In biology class, you must carve open a specimen and remove its vital organs in an allotted amount of time-and it's much tougher than it sounds. Standbys such as gym (dodgeball time!) and chemistry are still here, but four new classes have been added to the PlayStation 2 standards, and they are arguably more entertaining than the holdovers. If you choose to stay on campus, you can attend class in the morning or afternoon. As you play, more and more of the academy and its surrounding community open up, giving you plenty of leeway to explore Bully's many unique nooks and crannies. You're hardly stuck moving in a straight march from one mission to the next. Second of all, the voice acting is utterly spectacular, from the main cast to the hysterical quips from minor characters you overhear in your travels. At first glance, these moments seem to play to stereotype, but each character transcends labels and comes across as remarkably individual. A romantic interest says "I'm such a player" after flowers and a kiss cafeteria cook Edna tells you that hawking a loogie into the mystery stew gives it flavor. First off, you have an incredible script bursting with both cringe-inducing realism and snort-out-loud one-liners. The enormous surrounding cast of goofball nerds and slick-haired greasers deserves equal praise, from the obese and enuretic Algie to Mandy, the head cheerleader with a surprising streak of insecurity. He's also believable and is likely to remind you of at least one person you know or knew in your younger years. The story at the heart of Bully is incredibly involving, and Jimmy is both charming and exasperatingly cocky.
In fact, some of the most amusing missions were created specifically for the Scholarship Edition and revolve around a Kris Kringle gone bad. At one point, you'll man a potato-spewing turret to defend arm-flailing, bedwetting nerds from invading jocks at another, a professor instructs you to infiltrate the preppies' dorm and kill a prized Venus flytrap. One of Bully's many brilliant aspects is the variety it throws into these tasks. By fulfilling missions, you'll progress from one chapter to the next, alternately gaining sway over one social circle while alienating another. As new-kid-on-the-block Jimmy, you find your sneering self dumped at Bullworth Academy, a private school populated by the usual cliques we all came to know and hate in our own adolescences.
#BULLY SCHOLARSHIP EDITION PC#
But with little in the way of meaningful additions and all sorts of platform-specific problems, Bully on the PC just feels rushed.īully lets you relive your own painful adolescence.Īssuming you can look past all the frustrations and don't mind eschewing the keyboard and mouse in favor of an Xbox 360 controller, you'll find an entertaining experience with heavy doses of humor and attitude.
It's too bad, because at heart, Bully is one of the better gameplay experiences in recent years, letting you break a drunken schoolteacher out of an asylum, help the lunch lady drug her date, steal panties from the girls' dorm, and take pictures of snotty kids sitting on the lap of a homeless Santa.
There seems to be little regard for the platform here: The game suffers from numerous bugs and glitches, the keyboard and mouse controls are awkward, and for a game that hardly pushes the capabilities of a halfway decent computer, it performs poorly. That's the first indication, but hardly the last, that this version of Rockstar Games' boisterous look at schoolyard folly is just a quick cash-in. PC game enthusiasts know they're in trouble when a game's menus require keyboard input rather than allow you a mouse pointer.