Have you ever wondered what a day in the life of a white-trash 15-year old delinquent would be like? Here’s your chance!
Bully is Rockstar’s latest attempt at creating the most controversial game on the planet. Have they succeeded? In some ways, the answer is “yes”.
You are Jimmy Hopkins, a new student at Bullworth Academy. Jimmy’s mom has enrolled him, hoping that a more structured environment will break Jimmy of his bad habits. Upon arriving, Jimmy is immediately escorted to the principal’s office, where the principal states that he intends to mold Jimmy into a model individual, not a kid who’s goal is to cuss, vandalize, rob, and harass his way through life. Will Jimmy change his bad ways? The decision is up to you.
Bullworth Academy somewhat resembles a typical highschool, where your classmates include nerds, jocks, greasers, cheerleaders, and of course, bullies. Without causing too much trouble, Jimmy must attend class every day while trying to complete tasks (Grand Theft Auto style) in his down time.
Classes, such as art, gym, and chemistry give you the tools to create new items and learn new fighting moves. Chemistry teaches you to make firecrackers, art gives you flowers to woo girls, and gym teaches you moves to disarm and humiliate fellow bullies. The only class that serves absolutely no purpose is English, where you must solve a word scramble. You pass or fail depending on how many words you can make out of a few select letters. Scrabble anyone?
So what exactly happens to Jimmy if he doesn’t go to class consistently or is caught making trouble? Prefects and teachers roam the school and surrounding grounds just looking for kids to pick on. If you are caught beating up helpless nerds, you are busted unless you can run and hide from them in a trash can. However, if someone sees you hop into a trash can, you are pulled out, and then… you guessed it! BUSTED! No worries though, prefects and teachers are hopelessly inept at finding trouble makers. Just don’t cause trouble with a red dot nearby and you’re golden.
The tasks in Bully are dumbed down compared to Grand Theft Auto. Can kids really get a hold of guns or steal cars? I think not. The worst damage Jimmy can do is sling-shot a rock into a kid’s face or deliver a mean uppercut. Also, you can humiliate other students by rubbing loogies into their faces or calling them names looted with cuss words. Although most fights will make you cringe, there is nothing like pulling out a machine gun and annihilating your enemies. Sadly, we won’t find that satisfaction here.
Finding tasks are easy to do, just look for a star on the map. Each lead to a particular task. The majority of tasks involve running around finding things or escorting/defending students. Defend a nerd, get five dollars. Get a pre-pubescent acne-infested girl’s chocolate back, get a make-out session. It disturbs me that Jimmy would sink this low.
Helping and defending your peers gains you respect from them. Scaring and beating up your peers gains you respect from the bullies. Pick your side, but stay with it. There is no way to be on the fence, you’re either on one side or the other. Of course it doesn’t help that tasks tend to switch off – assist a fellow delinquent, save the girl. One, and then the other. How is Jimmy supposed to pick a side!?
Unfortunately, many of these tasks take place inside of the school, and there is usually only two hours between classes. Each class takes three hours to complete, and there are two classes a day. This leaves time for tasks only between or after class. Another time issue is that the school closes at 7pm, and any time spent after 7pm inside the school is considered trespassing. There’s just no way to win here.
Usually a task cannot be completed before or in-between class, leaving the few short hours afterwards for tasks. This causes Jimmy to skip a lot of class, and you can just pray there are no prefects around on the look-out for truant students. Also, the game makes it essential that Jimmy be in bed by 8pm each night, otherwise he will be low on energy the next day. Averaging one task a day can be frusterating.
You may wonder “with all of this beating people up business, what do you do for health?” The answer is: nothing! The simple formula is: target the enemy, throw something at them, and repeat. Firecrackers, smoke bombs, soccer balls, bricks, hub caps, ect. are available for use. Jimmy can buy a can of soda to replenish his health, but the chance of dying is next to zero. Unless a crowd of bullies gangs up on Jimmy during a fist fight, he usually leaves the fight unscathed. His enemies are usually not so lucky….
Because Rockstar chose to make Bully a Playstation 2 exclusive, we must deal with sub-par graphics. Sure they are fairly decent, and among the better graphics of games made for the PS2 lately, but if it had been released for Xbox 360 I’m sure the graphics could be considerably better. Jimmy and his peers have instantly recognizable faces and outfits, but space-filler students and teachers all look the same. Besides the character graphics, the school looks drab and boring.
Oh look! There’s a yellow blocky school bus. Oh cool, what looks like a brick on the ground! Neat! A blob moving towards me that I can shoot with my sling-shot! Damn, if only I could tell how fast it was moving! Okay I’m exaggerating a little bit, but after playing Xbox 360 for several months my expectations have gone up for the level of character and landscape realism. Bully just doesn’t cut it.
Controls are fairly simple, but sometimes fighting is a pain as you must hold triangle while pressing the square, circle, or x-button repeatedly. Unless you have crazy and unnaturally jointed thumbs, this task is irritating. Also, aiming with the sling-shot can be difficult if you’re used to the precision of a mouse or Xbox 360 controller.
I’m used to running with the d-pad, not the left joystick. In this game, the d-pad has a different use, so I was constantly doing other things that didn’t include moving. Lastly, the player must hold the x-button to run. I thought the days were gone when walking was the preferred mode of transportation. The thumb can become unnecessarily tired after a long gaming session.
What’s with the one-time, one-place save feature? If I had to count every task I had to wait to do because I needed to save in the boy’s dormitory, I would run out of fingers AND toes and anatomy in general! Why can’t I open up the start menu and click on “SAVE”!? Really, how hard is it people?
The game is very expansive; after the first few percentage points of completion you can open up new areas like the surrounding town. But do you know how long it takes to get to that point? Too long for me to hold interest. I have a little game ADD you must understand, if I cannot feel like I’m making progress quickly, I get tired of the game. Wasting time in school and making a curfew of 8pm every night doesn’t leave time to complete a normal amount of tasks during the remaining hours of daylight. Averaging about two tasks a day (provided you don’t fail any) makes completing 4% of the game take two and a half hours. Who has time for that?
Sound in Bully is okay. Nothing remarkable, just a few bleeps and bloops every once in awhile. The voice acting, however, is quite good. If I had to wait during the load times and then read dialogue, I’m pretty sure my head would literally explode. Jimmy and his classmates fall into preditable stereotypes; Jimmy has a fake bad-ass snarl and the nerds have nasal voices, tend to snort, and are overall big whiners. Some of the acting comes off cheesy though, like when the principle attempts to sounds controlling. Also, there’s a funky and intentionally seductive voice the secretary employs when in the presence of the principal…. gross….
Adding to the list of time wasters, load time must be added. That’s right, load time! Are we still in the video game stone-age? Apparently. Although Xbox 360 and PC’s have load time, they are nowhere near the thumb-twiddling action of the PS2’s. No joke, gameplay progresses like this: turn game on, wait three minutes. Load game, wait three minutes. Walk to the next mission, wait two minutes, resume mission. This makes all want to continue the game slowly vanish as you find various chores to do while the game loads. Ugh.
So here’s the answer to the question: did Rockstar accomplish what it attended to? Is Bully a worthy companion to previous Rockstar masterworks such as Grand Theft Auto? Yes, the game is crude, disgusting, and somewhat violent. But….on the whole it lacks in the fun department. Going to class, waiting for loads, running around trying to find the save point, and doing both light and dark side tasks at the same time is not only confusing, but generally a drag.
I have a feeling that the only people this game is truly going to shock are cave hermits. If you can last through the boringness and enjoy the few minutes of delinquent splendor, this game is for you. If not, go pop in a re-issued copy of Grand Theft Auto and save yourself twenty bucks.
Title: Bully
Rating: Mature
Publisher: Take Two
Developer: Rockstar
Release Date: October 17th, 2006
Platform:PS2
Players: 1
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