Now I, like most people am in the middle of waiting for GTA4 to be released. I thought the best way to quiet my moaning would be to get myself busy with another game. I decided on another Rockstar game which I missed out on the first time it was released on the PS2.
In Bully you play as Jimmy who is dropped off at Bullworth Academy by his mother and new step-father. Here you have to go to classes, do favours for people, navigate the various cliques and of course avoid getting beaten up yourself. The main story basically follows Jimmy trying to unite the school (under himself of course) so there will be no more bullying and it will be a nicer place all over.
Achieving this main goal means playing through the various missions dotted around and waiting for new ones to open up. This never got boring as the missions were always interesting and varied. One time you could be trying to win a prize for a girl at the carnival whereas another time you'll be boxing with the Preppies to earn their respect.
The more you progress in Bully the more gets unlocked. The map is actually suprisingly big for a game set at a boarding school. You get to venture out into three parts of the town. This can be a bit slow at first but you soon unlock the skateboard, bike etc which speeds up travelling around.
From what I can see the graphics havent really had a big overhall for the jump to a nextgen console but it didnt really matter, ive never thought of Rockstar games as graphical bests but their gameplay is always brilliant. I found the controls worked well enough aswell, switching between weapons and beating up kids came easy enough!
Id say I only have two real complaints about Bully. First, the load times. For a nextgen title this just cant be excused. It feels like every few minutes you are faced with another load screen. Yes we know it was ported from the PS2 but come on! My second complaint is a smaller one which I did get used to after a while. This was the camera, if you control it more with the right thumb stick then walk with the left Jimmy can sometimes suddenly shift and walk in a completely different direction.
Over the past few years I would say I have been in a gaming slump. Not often do I spend more than 30 minutes playing a game before I get a bit bored and end up turning it off for something else.
Bully however I spent hours at a time playing it, first being gripped by the storyline missions and trying to get through them. Then feeling an urge to complete everything I could to get the 100% (Which im still not at! Somewhere in the 90s as I write this).
This is just a basic example of how to do the reviews, not really the text but where we want the writer specific avatars and scores to be placed.
