Bully: Scholarship Edition Wii Review: Rule the School
Bully: Scholarship Edition, a remake of the Playstation 2 and Xbox game, invites players to revisit Bullworth Academy, a private institution unlike any other, full of bullies and brutes, nerds and dweebs. Originally released in 2006, Bully met high praise and critical acclaim. The game was tweaked and occasionally enhanced for its debut on Wii and Xbox. Graphics have been retouched, mini-games have been added and there are 8 new missions. Not only that, but players can unlock more rewards than ever before as they progress through the academy experience. Even the people you pass in the streets have more clever things to say.
Story and Premise
Meet Jimmy Hopkins-- a fifteen year old troublemaker who has been expelled from countless schools. Now his parents have enrolled him in Bullworth Academy. Jimmy isn't pleased. His mother has remarried and the man is old enough to be his grandfather. They're jetting off to a romantic honeymoon and while they're off fondling one another in a bungalow, they expect Jimmy to settle into life at one of the most miserable boarding schools around: Bullworth Academy. There, the principal plans to make a man of him, to prepare him to be a productive member of society. Jimmy wants to make a name for himself at Bullworth, and it starts with taking each of the school's cliques down a peg. There's the geeks, preps, greasers, and jocks to contend with. Each of the game's five chapters has Jimmy going after a different clique on his conquest to take over Bullworth Academy, and it's a fun ride to the top, seeing Jimmy in full control of all groups of kids.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Gameplay in Bully: Scholarship Edition is relatively straight-forward. If you've ever experienced a Grand Theft Auto title, that's a useful frame of reference. Those accustomed to Grand Theft Auto's game structure will feel right at home with Bully. You travel to the mission start location, travel to the designated destination, pull off the required task, and then travel to the next mission location to start the process all over again. As in those games, you'll spend much of your time running around a large, sparsely-populated world. There are optional forms of amusement all around, plus stars and such on your map that point out places where you can engage in a little bit of scripted mayhem. So the choice is really up to you.
The mission variety is quite large. There's your standard fetch quests and go-here-and-beat-up-this-guy missions, but there's also missions tasking Jimmy with infiltrating an asylum and the girls' dormitory which requires keen stealth and patience. One mission I enjoyed had you destroying all of the nearby port-a-potties in sight in order to coax a gym teacher into a special port-a-crapper which Jimmy knocks down a steep hill, covering the teacher in putrid poop. Fortunately, if failure occurs, some of the longer missions have in-mission checkpoints, but most do not which means failing forces you to travel all the way back to the mission location to restart the mission. That's just archaic and annoying.
Story missions are just half of the content in Bully: Scholarship Edition. The game follows a 24 hour in-game clock. Each in-game hour is sixty seconds. Jimmy didn't go to Bullworth just to raise hell though-- he went there to get an education, and two times a day he's required to go to class. Of course, you can always skip class, but there's always a teacher or police officer ready to drag Jimmy to class if he's not careful. There are multiple subjects that are randomly selected each day, and each subject has five classes Jimmy must complete in order to pass that subject. Jimmy will take part in English, Mathematics, Geography, Gym, Music, Shop, Art, Biology, and Chemistry classes. In English, Jimmy has a six letter word that he has to rearrange into as many words as possible, Math has Jimmy solving quick multiple-choice problems, and Geography has Jimmy placing country flags on a world map. Hey, who said video games don't test the mind!? Shop and Chemistry require quick button presses or Wii remote motions depending on the console of choice-- it's like one huge quick-time event. Completing a class gives Jimmy new bonuses such as costumes, collectible locations, bikes to ride, and moves to unleash on foes.
Read also: Scholarship Edition English
There's also plenty to do around the town of Bullworth: sights to see, people to punish, officers to harass-- y'know, kids' stuff. The amusement park located in the western part of town is home to many carnival games such as shooting galleries and dunk tanks. There's many mini-games around town to complete for those wanting to finish 100% of the game. There's go-cart races, bike races, newspaper courier missions, lawn-mowing missions, 75 rubber bands to scrounge up, 20 Gremlins-n-Goblin cards to gather, a yearbook to create, and loads more. Those who strive to complete games 100% will easily spend 20-30 hours playing through all of Bully's content and enjoy every minute of it.
Missions start out pretty simple and mostly serve to acquaint you with your various options, but from there they get difficult quickly. Bully: Scholarship Edition certainly has moments that will appeal to the casual gamer in all of you, but it's clearly built with experienced players in mind. One scene early in the game highlights this dynamic perfectly. After watching a skippable sequence where a cheerleader type snags an incriminating bit of text from her less fortunate classmate, you'll then receive your assignment: get it back. Outside, a less skippable scene tells you that it might be worth investing in some stink bombs to leave in the locker. This is code for you have to do this to pass the mission. So you then must wander over to the area where a fat kid is lamenting his lot in life, then pay a fee for a stink bomb (never mind that you can perhaps manufacture them yourself by this point in the game). With that done, you then cross a large chunk of campus again in your quest to reach the locker. The area is deserted, but you'll have to break into it in order to do your deed. This will alert prefects, so you have to act quickly. By the time you get inside to leave the stink bomb, you'll almost certainly have been spotted. Missions like the one outlined above are more frustrating than they are fun, particularly if you have to make repeated attempts to conceive successful strategies (and sit through load times and story sequences all over again). Depending on how you playwhether you worry about completing the game or are just goofing around to have funthey can make up the bulk of your time spent with Bully.
Class assignments are where more casual gameplay makes its appearance. In the biology lab, you'll play a scaled down version of Trauma Center, where you must dissect frogs, rats and other beasties and extract their organs. In art class, you play a Qix-like game where you have to draw squares that gradually reveal a sketch in the background as you avoid various hazards. Then there are things like gym classwhere you play positively vicious dodgeball matchesand English class, where you have to form words out of a scramble of letters. The mini-games add some pleasing variety to the Bully experience and the Wii Remote adds to their effectiveness. It's fun extracting bits of animals, just as it was a delight suturing wounds in Trauma Center. Not every option succeeds, but you might very well find yourself looking forward to class work.
Wii Remote Integration
The Wii Remote isn't limited to just mini-games, either. When you find yourself engaged in a round of fisticuffs, for example, you'll have to swipe it and the Nunchuck attachment forward as if playing a boxing game. When you lock into Jimmy's first-person perspective (while peering out of a locker where you've found temporary solace, for example), you tilt the controller this way and that to get a full view of the situation.
Speaking of choices, Bully: Scholarship Edition is an excellent experience on either console, but there are differences between versions. I prefer the Wii version due to its cool controls. It's cool being able to point at where you want to aim the slingshot, use the Wii remote and nunchuk to punch with Jimmy's right and left hands respectively, and play Trauma Center-lite in Biology class, dissecting frogs and pigs with the Wii remote.
Read also: Unlockables in Bully: Scholarship Edition
Bully’s controls use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk to mixed effect. When going from place to place the controls work well enough; movement is controlled with the analog stick, and you run with the A button. Having to hammer the A button to pedal your bike or push your skateboard is annoying, but it’s a non-issue once you buy a scooter or unlock a go-kart. Fighting is handled by mapping Jimmy's fists to the Wii Remote and the Nunchuck. While it does work, it can prove to be tiring. Long fights can feel like a chore, and the combos (which were clearly designed to be done via button-taps) can be difficult to execute. Sure, it’s visceral when I punch with the Nunchuk and see Jimmy jab on-screen, but it’s overkill to have it as the game’s primary fighting technique.
Much of the gameplay comes in the form of mini-games, and a few new ones are added for the Wii. Some mini-games retain their PS2 controls, using the Analog Stick and buttons instead of the Wii Remote's motion sensor and pointer, while other have been converted to Wii controls. The mini-games control well overall, but the Wii controls work better in some than others.
Customization
Players can fully customize Jimmy with an expansive catalog of purchasable items and gear. You can dress in full school spirit or dress like a greaser, dress clean or dress sloppy. The choice is yours. Dress nice though, or your affections towards the opposite sex will get shot down. There's hundreds of clothing options available, so it'll be difficult to find something players won't like seeing Jimmy in. You can also travel to a local hairdresser to style Jimmy's 'do in one of many ways. Be conservative with a crew cut or rock out with a mohawk. Again, the choice is yours.
Graphics and Sound
Don't think for a minute that Bully is just about picking fights, either. The game actually has an engaging story, with voice actors and character models that bring it delightfully to life. It's easy to find yourself swept up in the cinematic experience. Voice acting is on-par with past Rockstar efforts meaning it's terrific. The humor this time around is more PG-13, so don't look for any Room 69 innuendo or Hot Coffee incidents here. The script is well written, often hilarious, and the voice acting is top-notch.
However, the biggest problem with Bully is its graphics. To put it succinctly, they are poor. On the PS2 Bully was not a graphically top-tier title; it used the aging GTA III engine and sported strange character models, bland textures, and a fair amount of pop-up. The Wii port has received little in the way of graphical upgrades. It sports the same bland textures and messed-up character faces, although draw distance is improved and a new character shadow system gives Jimmy a realistic shadow. Also added is the ability to play the game in 16:9, which is a nice addition.
Read also: In-Depth Bully: Scholarship Edition Completion Guide
Despite these modest improvements, the Wii version also introduces a series of graphical glitches. While not exceedingly common, you should expect to see at least a couple of the more noticeable ones every half-hour or so. I thought the invisible school bus was a weird glitch until I saw the translucent school bus; I've seen cars lose their shadow simply because the driver’s door closed; I've seen one NPC clip through another. But the most severe glitch occurred when a townie tried to steal a bike from a student. He flipped the student from the bike, at which point the child hovered in the air (as if he were riding another invisible bike) and the townie disappeared as the bike rode itself off. While not game-breaking by any means, these glitches detract from gameplay and give the game a certain lack of polish.
Bully’s sound is actually quite good. There’s a wide variety of music and it always seems appropriate for the situation at hand. Ride a bike at night, you hear one song; ride a bike during the day and you’ll hear another. However, voice acting is where Bully really shines. Each character has their own lines, and they are well-delivered by skilled voice actors. Some of the dialog is cheesy, but the sheer amount of dialog is impressive. The sound effects are good enough, but are overshadowed by the quality of the voice acting and music.
Additional Content and Features
Rockstar has proven here that it can venture outside of Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas without leaving behind the sandbox nature and production values that made those environments so addictive in the Grand Theft Auto games. Bullworth Academy is irresistibly awful.
The biggest addition to the Scholarship Edition is its multiplayer mode. The in-class portions of the game are featured in a two-player split-screen mode, with players competing to have the highest score at the end of the game. It's not exactly the most exciting multiplayer option, but it’s a nice bonus. Bully: Scholarship Edition has some extra content that was not available in Bully for the PS2. Mini games from the story may now also be played online with friends; there are also eight new missions, a handful of new classes, and new items. There is also some improvement to the graphics, but they are still nothing to write home about.
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