable for a brand new release, but that’s not really what did it. This game has gotten so much hype over the last 3 to 6 months with government officials lobbying to try and keep the game from ever seeing the light of day. Why? The game is made by Rockstar, the company behind the popular Grand Theft Auto series, who has been the target of protestors and government officials for a while, and even more so since the infamous “Hot-Coffee” mod was discovered in their San Andreas title last year. So let’s look at it from a school perspective: Rockstar’s reputation^3 + new game in school setting + title of “Bully” = instant controversy. In fact, the title of the game has been controversial in the UK as well, so Rockstar changed it to "Canis Canem Edit" for that market.
Well, I own Bully, and have played through a good majority of the game. Bully is not a Columbine simulator, and even though it’s based on the same engine as the Grand Theft Auto series, it's much different.
The Story
The story of Bully is set around 15 year-old Jimmy Hopkins, a street-smart troublemaker with a bad attitude, but isn’t a raging psychopath that goes around kicking people for fun. He’s just been dropped off at the front gates of Bullworth Academy so that his gold-digging mother can head off on a year long honeymoon with the rich old man she just married. After a meeting with the principle and a quick tour from his butt-kissing assistant, you’ll instantly feel like the new kid, one that is quickly deemed as an outcast among the student body’s various social cliques. From the moment you step into the campus courtyard, the bullies, jocks, and greasers all want to pick a fight with the “fresh meat”.
You encounter your first friend early on, a somewhat demented student named Gary who has stopped taking his sanity medication. Here you’ll get your first feeling what Jimmy’s personality is like, and also get a good idea how great the dialogue is in this game. Gary is bent on taking over the school, and thinks you’re just the right person to help him. This relationship only goes so far, and Gary soon thinks of you more as a liability than an aid.
As you progress through your adventure, you'll see that Jimmy isn't really a bully... though he can be a little rough at times. He's more of the anti-bully, and it's your job to work through the social hierarchy at Bullworth and become the dominant leader of each social group within the school. Sounds easy, doesn't it? It isn't.
Let the fun begin…
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Game Play
Since Bully is powered by the same engine used for the infamous Grand Theft Auto games, the story plays out in a similar mission-based style. Between missions, you’re pretty much free to do what you want. However, Bully has much more structure than its GTA cousins. You’re in a school, so you have a regular schedule of classes that you need to attend. Your first class starts at 9 AM sharp, then free time for lunch (a good time for pranks or food fights), and your second class starts at 1 PM. Afterward, the rest of the day is yours to go on missions, play pranks, work a job to earn some case, etc. The clock moves relatively fast, so your first few days it will seem like you never have enough time to get anything done. It gets easier to schedule your time, and you’ll manage to get everything in without feeling like you’re constantly fighting the clock.
Missions are creative and intuitive, and will keep you interested through the entire game. You’ll do everything from escorting nerds around the school to keep them from getting beaten by the jocks or bullies, to confiscating the drunken English teacher’s liquor bottles so he doesn’t get canned, to boxing out the leader of the preppies.
If you’re short on time or waiting for a class to start, there’s other things you can do to occupy your time. Classmates and townsfolk will approach you with a short errand, some of which include making food deliveries or snapping pictures of a cheating spouse, which are usually short enough to complete in a few minutes. There’s also various jobs you can pick up around the area, like lawn mowing or a paper route, which can keep you busy and line your pockets with cash.
Prefects and Law Enforcement
The faculty at Bullworth doesn’t like troublemakers, and so have created an army of prefects to roam the halls, courtyards, and other areas of the school to catch those causing mischief. Prefects don’t patrol outside of the school, but local law enforcement fills their shoes for catching students when out and about.
The heads up display contains a three section trouble meter, broken up between yellow, orange, and red sections. The meter will indicate how much trouble you’re in, depending on the naughty things you’re doing. For the most part, teachers, prefects, and officers will leave you alone, but start breaking the rules and they’ll go through different stages of pursuit. Something like breaking into a locker will get the prefects looking for you, but won’t cause them to chase you down in groups. More advanced crimes, like pulling the fire alarm or hitting a teacher will throw you into the higher levels.
Depending on your English skills, Jimmy can talk his way out of smaller crimes, but even the smoothest talker can’t weasel his way out of everything. Fortunately for you, the prefects have a very short memory. Once you’re out of sight, they’ll look for you for a little while, then forget about you and move on with their lives. When you’re in trouble the best thing you can do is hide and wait for the trouble meter to deplete, and fortunately Jimmy can dive into lockers, trash bins, and other areas to get him out of sight.
Jimmy’s a smart kid, so learning how to use the prefects to your advantage is key. At any one time, Jimmy will be the target of any number of social groups. If you get wrapped up in a fight the prefects see, they’ll chase both of you down no matter who started it, but if you don’t throw a punch the prefects will chase down the other student. If you’ve got some students chasing you, laying down some marbles behind you is one way to trip them up, but you can also get them to back down if you run towards a prefect.
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Classes
Everybody needs an education, so getting to class is important… at least for the first few chapters of the game. Most classes are nothing more than short mini-games, some more enjoyable than others, while photography class will send you out to snap photos of various things. Each class has five assignments, each progressively more challenging. English class presents six letters, and gives you a few minutes to create as many three, four, five, or six letter words as possible, while chemistry class scrolls button combinations across the bottom of the screen for you to press at the right time.
There are six classes you’ll need to attend throughout your stay at Bullworth: Chemistry, Art, English, Gym, Shop, and Photography. The first four are available immediately, but shop and photography aren’t available until later in the game. Each class teaches you new skills and unlocks new things to improve your character. For example, winning a dodgeball game in Gym will improve your accuracy with your Slingshot, Chemistry will teach you how to make items like stink bombs and itching powder with your chemistry set, and English will help you talk your way out of trouble with prefects, taunt students, and more. Shop class is available after Chapter 1, where you can make new bicycles to help get you around town.
You can ditch classes to do other things, but doing so can get you into trouble with the school prefects who are constantly on the lookout for students playing hookey. Get caught by one of them, and you’ll be thrown back into class or even detention. Plus, you can kiss any contraband you might be carrying goodbye. Once you’ve completed all the assignments for the class, you no longer need to attend that class, giving you more time in your day to perform missions or do other things. You can still attend the class if you want to, but there’s little reason to go back. It’s unfortunate that Rockstar missed a great opportunity to extend the school theme out a little more if they added more than six classes to the game.
The Controls
If you’ve ever played one of the Grand Theft Auto games, you should feel right at home with the controls. Where Bully differs is in the sheer amount of interaction that can occur between students. Holding the L1 key gives you options to greet and taunt students, as well as perform a varying amount of bullying maneuvers depending on the environment. If you’re near a locker, you can stuff a nerd inside it. Bathroom encounters invite opportunity for swirlies, and the stealthy can give wedgies with ease. Be careful with where and when these pranks are performed, as some students that see you will run off and tattle on you to a prefect.
What GTA like game would be complete without various vehicles to cruise around town with? Jimmy is too young to drive a car or fly a helicopter, so your methods of transportation are limited to more youthful options like skateboards, bicycles, and go-karts. For the most part, cruising around town on a bicycle or skateboard is easy enough, but the turning is a little sluggish, so you’ll frequently find yourself running into lampposts and walls.
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Graphics and Sound
From a technical perspective, Bully pushes the limits of what the Playstation 2 is capable of, but don’t expect next-gen performance from 5-year old hardware. The world is on a much smaller scale, so scenes offer more detail than what I’ve seen with the Grand Theft Auto games, but don’t expect anything to write home about. Given the PS2 limitations, Rockstar has done an admirable job making Bullworth Academy and neighboring towns come alive.
Since the story is set to take course over a school year, the masterminds at Rockstar didn't miss an opportunity to change the look and feel of the game according to season. For example, towards the end of Chapter 1 you'll see plenty of Halloween decorations all over the school. Around Christmas, the landscape changes to a winter wonderland full of lights and Christmas trees... and you even get a surprise gift from your mother. It's the small details like this that truly give you a sense of involvement and realism in the game.
In an effort to pull in gamers that went to school at various times, Bully has a wide mix of old and new elements intertwined within the game world. You’ll find older, 70’s style computer consoles in the library, but a modern LCD flat panel display in the Nerd’s hideout within the comic book store. That’s only one example, but there are hundreds of things around to jog the memories of anyone who ever went to high-school.
On the music side, I’m sure veteran GTA players will miss the radio function that provided modern day hits while cruising around in various vehicles, but Bully opted to forego the one hit wonders of today for a completely original score composed by Shawn Lee. My ears have never been happier. The music is fitting to the story in every instance, and even serves as clues to what’s going on around you. If Bully doesn’t win an award for its music, I won’t be the only one stockpiling stink bombs and firecrackers for revenge.
Music aside, the audio gets even better through the excellent use of dialogue throughout the game. There are over 37,000 lines of speech in the game, though much of it must be limited to cut-scenes since the various interactions during game play will start to get a little repetitive after a while. The performances from the voice actors are some of the best I’ve ever seen in a video game, and never once seemed corny or unrealistic.
Conclusion
Despite the negative hype, Bully is a great video game. Sure, it has some violent moments, but nothing more violent than what children see on an episode of Power Rangers. To be frank, Bully doesn’t have much that would hold the interest of the youthful crowd anyway; besides the various pranks you can play (tossing a firecracker in a toilet is fun at any age). The story moves slowly, and much of the social relationships that make the story compelling will be over the heads of little tykes who haven’t really been though that period of life.
It has a few weak moments, like Jimmy’s inability to stay up past 2AM without passing out, but if anything my complaints are minor. It may be a little tamer than Rockstar fans were expecting, a move that has made it much more appealing to a wider audience, but it should still satisfy their hardcore fans. Overall, Bully has a great story and some truly fun elements that make playingit very worthwhile, and I have no doubt anyone who picks it up will play it from start to finish.
