Bully: Scholarship Edition - A Comprehensive Gameplay Review

Introduction

Bully: Scholarship Edition, originally released as Canis Canem Edit in some regions, offers players a unique experience as they navigate the chaotic world of Bullworth Academy. This remastered and expanded version of the original game provides updated visuals, new missions, and classes, enhancing the already excellent story and gameplay. Players take on the role of Jimmy Hopkins, a 15-year-old troublemaker, as he attempts to survive and bring order to the unruly school.

Gameplay and Mechanics

Open-World Environment

Bully is a third-person sandbox game where you control Jimmy Hopkins within the confines of Bullworth Academy and its surrounding neighborhoods. The game world, while smaller than the sprawling cityscapes of Grand Theft Auto, is rich and diverse, offering a constantly evolving experience with new areas and missions unlocking as you progress. The game is broken up into chapters, the first chapter takes place exclusively in the academy, but chapter two opens the gates and lets you into the rich side of town. Chapter three unlocks the poor side of town and chapter five unlocks a large industrial side of town. There’s not only a sense of progression from parts of the town opening up, but the game takes place over a year and you’ll see the seasons change.

Missions and Activities

The gameplay is focused on a variety of missions, mini-games, and activities scattered throughout the academy grounds and the surrounding town. There's always something to do, someone to see, or someone who needs their butt kicked. Missions come in various forms, including odd jobs, story events, and classes. Odd jobs typically involve simple fetch quests or brawls, while story events offer more diversity. Classes take the form of mini-games that may or may not relate directly to the storyline.

Combat and Interactions

Jimmy is strong enough to take on entire groups of students, using a combination of punches, kicks, and improvised weapons like stink bombs and firecrackers. However, violence isn't the only option. Players can also engage in vandalism, bike races, and various errands. The game's authority figures, including cops, prefects, and teachers, keep a close eye on Jimmy, and getting caught fighting, playing pranks, or bullying other students can lead to detention.

Controls and User Interface

The game controls are generally straightforward, utilizing most of the buttons on the Xbox 360 controller. When not in a specific side mission or mini-game, every button and control are available to move Jimmy around, select his options, and interact with the environment. Mini-game controls, however, are often unique, with tutorials provided before each one.

Read also: Scholarship Edition English

Faction System

The game features a faction system where different cliques, such as nerds, bullies, greasers, preps, and jocks, have varying levels of respect for Jimmy. The less respect a faction has, the more likely its members are to initiate a fight. Story missions will always change a faction’s respect for you. Each faction has their own turf at the academy, and outside the academy as well. There are even factions outside of academy that will rise against you.

Time Table

The game is really set to a timetable that can sometimes break the flow. You wake up in the morning and have two classes in the day. You need to find a bed to sleep and if it gets too late, Jimmy will fall asleep where he is and wake up the next day. You can skip classes, but then the authorities will be after you.

New Features in Scholarship Edition

Enhanced Content

For those that played Bully on the Playstation 2, it will be hard not to notice all the new additions to the game. No less than eight new missions, four new classes and several new characters have been salted in across the board.

Multiplayer Mode

One of the modifications that found there way into Bully: SE some basic multiplayer action. Unfortunately, it wasn’t created as a full in-depth online setup, but rather relegated to local two-player local minigames. While these are fun and take on the various newly installed classes, they really don’t add much to the game play or even the achievements.

Technical Aspects

Graphics

Bully: SE won’t win any awards for graphics of the year, but overall Mad Doc did a solid job of porting the game from the PS2. The limitations of developing originally for the older platform do show up from time to time, mainly in the cut scenes.

Audio

The audio soundtrack is extremely good, and is anchored by the background music which complements the pace and activity on screen. If it kicks up to a fast pace, you know its time to run like the wind or swivel your head around to figure out where the danger is. Fortunately the radar tips you off to the closest prefect, cop or bully. Where the audio really shines is in the verbal interactions with the characters in the game. There are over 100 voiced characters located in the academy and the surrounding town, which really adds to the gaming experience.

Achievements

The Achievements in Bully: Scholarship Edition range from easy to hilarious and can be picked up primarily by letting the storyline run its course. Toss in the fact that there is an extremely comprehensive stats page, so it should be easy to know exactly how close you are to getting that next achievement.

Narrative and Characters

Storyline

The storyline of Bully: Scholarship Edition (Bully: SE) is centered on 15 year-old Jimmy Hopkins, who is dumped at Bullworth Academy by his mom and told to fend for himself. He must be navigated through minefields of mini-games designed to test your patience and gaming skills. The storyline is fairly liner as you cannot advance through the chapters until certain missions and errands have been completed.

Characters

It’s the characters in Bully that really make the game stand shoulder to shoulder with Grand Theft Auto games. There are dozens of characters in the game. In fact every random person has a name and schedule. You can even take pictures of all of them for the yearbook. Most of the characters are downright evil with a few exceptions. Garry, the over the top villain with an eye scar that lies to cause trouble. Petey, the short effeminate best friend. The drunk Santa. The alcoholic English teacher. The two timing dame that uses men. Russell the big dullard so dumb he calls himself Russell. Its all done in a tongue in cheek 1950s stereotype.

Dialogue and Writing

The overall story is predicatably, and fittingly, juvenile. It does provide some twists in an attempt to the throw a curve ball at the player, but there’s nothing that’s too out there. It isn't a narrative masterpiece by any stretch, but it works well enough; however, the dialog and event writing is top notch. It’s clever in a “high school” sort of way, and the situations Jimmy finds himself in are both amusing and fittingly immature.

Reception and Issues

Initial Problems

Unfortunately, not more than 20 minutes into the game, I started to experience serious issues with the framerate and the game locked up on me a couple of times. The next day, Rockstar acknowledged the issue and went about producing a patch to correct the issue.

Post-Patch Improvements

Fortunately, I took the opportunity to put this review together after experiencing both the pre and post-patch releases of the game. As a result, I have discussed the pre-patch issues, but have rated the post-patch version with all of the significant performance upgrades that were implemented. The reasoning is that if you rent or buy the game after reading this review, the patch will have been applied as soon as the game is connected to live. To its credit, I have not seen a single freeze or crash during the entire time I've spent playing the patched version of Bully: Scholarship Edition.

Lingering Framerate Issues

The framerate, though. Oh man, that framerate. You'll be tempted to return the game and demand a refund upon watching Bully's intro movie. What was a smooth if graphically underwhelming real-time cutscene on the PlayStation 2 is a jerky, almost unwatchable mess on the Xbox 360. Fortunately, in-game framerates fare a little better, though they're never as consistent as you'd like.

Comparisons to Other Games

Grand Theft Auto

This game is unique, but it isn't that good. It's just GTA, but for kids. Literally, it's just a lazy copy and paste of the GTA formula, but rated PG-13. And it doesn't work.

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