Freshly STEAMed: Bully Review. "That's why it works, Jimmy, because we're all bastards.”

Let me ask you a question.

What if Ennio Morricone scored a brat pack movie?

That's pretty rad isn't it?

Well as it turns out, the red headed stepchild of the grand theft auto games is exactly that. Pretty rad. I first played Bully years and years ago and had a great time with it on my ol' PS2. I had thought I finally had an idea of what everyone saw in Rockstar games. I was never super into GTA III (arguably the most influential game ever made) but Bully got me on board. I played San Andreas next and loved it to bits, though as soon as I had heard the last from Tenpenny and James Woods I was done. The progression in both of those games were amazing. Just when you thought San Andreas was winding up, boom: AIRPLANES. Just when you thought you'd be stuck at Bullworth Academy for 14-some hours, crrrreeeeeek: the front gates open and the surrounding town is yours for the taking.

 Years went by, GTA IV finally skulked its way back to the PC and I thought I could bottle that same magic again. For a while I did...but after its riveting first act, things took a turn. The plot stopped developing, the characters I enjoyed had vanished from the story. I no longer cared about some guy Niko came to America to kill because he obviously didn't care anymore. He'd hem and haw at the revolving door of random Italian mafiosos to help him find that guy, but then he'd let it go because he jus' wants de money. Over and over again with the money.  

To paraphrase a recently deceased film critic, I hated that game. I hated, hated, hated that game. GTA IV exacerbated the issues I had with both earlier games to almost comical degrees. It wanted to be taken more seriously as a narrative. So I tried to take it more seriously too. The story began to become the game people had turned GTA into: just a bunch of fun, unconnected, random things. If the game was going to let the plot go, if it was just going to be a daisy chain of short stories, I could respect that. But the finale comes out of nowhere and throws the cadaver of the first act back on the stage after it was left to rot for 15 hours and expected me to give a damn. No. San Andreas had Samuel Jackson dropping by at regular intervals, but for some reason IV's villain had more important sh*t to do than to be part of his own story. He'd seriously call you on your cell phone every 5 hours begging you not to forget he existed. That's. Crap. Storytelling.

"You done buddy? You want some cheese with that whine?"

Sigh...sorry. That's been on my chest for a while now. I'm just frustrated. I'm frustrated at how much people care about IV when contrasted with how little people even remember Bully. Because after jumping in to it for the first time in nearly 8 years its amazing how much fun I had. It's remarkable how much fun it is. I'd like to go on the record and say it's the most fun game Rockstar has made to date. Red Dead was a fantastic game to be sure, I'd say it's their best game, but it's nowhere near as fun or as focused as Bully. That's another rarity for them, focus. See, you're on the clock in Bully. You have classes to attend and curfews to mind. That sounds like the antithesis of what makes a good RS game, but bear with me.

It makes the moment to moment game play that much more compelling. You have so many objectives pulling you in so many directions, you always have to have a plan. Do you want to build your character with the buffs you get from passing classes? Do you want to buy some new clothes or hairdos? Do you want to train your CQC with the homeless Korean vet who lives near the shop class?  Or do you want to dig deeper into the resident sociopath's plan to eventually puppeteer every clique on campus? Time's a'wasting, make up your mind.

"If I had some black lipstick and eyeliner...Rockstar already made that game?! Damn."

Even for an 8 year old game that was given a bare bones face lift for a port 6 years ago... it could look better. In fact, the steam guide has a link to a replacement exe. file that lets the game run in 60 frames per second. You're really gonna want that. The fact the port crew couldn't bother to put that in themselves is embarrassing. But the core experience does eventually shine through...but it will take a while to get a keyboard set up that works for you.

The trails and tribulations of Jimmy Hopkins will eventually hold your interest. Jimmy himself slowly evolves into a much more rounded and likable person than he seems at first blush. The central villain has a standout performance, though this game also suffers from a previously mentioned RS game affliction: D.V.D. (disappearing villain syndrome). But you won't care, the deep roster of cliques and characters isn't as bothersome as it was in GTA IV because you will see those characters all the time. The students on campus aren't the faceless droves of Liberty City, they are all people with names and personalities. They're broad and hammy personalities, but still, the effort is noticed and deeply appreciated. If you join the year book club, you can snap pictures of them and build what is essentially a trading card collection. How cool is that?

"I'm thinking about starting a conflict, a conflict with caramel."

Bully is a wonderful game that makes a lousy first impression. The character models are ancient and the script and compressed sound is hard to listen to sometimes, yet I'll admit the animation holds up surprisingly well. Once you get in a groove, pass a few classes, make a favorite outfit, and nail the wonkier control prompts, Bully will have you eating out of it's palm. This is an aging gem that deserves to be remembered as well as learned from. This is old school Rockstar at its very finest.


The scholarship edition (which is what I picked up) is available on the 360 and Wii. But Steam has it for a paltry $15... and would you look at that, they stuck the whole soundtrack in the root folder. Those guys are the best. 

Oh! And just in case you were curious, this is what starts playing when you punch a nerd: