Rockstar's Bully has been a lightning rod for the media, which has used the game as a vehicle to promote videogame violence and the harm that it could potentially do to the youth of America (as if cartoons haven't done enough damage already). But what's especially interesting here is, despite all this fuss, none of these people, not the picketers that lined up in front of Rockstar's NYC headquarters or violence crusader Jack Thompson have played this game. All of their claims are based on some perverse speculation as to what Bully might be. Well thankfully, Rockstar allowed me to see what all the fuss is about, but as I discovered, Bully is one of the least violent games you'll play.

That's right. Bully, the game that's been referred to as a Columbine simulator and GTA in a school is anything but. In fact, the violence that does take place in the hallowed halls of the fictional Bullworth Academy is the same sort of pranks and fist fights that occur in Saturday morning cartoons or teenage high school flicks. People do get beat up quite a bit and there's the occasional wedgie, Indian rope burn, and the all important noogie, but the game doesn't contain a single drop of blood, nobody dies, and the closest thing to sexual content are a boy and girl sharing an all too brief kiss on the lips. It's just typical school yard shenanigans, the likes of which you and I have both experienced, but that's what makes this game unique, the common thread shared between us. Most games plunge us into scenarios and roles that we'll never get to experience in everyday living. I'm never going to be an NBA superstar or a colonial space marine, and you're probably not going to be a Jedi or the keeper of some mysterious flying dragon. With that being said, while we can have shared game experiences, most times we have nothing to truly compare them to. But in Bully's case, we've (hopefully) been to school, gotten picked on, had to pass chemistry tests, and stood up for our friends. The odds of us having to pick up meat for the school's cook is a stretch (one of the early missions in the game), but we've been late to class, gotten caught wandering the halls, and pushed around by some bonehead jocks. Of course, I'm not ruling out the possibility that you were or are being home schooled, but you should have gotten my point. Bully is going to succeed as a videogame not only because it's good, but also because at the end of the day, you and I will find similarities with it and our personal lives, which is something that just doesn't happen too often with these games of ours.

Ok, so Bully isn't the violent monster that it's been painted to be. But don't think for one second that Rockstar's gone soft on us. The game may not contain decapitations and machine guns but there's plenty of mischief. Plus, Rockstar has sort of modeled Bully like GTA in the sense that it's created this fairly sizable living, breathing open world to explore. There are restrictions, but for the most part, you can go and do whatever you please within reason, even if it means cutting class.

Ah yes, truancy. If you want, you can be a model student, the type of kid that most if not all teachers dream about. But the game's star, the fifteen year old Jimmy Hopkins is a troubled young lad. As explained in the game's opening cut scene, his mom is pretty much the Elizabeth Taylor of videogames in the sense that's she's been married five times! And her new husband, Jimmy's latest step dad, appears to be a mean SOB. Both of them have conspired to dump young Hopkins at the U.S.' most notorious prep school, one Bullworth Academy, and as I expected, there's a lot of tension between Jimmy and his rents. So it's not that Jimmy's a ticking time bob. He's just misunderstood. But with that being said, he's often tempted to cause trouble, and Rockstar's given you a hefty dose of pranks to pull. Anything from terrorizing nerds to yanking fire extinguishers off walls and spraying little girls; you're free to go nuts. But what makes this game cool (as opposed to GTA, in which you cause anarchy on a regular basis) is the class and social structure. You can wander about whenever you like, but there's limits to what you can do and when you can do it. Furthermore, and being that you attend a school, things happen as they normally would. You're there for an entire semester and the game takes place in a very persistent world, so students will go about their business, the academy will decorate for the holidays, and there's class on a regular basis that, while you're free to skip them, it's actually important that you attend. But you're not going to be sitting in a desk listening to some old professor ramble on and instruct you to turn to page 53. Each class, from chemistry to English has various mini games that, if correctly completed, will cause Jimmy to level up and earn new skills. The first chemistry class, for example, is a button pressing mini game in which you'll learn how to make all sorts of cool things, firecrackers being one of the more attractive "toys". And once you know how to make those, you'll be able to do something like drop it into a toilet and blow up a bathroom.