Bully is a game from Rockstar Games, who are best known for the Grand Theft Auto series. Bully originally came out on the PlayStation 2; this version is a port of that one. While the game shows its age and its origin, it is surprisingly fun.
Instead of playing as an adult criminal, you play as a juvenile delinquent. You play as Jimmy Hopkins, a young punk who has been kicked out of every school he has ever attended. At the game's start, he is entering into Bulworth Academy, a small private school. He quickly discovers that most of the teachers and students are nastier than he is and bully any below them in social standing. The game follows Jimmy as he strives to become social king of Bulworth by taking over the various cliques.
How do you gain respect from the cliques? Through fetch quests, fights, bike races, stealth missions, and a few other types of gameplay. You can also engage in other activities outside of the story missions such as in-game errands, making out with other students, bike races, playing arcade games, shopping, attending the carnival, and being a general nuisance.
You are also supposed to go to class every morning, but you can skip them if you are not caught. Attending classes can unlock items and clothing and improve your attributes.
The brawling and racing controls are simple and intuitive. The stealthier missions are not too hard if you have a bit of patience. The controls for the classes are horrendous. All of the classes are minigames. Some are timed button-presses that work fine, but some involve a lot of dragging and dropping items with the control stick. These controls are very unresponsive and frustrating; they seem to have been designed for a mouse rather than an Xbox 360 controller.
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