Bully for PlayStation 2

I was holding off on typing this review out to actually finish the game, but given the headlines lately that have been giving me utter headaches reading them "New Bully Video Game Stirs up Conflict", I was starting to get a bit flustered by the absurd controversy that Rockstar's latest creation had endured.

A majority of the people who are taking action against Bully have not even played the game! They are mostly protesting in part because of the reputation that Rockstar has gained from the more controversial GTA series. Bully however is in all regards tame, it is not a "Columbine" simulator, and instead is more like a nice tribute to satisfying the childish desires we might have had in high school to play pranks, date the most coveted girls, get revenge on bullies, and go face to face with authority from time to time. One important thing I think that should have dispelled this whole "controversy" is the fact that Bully received a T for Teen from the ESRB. There is no hot coffee mod, there's no sex (though some suggestive dialogue and kissing) and there are no guns or even blood.

Ok, so rant aside regarding the latest smear campaign on violent video games that are not in fact any more violent than movies or books that exist today, I'll get to my review of this game. I prefer to review games after I've finished them but that might take far too long with this one, so I'll admit I'm 1/3rd of the way through, which is better than most game review sites out there (which review only after 1-3 hours of gameplay). In fact, I've read a ton of incorrect reviews on this game, stuff about how missions get closed off if you do them in the wrong order and all kinds of ridiculous things about the gameplay and such. If they bothered to play this game for a little over 20 hours like I have they would have seen it's got a lot more depth, an overarching storyline and that missions do not "close" off.

So What is Bully?

Bully is the latest GTA-like simulation game that puts you in the place of Jimmy Hopkins a 15-year old whose mom ditches him at a private academy while she goes on a 1 yr honeymoon with some new man she's picked up. The game's title while suggesting that you or others might be involved in "bullying" which is a very sensitive subject to some parents is actually downright off. While Jimmy goes get picked on initially, the whole idea is that he overcomes this with perhaps a bit of a mobster-like mentality in forging alliances and than gaining respect from outrageous deeds, but nothing with all too malicious intent.

What the game lets you do for the most part is live out your fantasies of attending a private high school all over again, and instead of being a quiet compliant kid, you can actually rebel and do all those little things you've wanted to do but might not have had the guts to. This includes playing all kinds of pranks (such as lighting a paper bag of dog poop outside the teacher's lounge), taking out a girl to a carnival on a date, racing up and down beaches with dirtbikes, attending class and cutting plenty more of it, breaking into the girl's dormitory to steal some laundry, playing dodgeball in the gym, and on and on. Rockstar has really outdone itself this time, with GTA San Andreas as a benchmark where they've tried to incorporate more real elements such as exercise, eating, and dating into their video games. Bully goes the full mile. Almost everything you can conceive of is possible in this game, you can skateboard and grab onto the back of cars to hitch a ride, you can play a ton of carnival games, shop for more clothing and on and on. Honestly, if Rockstar had produced this game to be Hogwarts under a Harry Potter theme, the media would have jumped in positive things to say. The game is utterly amazing and simulates high school life to a degree I am amazed.

What Bully is NOT is fairly important to make clear. It is not like GTA in any sense other than that it uses the same engine. There are no drugs, car-jacking, murder, and other illegal activities. Even running into people on your bike (which only startles them) will get you in trouble with the police in Bully and so there are clear repercussions for doing anything excessively bad. The most controversial elements of this game may be the sexual innuendo, the pranks, and the possible encouraging for kids to get into fights. However, I will admit I side on Bully's approach to bullying. If a kid is getting bullied, I would tell him to stand up for himself and form whatever alliances he needs to get back or protect himself. Telling teachers or telling your parents that you are being bullied at school does little and I think only shelters a kid to believe that there is some kind of overarching authority to protect him in the future (who are you going to tell when you get punked on in college?). Of course this is controversial in of itself and a tangent so I'll leave it at that.

I Wish this Game Were Next-Generation

The graphics in Bully are dated but amazing for the PS2 and I honestly wish Rockstar had tried to develop this game for Xbox 360 or PS3. The world is vastly smaller than any GTA game, but much more detailed. The school, while small in size, is equipped with lockers you can break into, fire alarms you can pull, teacher's lounges, cafeterias, everything you'd expect. There's a gymnasium that you can play dodgeball in complete with lockers. Outside of school there is a complete town with a carnival, a beach, an insane asylum, an observatory, a boxing ring and probably even more that I have not discovered yet.

Character models are very detailed, and you can actually identify students as they walk around campus from class to class. There's such a diversity of character models you will see each kid as unique, no more hordes of cloned mobsters running through the city. This makes a huge difference in the game, and really helps simulate that high school experience, when you actually see girls you've dated, guy's that have picked on you and so on, roaming the campus.

There are two added reality kickers in this game. One is that the seasons change, and during Halloween, students dress up in costumes, decorations are put up and so forth. During Christmas, snow appears on the ground, kids dress up in scarves and coats, Christmas lights go on. In addition, time also passes in the game by the hour, and you can sort of witness the sun go down as the game turns to night. It's very subtle on some level but adds quite a level of reality especially as you note the students change outfits over the course of the year.

The major load times for the graphics only occurs once in the early beginning and after that there is barely any framerate drop and virtually no loading other than in-between cut scenes, and buildings all of which is very minimal.

Again, it would have been amazing to see this game run at higher resolution with anti-aliasing on a next-gen console…but Rockstar obviously had been at work on it for quite some time and definitely intended it for a mid/late PS2 release, probably delayed from tweaking and appropriately removing more risque content ever since its GTA fiasco.

The Mixed Reviews

Bully received a number of mixed reviews from people in forums and on the internet. Gamespot gave it a respectable 8.7 and IGN gave it an 8.9. I've read people complain about it being to dull, being GTA but only rehashed, and what not.

I disagree with the negative rep this has gotten and fall into the majority of the crowd that seems to appreciate and enjoy this game. While the game does play like GTA in the running around and doing errands, and the fighting system is very simplistic, the variety of missions and tasks is far better than any former GTA game. Sure there are a few gopher missions where you just pick things up at shops for teachers, but those missions help you get a sense of new areas in town. Bully has a number of "boss" missions, one for each chapter as far as I know, where you showdown with another kid who's a major player in group, and defeating him lets you get influence in that clique.

There are a ton of minigames, I enjoyed the dodgeball one, and there's a sumo arcade one, all of which are very simplistic but fun and add diversity to the gameplay. It isn't always about beating kids up. The bike races I think in particular are also kind of fun, I wish Bully had added a few more moves to skateboarding, but the skateboard surprisingly responds as well as I'd expect one to respond in reality. You do face plant asphalt too quite often if you miss an ollie.

I don't know what people have come to expect from video games in calling this simplistic, when it's probably one of the most diverse and interesting games to be released in maybe even years. Bully as far as its genre of simulation games go, is probably the best and most realistic one yet, and despite the limitations in the fighting system, which mainly involve rotating between punching him and holding him, or using the slingshot to take out long range enemies, is still a lot of fun.

Rockstar's Awesome Dialogues

Rockstar is best at storyline and scenario scripting and it shows. Even if the gameplay is redundant (which I do not think it is), there are a far greater diversity of gameplay elements than there ever have been in any other Rockstar game. The ability to date girls, to suck up to teachers by setting them on dates, helping one break out of an insane asylum or deal with other classmates by protecting a nerd during his class president speech, beating the jocks in dodgeball, or shaming a troubled bike gang leader of his girlfriend problems keeps things from ever getting too redundant.

The dialogue is hands down hilarious and pokes fun as differing stereotypes, from the nerds who speak too much geek talk to the jocks who lack conversational skills. Rockstar is hands down witty and also very raw and gritty in its approach of subject matters such as alcoholic school teachers, and a cafeteria worker who desires a date with the chemistry professor.

The best though are the side dialogues of students as you wander the halls, you'll overhear jocks proclaim "I wonder what it'll be like to wrestle a chimpanzee" and other nonsensical things. Its also common to witness actual student interaction, geeks getting picked on by jocks, rich snobby types walking around looking snidely on everyone else, and so on.

Extras and extras and extras.

As typical of Rockstar games, getting 100% in this game will take nearly forever as there are 75 rubber bands scattered around the world to collect, 50 trading cards, various outfits and haircuts, radio transmitters that you can give to the homeless man that lives behind the abandoned school bus at school to get him to teach you moves he learned as a war veteran in Vietnam….and probably more, which I have not gotten to yet.

There's just a lot to do in this game, and its fairly open ended. You also have to pass classes you attend, such as Art, English, Photography and so on. All of these classes are various minigames, which success of boosts your character or gives him more ammo and weapons to use. The English class is a fairly fun one in my opinion and just involves unscrambling as many words as you can from a string of letters in a set time point.

Classes can be skipped out on, but since they improve your character a lot, you'll find yourself attending them when you're not on missions.

Conclusion

While this is not the perfect game it's a good glimpse into what Rockstar will be able to do with their next-generation game. While graphically not up to date, the sheer amount of realism and atmosphere they've managed to pack into Bully shows potential for highly immersive environments in GTA4, set to possibly come out next year.

I highly recommend Bully and am a big fan of the game, despite what people have said about it negatively, and think it represents some of the best in its unique gameplay and genre that just completely have been untapped. Innovative and bold, I think it's worth checking out despite what you might have heard, and I feel like the IGN and Gamespot don't give this game as much credit as it deserves.

PS: One thing I haven't mentioned much is music and to be honest I don't remember much during the game, so it's not like GTA with its extensive soundtrack.