Bully is a eloquent adventure and it's comic graphics, sound and gameplay make up for any minor blemish it has otherwise
However, where there is a lack of GTA, there is a glimmer of hope. Thanks to another controversial Rockstar effort, 2006's Canis Canem Edit. Or rather, 2008's Bully: Scolarship Edition (as it's now known as) is finally available for purchase on Nintendo Wii. This charming little adventure game lacks most of the car-jacking and random rampaging joy otherwise found in Rockstar's other well known IP. In its place are inventive missions, an in-depth fighting system and dozens and dozens of classes and tasks to complete in-between the main story of the game itself.
Bully is a game about a young boy named Jimmy Hopkins, a teenage insubordinate who has been expelled from every school he's been to. In an effort to be rid of him and his nature, Jimmy's parents decide to send the poor sap to a boarding school located in a town called Bullworth, New England where Jimmy then begins his adventure as a student of its local institution.
Bully works in that you begin from nothing and eventually rise to the top as king. The game is split out into a series of acts in which you progress your influence and approval throughout Bullworth by appeasing the five gangs: the Bullies, Nerds, Preppies, Greasers and Jocks. These gangs offer you missions which vary greatly from playing as part of the school band to stalking a paranoid greaser's girlfriend.
You also gradually find different parts of Bullworth to explore by doing missions and unlock new weapons like a slingshot and even a skateboard by doing so too. Bully plays as a sandbox title, so much like GTA, you can candidly go out and cause havoc or do the numerous accessible side-missions. During Bully you'll be offered jobs like paper-rounds, you can also unlock safe houses to save your data and change your look by accepting challenges from other gangs. One of the challenges is a boxing match that plays similarly to the well known Nintendo title, Punch -Out!
As for other punches, the combat system of Bully works via targeting and you fight using the nunchuck and wiimote's motion controls. Although this sounds impractical, it works sufficiently and performs as if each half of the body were controlled with the nunchuck operating the left and the wiimote operating the right. Features like combos as well are altogether functionable and effortless to perform. Because Bullworth is pretty big as a town, you can swiftly move between spots of the map using bikes that you find, you can also return to the school in time for lessons using the school bus when near a stop for it.
During the time that you do miss lessons however you put yourself at risk of being captured by either the police or the school prefects, and if not careful, will find yourself in detention. You can also get busted by doing repugnant deeds that otherwise break the school rules, like picking locks, starting fights or even entering the girl's dormitories. As for dormitories, they are the prime spot for finding your ammunition and getting sleep so you can recover your health for later. If you don't sleep in Bully you may risk of blacking out and falling unconscious, this isn't good at all during missions.
One of the cool things about Bully is how great the characters are in comparison to other games, especially because of the personality added to them by the voice actors and script developed for the game. Characters like Gary who is a power crazed rebel that befriends Jimmy at the beginning of the game and Petey who is a shy but wise advisor to Jimmy throughout the game. You get to learn of the teachers of Bullworth as well like the tyranic Mr Hattrick and Bullworth's oblivious principal, Dr. Crabblesnitch. You learn from these characters during the game via Bully's classes.
The classes featured in Bully are majorly improved by the Wii's controls and they range from Maths classes, Music, Art, English and even the subdirectories of science like Biology and Chemistry. They play as fun little minigames and mainly consist of easy to do tasks that eventually increase in difficulty as you complete them. Classes also reward willingly with new clothes to wear and increased stats to help out with the game.
You can also interact with other characters by targeting them and pressing one of the commands on your D-Pad. This command list can make you scare your enemies; apologize to bullies who are attacking you and help you flirt with girls into kissing you. You can also manually aim by pressing up on the wiimote D-pad which enters a very fiddly but adequate aiming feature.
Sadly when it comes to the Wii controls, they're pretty fiddly. This is exactly the perception received from how Bully plays as a port on Wii. While the controls are indeed solid, they are somewhat odd. For example, Z is the button used for actions and you have to press down to jump, the complete opposite of what it does! Also the game is home to frame rate issues and bugs which are occasional but still a hindrance to the game's quality.
Bully also is a quite easy game and is a little condensed in comparison to GTA in that the gangs are less meaningful and the missions are much shorter and less effective in the long-term picture. We see little of the characters we want to know about as well. Characters like Lola and Zoe, though hinted as main components to the story, never actually feature that heavily to it at all.
There is also very little new on this Scolarship Editon of Bully, despite being released nearly two years after the original. It is a shame because rather than make more lessons and a few extra missions, the important bugs and cracks could've been fixed up. Besides, Bully's length as a game isn't in question anyway as it approximates from ten to twenty hours in size.
So all in all, Bully is a eloquent adventure. It's comic graphics, sound and gameplay make up for any minor blemish in the title's otherwise questionable development time. Inclusive, it is a stand-out buy on the Nintendo Wii. It's price tag should definitely convince you that is too.