Become the coolest kid in school with Rockstar's Xbox 360 game Bully: Scholarship Edition. This attractive port of the acclaimed PlayStation 2 version includes the same engrossing narrative, characters and mis-adventures, but with updated visuals, eight new missions, four new classes and two-player mini games. A jittery frame rate and excessive loading keeps it from excellence, but on a whole, Bully makes the grade.
True to its name, Bully, someone always gets up in your grill
From there, you're free to explore Bullworth and terrorize/defend the student body. You'll run across nerds, jocks, greasers, preps and other groups, each of which has distinct dress and varying degrees of disgust for Jimmy, depending on your actions. Help the nerds, and their enemies and the jocks may come after you. Piss off the nerds and... well... you're free to harass them all you want.
Unlike Grand Theft Auto's sprawling environments, Bully presents you with a smaller world to romp around in. There's a linear and excellently written narrative with plenty of interesting missions to complete, but you can also stray off the beaten path and wander around, picking lockers, starting snowball fights, chucking food in the cafeteria, kicking soccer balls, collecting secret items and pummeling random kids. You'll even leave Bullworth's gates and explore the surrounding town, playing pranks and egging cars. Furthermore, to appeal to the kids in us all, Rockstar pumped Bully full of the stereotypical items, including stink bombs, slingshots, firecrackers and spray paint, among other toys.
With that being said, and since you're at school, there are rules to abide by. Every morning, the bell rings and you should go to class, lest the prefects, annoying hall monitors that bust up fights and stick their noses where they don't belong, nab you. Thankfully, there are only two classes per day and all of them give you something fun to do. English, for example, lets you make words out of scrambled letters, while biology forces you to dissect a frog. Music relies on a simple rhythm game, and chemistry tests your button pressing skills. But there's also Geography, Photography, Gym (dodge ball is very entertaining), Shop, Art and Mathematics, and while you don't have to attend class, it's strongly encouraged, since passing courses unlocks new outfits, items and secrets.
You'll also need to sleep, as Jimmy eventually gets tired and passes out. To do this, simply return to your hub, the boy's dorm and hop into bed. Doing so not only restores your health, but also fast forwards to the next morning. In addition, you can also save your game (you can also save it in Crabblesnitch's office), change outfits and mess with your chemistry set, which lets you create firecrackers.
Although we enjoy rushing to class and hitting the hay, Bully's sense of structure is also its weakness. With the onscreen clock running super fast and the prefects chasing us, it becomes difficult and at times annoying to complete missions. Sure, kids have it rough attending school, but sometimes, we wish we had more freedom to explore the grounds. However, the more we played, the more we learned how to manage time, and the reason why Rockstar forbids us from wandering is probably because Bullworth is much smaller that any of Grand Theft Auto's cities, so having to attend class and sleep hides the game world's short comings.
With all of its bonus features and updated graphics, Bully: Scholarship Edition is superior to its PS2 counterpart, but it didn't make a smooth transition to the Xbox 360. It looks better, with smooth looking character models and more environmental detail, but the action chugs at times, and there's quite a bit of loading that occurs whenever you go into or exit a building. In addition, some gamers have complained about Bully freezing, but we never experienced this, and Rockstar will patch the game this week to address the issue.
Finally, Rockstar added two-player offline games, but none of them will hold your interest long. That is, unless you and your friends really enjoy unscrambling letters and solving math problems.
Thanks to a great cast of characters, plenty of enjoyable mini games and schoolyard antics, Bully: Scholarship Edition is an ideal purchase, the type of sandbox game you should happily lose yourself in for hours. Just cross your fingers that Rockstar patches it immediately, as tons of freezing will land this game in detention.
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