Bully Review
BULLY: CANIS CANEM EDIT
Platform: Sony Playstation 2
By: Rockstar Games, Rockstar Vancouver
Genre: Modern Action Adventure
Release Date: Oct 27, 2006 (more)
Players: 1 Player (tech info)
Difficulty: Easy
Learning Curve: 0 to 30 Minutes
Time Spent: 10 to 20 Hours
Background:
Rockstar’s new game, Bully is hailed as the “Grand Theft Auto” of high school. As suggested, the game takes place in a school, specifically, Bullworth Academy, a school for the problematic kids of society. The games starts of with you, a 15 year old troublemaker Jimmy Hopkins, being dumped in Bullworth by his mother who married a rich old man and going off for a year long honeymoon. In Bullworth Academy, you’ll find a series of typical social cliques you’d expect to find in a school, i.e. Nerds, Jocks, Cheerleaders… Your task is to navigate through the many factions in the school while escaping trouble with the bullies, prefects and school administration.
Story and Gameplay:
You start of as a a new kid in school and is quickly being painted as an outcast as you don’t seemingly fit into any of the existing social cliques. Earlier on in the game, you’ll be introduced with another outcast named Gary, a psychopathic weird kid who has delusions of taking over the whole school, kinda like the cookie-cutter evil geniuses bent on taking over the world. He’ll soon be gone and you’ll be left alone to survive in this nightmare of a school.
Bully’s story is being told over a series of open-ended missions which draw upon the many skills and pranks you picked up from both in and out of classes. Yes, Jimmy has to attend classes just like any students and it is generally a good idea not to wag classes as you’re able to pick up new abilities. Besides, the mini-games that make up the classes are fun in their own right. For example, attending gym classes will allow you to learn new wrestling moves for self-defense against the game’s bullies or to bully kids with.
Bully’s story is broken up into chapters with each chapter placing you into conflict with each up the game’s faction. Each faction story missions are unique and well thought up. As describing the mechanics and structure of the missions reveal spoilers, i will refrain from further describing them. The dialogue are all perfectly written IMHO, they are both witty, humorous and simply good. At the end of each chapter, there is a boss fight. Each boss fight has different mechanics to beat them ala God of War. Although this is an open-ended game, you are expected to attend 2 classes each day and failure to do so will result in prefects hounding you in schools. There is also a curfew at 11am which will result in police (in town) and prefects (in school) chasing after you. In addition, you have to be in bed by 2.am all you’ll pass out from exhaustion. Aside from these ‘restrictions’ you are free to tackle any of the side missions available.
As this is a school-based game, you’re free to do anything a teen would do in his spare time — picking up girls, stuffing kids in trashcans, picking locker locks, cycling, racing, pranks, smooching girls, general fist fightings, panty raids… etc. Jimmy also has the ability to take up side jobs to earn some pocket money (to buy food and clothes). Jobs include the usual mowing the lawn, delivering mail, working at a fast-food joint etc.
Graphics and audio:
The graphics looks good for a Playstation 2 game taking the technical limitations of the Playstation 2. Life-like animation, excellent presentation and good camera will make this game playable graphics-wise in the age of PS3/Xbox360 visuals.
The soundtrack is excellent in setting the mood for Bully. It fits Bullworth Academy’s mood perfectly and gives it a movie like feel throughout the game. There really is no complain from me.
Personal Comments:
What I like about the game is that its innovatively refreshing, a simple fun game is sometimes better than all the killing games out there. Also, the setting of a high school in fresh enough than the usual big city/fantasy setting we’ve all been used to. There are parts of the game that make me smile in recognition/memory of similar things that happened in my high school. Overall Bully is a well-developed, will implemented game with its own humour and charm.
RATINGS
| Gameplay | 10 | |
| Graphics | 8 | |
| Sound | 10 | |
| Value | 8 | |
| Tilt | 10 |
OVERALL SCORE: 9.4 out of 10
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