I’ve had a lot of GameSHOUT Radio listeners ask me, “Maverick, were you a Jock or a Nerd in school?” When I was in school we also had the same categories or cliques that there are in schools today; Jocks, Nerds, Preppies, Greasers, but we also had Hippies that later became Heads. When I get that question I tell them to mind their own business or I’ll kick their butt! LOL…no really but if you are in school I’m sure you see these groups and maybe you see yourself in one or more of these groups. Maybe you are among the most dreaded one, the Bullies.

Bully: Scholarship Edition takes us back to those wonder years of high school, and in many cases helps us remember that they sometimes weren’t so nice. This is the story of one such person, Jimmy Hopkins, who dropped off by his mother and new step-father at Bullworth Academy, a place where some of the truly great criminal minds of our time have been nurtured and developed including some of the best corporate lawyers this country has to offer. Jimmy, “the new kid” has to find his way in this new school, all alone and friendless, finding himself more of a target than anything else.

You will take control of Jimmy and guide him through his life at Bullworth Academy. And what a life it is. It consists of classes in the morning and afternoon and other tasks to develop your 15-year-old mind of mush. And all the tools are here to make your way through this life including the bullies that will trip you in the halls and push you around every time they get a chance. Now you can fight back but don’t let the Prefects see you getting violent or they will turn you in and you will face the principal, and he already has it in for you.

These prefects are like the school hall monitors and they are marked by the red dots on your mini-map. If you do something wrong, they will search you out, but you can hide in lockers, or trash cans until the coast is clear and then move out about your business. But if you are late for class, they will be on constant alert for you until the end of class bell rings, or if you are outside after curfew, or in the school after 7:00 PM, they will be on full search and destroy mode, they will hunt you down, beat you and then turn you in.



You can make Jimmy the kind of kid that you want to make of him. The game is pretty free-form allowing you to choose quests that are highlighted by stars on your mini-map and yellow circles on the ground, (sound a little like GTA?), and you can go to class. Completing quests will give you in some cases income, and often respect by one faction and loss of respect by another faction, (i.e. you’ll gain the respect of the Nerds but lose the respect of the Jocks when you defend the Nerds against the Jocks with the Spud Cannon). Classes successfully completed will also give you some extra skill that will help you out in your life at Bullworth. For example, pass chemistry 1 and you will be able to make firecrackers and pass chemistry 2 and you cam make stink bombs, these will come in handy. When you pass art 1 you become a good kisser, which gives you a little more addition to your life bar, then pass art 2 and you become an even better kisser and the ladies will start to want to kiss you more as work gets around, so look out.

Rockstar added some great new classes too that make for some interesting mini games such as biology where you will get to dissect a variety of animals. There is still English where you will play the word scramble game and Math where you will play a sort of brain game but shop class was kind of fun where you can repair a number of different bikes and earn better rides as you go. Then there is a music class added with a rhythm-based mini game that for some of us took a little getting used to…but these mini games have been turned into a local 2-player games that are exclusive to this version of Bully. There are 10 total events ranging from geography to English to photography and more. It was a nice addition to the over-all package and gave us a little more quick competition in the GameSHOUT break room.

The Xbox 360 version of Bully: Scholarship Edition did have some bugs and glitches in the beginning but a Rockstar patch took care of most of that. The 360 version did give a much nicer graphic quality over the Nintendo Wii edition, though both gave nicely detailed environments, the 360 was just much sharper. The character and NPC modeling all around seemed a little old for use on the next-generation systems in my opinion. The faces seem a little sharp and triangular and the action not as smooth, almost as if this was a PlayStation 2 game simply ported to the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii.

The Xbox 360 control was very intuitive and fairly clean though I ran into some issues when escaping from the Prefects. You need to rapidly hit the “Y” button and then Jimmy will do something that will distract the Prefect such as kick him in the shin, push him down, or most commonly, give him a very severe “groin grab” and then run away. The problem I had was that Jimmy would always seem to be facing the wrong way and I had a terrible time trying to regain my bearings in order to run away while I have a chance. I don’t know if I was just pressing the left stick too hard and looking behind me or if this is a part of the game but this was driving me nuts…no pun intended.

As for the use of the Wii controller, I think that Rockstar did a nice job of using what the Wii Remote has to offer. For example to get away from the Prefect you will shake the Wii Remote, and to fight, you will box with the Wii controllers and that was nicely done. It was also easier to dissect the critters in biology with the Wii Remote than it was using the clunky 360 controller. The Wii Remote was fast where it needed to be fast and more precise where it needed to be. This is not to say that it didn’t have its own learning curve. On the wrestling mat it took quite some time to get the hang of certain wrestling moves with the Wii Remote while with the 360 controller it was a breeze. Also in chemistry class, pouring beakers sometimes didn’t work out the way I had planned while with the 360 I just pressed a button and trigger sequence at the right time to pass the class. So each had its strengths and weaknesses, but I think Rockstar did a nice job of using all that the Wii controllers had to offer.



If there is one thing that really stands out in Bully: Scholarship Edition, it has to be the audio and voice acting. Okay, it did have its moments where I said “what?” but there were other moments where I couldn’t help but laugh. As you run through the school halls trying to get to class and some kid yells out, “Jimmy, have you ever eaten your boogers?” you just gotta laugh…if you’re a guy. Sorry but women just don’t get booger humor. When you walk into chemistry class and the teacher says “What in the world are you doing here? Oh yeah, that’s right, class.” Or in biology the teacher that warns you that you better have a strong stomach, those are some classic voice acting lines done well. And there are so many more. But like I said, there are also a few that fell on the ground and laid there like a wet brick…but for the most part I was very impress with the audio in general. It really brought me back to high school. But for you parents getting this for your kids, this really is a Teen game and does have some family settings if you so choose to use them because the language does sound like a high school too.

Bully: Scholarship Edition, as I said is pretty free form. As you unlock more chapters, you will also unlock more of the town that you will be able to visit, and more you will be able to do. Now you can just stick to the school and push it straight through and finish the game in about 10-12 hours, of if you are more like me and like to explore, you can take more like 40 hours to finish the game. It can be as deep as you make it. There are no shotguns but the weapons are pretty fun if you ask me. Firecrackers are nice and complement the stink bombs nicely, the sling shot makes for nice ranged shots and then you will have the bottle rocket launcher and the spud gun too. The itching powder can really liven things up and eggs make for decent projectiles, but you will spend most of your time defending yourself (or being the aggressor if you choose) with your fists. One thing that will really bother you health-nut parents, (me being one of them) is that the health potion is soda…yeah soda. I mean they could have gone with a juice machine but instead you will regenerate your health with sugar and chemicals. What is this world coming to?

For the most part I found much of Bully: Scholarship Edition extremely juvenile and childish, which is exactly why you teens will love it. It is irreverent and has a storyline that makes it easy to cheer for the underdog. The game allows you to play as you want to, either go out and be the aggressor and kick everyone’s butt, or be a good guy and defend the weak and do what’s right. Either way, you are in control of Jimmy, and it is Jimmy against the world, and the world seems to have made Jimmy it’s target…or at least this corner of it anyway. The free-form style of the game is very appealing and allows the player the freedom to play the way you want. You make the game what you want of it. The graphics of the environments are not bad at all though the load times are a little long, though the player and NPC models seem a bit behind the times and seem to need to be brought up to date with the next-generation. Game play is good and smooth though the in-game clock is a little fast in my humble opinion, and the audio and voice acting is spectacular. The quests are a lot of fun and the class mini-games can be challenging and loads of fun when played in 2-player multiplayer mode as well. Overall I enjoyed much of what Bully: Scholarship Edition had to offer, maybe for the fact that it teleported me back to my own high school days, and this time maybe I got to play it a little differently than I did the first time. If you are a fan of the free-form game play style of GTA and like to root for the underdog too, then I would recommend that you also grab a copy of Bully: Scholarship Edition and try changing the world of Bullworth for yourself.