Bully for me!

I finally got in a few hours of Bully: Scholarship Edition last night. It was hard to pry myself away from MLB '08: The Show, as I am having a blast in Road To The Show mode with my closer. Still in AA (that's Double A ball, not Alcoholics Anonymous), but now I am actually closing out games, which is great fun. Anyway, back to Bully. The first thing I noticed was that the game was not blessed with cutting edge graphics. It almost looks like an original Xbox game, but a bit more polished. If you are not a graphics whore, you'll get used to it in pretty quick order and go about your business.

The game puts you in a sort of private school hell, as your character is dropped off at Bullworth Academy by your uncaring mother and stepfather - not that you yourself have the best of attitudes. After getting lectured by the headmaster, you start your career as the new kid at school. No one likes you very much, except for a creepy kid named Gary. I wanted to beat the crap out him right away, but he plays a vital role in the story, so that was a no-go. Everyone else at the school seems to either want to kick your ass or avoid you like the plague. You can fight back of course; the fighting mechanics are simple and the fights themselves pretty easy. You spend your idle time going to class, pulling pranks, helping Gary's nefarious plots, fighting bullies and wooing the girls. It's all a little simple, but damn if it ain't addictive. You definitely get that "just-one-more-task" feeling. You are given missions to carry out that advance the story and there are little side quests such as helping out other students. These side quests are usually of the paying kind, so you can build up a nice little chunk of change. Just like real life, there are cliques at school and your actions will either increase or decrease your popularity with each one, i.e. help the nerds and face the wrath of the greasers. Each individual day goes by pretty fast, but there doesn't seem to be a limit on how long you have to carry out the main story.

So basically the game is Grand Theft Auto in the schoolyard., which makes sense since GTA creator Rockstar is behind the game. It plays very well, controls aren't too wonky for the most part and I have yet to see any of the slowdown that has been mentioned in some web reviews. There are a LOT of "loading" screens. At first they were excruciating to me, but they actually become more tolerable as you play on. I just finished the first chapter of the game, so now I get to venture off campus and out into the real world. Every review I have read said that this is where the game really takes off and gets interesting. So far I have had a lot of fun and I am very anxious to carry on the adventure. If you like "sandbox" games, I'd definitely recommend trying out Bully.