Everyone who owns a Xbox 360 is waiting for the latest Grand Theft Auto from Rockstar, in the meantime however another game from their catalogue, Bully Scholarship Edition, has hit the shelves and while it may not have all the features of Rockstars more famous game, it does offer something that should help it draw quite a few people in.
Bully sees you play as Jimmy, a misguided fellow who has been expelled from quite a few other schools, at the beginning of the game you are dumped outside the next school in line, Bullworth Academy where it is your mission to become respected by all.
During the first section of the game you will come across minor missions which will allow you to gain new items such as a slingshot and skateboard as well as cash, the slingshot mission see’s you chase down a member of one of the gangs and then all of a sudden find yourself ambushed by the remaining members, once you manage to beat them all then you will gain access to the slingshot.
There really is an incredible amount of missions included In the game, some of which are very humorous, like when you sit up a tree taking down the football team with your slingshot, or when you are asked to escort the school wimp to the bathroom before he wet’s himself. However it’s not just about missions, as when you are in school you must attend class, there are quite a few classes to attend too but my favorites have to be Gym and Biology. In Biology you are tasked with cutting open various specimens within a set time limit, using tools such as drawing pins to keep the skin in place, a scalpel to cut the specimen open, a magnifying glass to find the organ you are looking for and also some tweezers, to pick the organ up and place it on the dish, passing lessons gains you rewards, from clothes to weapons however trying to completely dissect things like rats within the time limit can be quite a challenge.
While attending class is mandatory as far as the school is concerned, you can skip classes and do your own things, you just need to watch out for prefects and the police as they will see return you to class should they catch you. The only problem with this is that if you are in a middle of a mission during class time if you are caught you will then have to restart the mission all over again, meaning that once you have finished your class you will have to go back to the start point for the mission and go through the motions until you reach the point you where at before you got caught.
Combat mainly takes the form of fighting with your fists, at first you are quite limited to the moves you can make, however you will soon learn new moves by attending gym or helping the hobo, such the upper cut and grab moves. As previously mentioned you will also gain weapons and equipment which will also help you in your cause.
As well as fighting Jimmy can also gain love interests, in fact one of the achievements sees you trying to get 25 kisses from girls, this is done by sweet talking, picking flowers to give to them and also doing errands and passing missions in which you help the girls, once you make a love interest, she will then always want to talk to you and kiss you.
The game really lets you decide what you want to do, although you won’t really get anywhere if you don’t complete the missions which are set up for you, if you’d rather not be the school hero, you can run around causing chaos, by skipping class, picking fights with everyone, sticking kick me stickers on peoples backs and throwing stink bombs in the girls locker room, it’s up to you.
There is also a multiplayer option included in Bully, this consists of 10 games which include a mix of the classes and arcade games from the single player mode. The multiplayer section can be entertaining, however it’s more of a distraction from the single player game rather than anything else.
One thing that can be said is that this game looks fantastic and every detail of the school is very well presented, but it isn’t perfect, the frame rate can be quite erratic sometimes and the animations sometimes feel quite awkward, the game even froze on at me at one point, even after installing the latest patch, however this only happened once so I can’t be 100% sure if this was an issue with the game or my Xbox 360.
Bully: Scholarship Edition is a fun game to play and certainly offers something a bit different, it can also be amusing too, however the main parts of the game are where it shines, helping the helpless and becoming the hero is satisfying and rewarding and if that’s not for you then you have the option of beating them up instead. Now that is what I can something for everyone.
