Bully: Scholarship Edition

Paul goes back to school...

First things first, you may have noticed we've now come full circle. What was once Bully, only to finally see the light of day under the distinctly less catchy title of Canis Canem Edit, is now simply Bully once more. It appears the furore that the original title attracted when the game came out on the PS2 last year has subsided enough for the game to revert to Bully in time for its release on the Xbox 360 (there's a new Wii version, too). This is a good thing. Not only was the other title distinctly silly, the huge overreaction in the mainstream media that precipitated the change was yet another instance of a game being misunderstood by people who'd never played it.

You see while calling the game Bully certainly generated column inches it's actually a pretty poor indication of what the game actually asks of you. It'd be like giving a game like Project Gotham Racing a name like Crash. Yep, the game does indeed let you plough your car into the walls whenever you want, but it's not really what the game's about and it won't get you very far.

Set in the private boarding school Bullworth Academy, Bully: Scholarship Edition (to give it its full title) puts you in the shoes of young Jimmy Hopkins. Dumped at the gates by his unpleasant sounding mother and her new husband at the start of the game you arrive at Bullworth with a reputation for trouble so it's up to Jimmy to try and keep his nose clean, pass his classes and try to pick his way through the tricky social minefield that is the modern school.

What this all boils down to is a fairly typical looking standbox-style game where you can make your way though the central story at your own pace, pass the time doing any of the large number of side quests or simply explore the world provided. Comparisons with Rockstar's other more famous sandbox series are easy and not without foundation, but the school setting actually makes Bully feel much more like a naughtier version of the latest Harry Potter game, albeit without the magic, than a teenage GTA.

Despite the title the missions and side quests rarely pit you as the bad guy, in fact Jimmy is far more of a champion for the underdog than you may be expecting and you'll spend a lot of time helping and protecting some of the weaker members of the school fraternity while messing with the teachers and prefects (who are surely fair game if I remember rightly?). There are various stereotypical factions making up the student body as you may expect, from the stupid but strong Jocks to the bookish but sometimes mean Geeks. Throughout the game you'll try to balance favour between each of these social groups performing quests for each of them to try and retain popularity, or at least stop them from trying to beat you up.

The school is far more than just a simple setting though, you're a pupil in every sense of the word and as such you're expect to attend class twice a day as well as abiding by a curfew at nights. The classes take the form of subject themed mini games and are generally far more fun than the real thing. While some gamers may baulk at having to actually do maths or spelling exercises in a game they were something of a welcome change for me and the other classes such as the simon-says style science class or rhythm action music ones mean that even the less academic amongst you will find something to enjoy. There's no real penalty for failing either, other than having to try again next time the subject comes up in the timetable and you're free to try and skip class if you want although getting caught while skiving will send you right back to class.

This structured approach to each game day is quite refreshing in a genre based on its open-ended nature. The only slight problem is that the in-game clock seems to move a tad to fast leaving less game time between classes and in the evening to actually get many of the missions done at a time. Not as much of a problem when you're completing the missions but if you fail one a few times it can be annoying to have to then pop to class or go to bed before you can try again.

The action also isn't confined to the school ground and as you progress through the story other areas such as the local town become available as do modes of transport to help you get around faster and the ability to take a job to make some money.

The game has moved from the PS2 to the 360 pretty well, new high-res graphics stop it looking too much like a port and there's been some new missions and classes added to the mix to freshen things up a bit. Controlling Jimmy is simple and the gradual build up of moves and options both in combat and social interaction helps things stop getting repetitive.

Unfortunately Bully isn't without more than its fair share of problems and chief amongst those are some glaring bugs. I know Rockstar have publicly claimed to be shocked that some issues have made it into the release code but such are their obvious nature that serious questions have to be asked about the testing the game underwent. Audio stutters that can be 'fixed' by leaving and re-entering a room, quest markers that either point to the wrong place or don't appear at all and an alarming screen jitter that reminds me of a video that needs the tracking button pressed. The most irritating bug however is in the camera; at times it simply gets horribly confused switching angles randomly with every movement leaving it next to impossible to move around and leaving you looking at scenery full of weird texture glitches as the engine fails to load what it thinks you shouldn't be currently seeing. This would be bad enough at any time but it seems to happen, for me at least, at points where speed and accuracy are paramount such as on timed quests or when trying to escape from prefects in enclosed spaces. It's irritating in the extreme to have to repeat the same simple quest six or seven times till you fluke completion because the camera breaks at the same point every time.

To be fair Rockstar have promised fixes to all these issues and during the course of this review the first of those patches was released. However, in my personal experience it's failed to fix any of the problems I was experiencing, and in some cases (the screen glitching) the problems have only appeared since the update. I've still yet to have the game crash completely on me despite that being a common problem for others, but that should hardly be cause for celebration, and it remains the worst tested game I've played in a long time, worse in fact than most preview code which has to be a bad sign.

But, all the problems aside it's still great fun when it works and for that reason, had it been released bug free, we'd be looking at a score in the 90's. As it is the painfully obvious nature of those bugs make it impossible to ignore them entirely however much you may want to. If, or when, Rockstar patch the game to the quality we should be able to expect from a finished game then I'd heartily recommend picking up a copy as there's a real gem of a game here to enjoy. In its released state however, before or after the first patch, it's a game that if not ruined is certainly hampered by some glaring problems that really shouldn't be acceptable in this day and age.

80%

By Paul Newcombe