Bully: Scholarship Edition Xbox 360 Review - A Second Chance at Bullworth Academy

Bully: Scholarship Edition on the Xbox 360 offers players a chance to experience the chaotic and often humorous world of Bullworth Academy. Retaining the wit and deep gameplay of the previously released PS2 Bully title, Bully: Scholarship Edition takes place in the fictional New England boarding school of Bullworth Academy and tells the story of 15-year-old Jimmy Hopkins as he experiences the high. While the game has its share of technical issues and some limitations, it provides a unique and entertaining open-world experience.

Story and Setting

The game centers on 15-year-old Jimmy Hopkins, who is dropped off at Bullworth Academy by his mother and new step-father. He must navigate the school's social hierarchy, which is divided into distinct cliques such as jocks, nerds, preps, and greasers. The storyline is fairly linear, requiring players to complete certain missions and errands to advance through the chapters. Jimmy tries to win the respect of the different social circles (usually through beating up the members of said circles) while the borderline-sociopath Gary turns on Jimmy and assumes the role of chief antagonist. Along the way, Jimmy will learn the art of hand-to-hand combat from a homeless Korean War veteran, beat up Santa Claus and his elves, go on dates to the carnival, and kill a giant Venus Flytrap, all in the name of climbing the social ladder.

The story is well-written relative to other videogames. The voice acting, particularly that of the narcissistic Gary and the shy and socially isolated Petey, is impressive. However, most of the game's characters come off as overly stereotypical to the point of absurdity.

Gameplay

The gameplay is focused on missions, mini-games, and activities that are scattered throughout the grounds of Bullworth Academy and the surrounding town. It seems as if there is always something to do, someone to see, or someone that needs their butt kicked.

Missions

Players initiate missions by following the onscreen radar to marked locations on the map. Missions include pulling pranks, infiltrating the girls' dormitory, escorting classmates from one place to another, fetching items for people, and fighting groups of rivals. In one sequence, Jimmy must help the school's hideous lunch lady gather items (e.g., perfume, sedatives, etc.) that she needs for her date with the chemistry teacher. Later, he must protect the couple during their dinner by shooting down interfering students with a slingshot. Another mission has Jimmy penetrating the heavily-fortified school observatory in order to earn a chance to parlay with the leader of the school's nerds.

Classes

During the day, players have the option of attending classes in subjects such as math, English, chemistry, art, gym, biology, and music. These essentially take the form of short mini-games of mixed quality. Biology class, for example, involves a surprisingly realistic dissection, and the music class takes a cue from the rhythm-game genre with some enjoyable timed button pressing. Chemistry consists of nothing more than hitting buttons as they scroll across the screen, and English resembles a simplified form of Boggle. Passing shop, for instance, awards players with a better-handling bike, and passing chemistry allows players to make small bombs in the dorm.

Open World

Bully encapsulates free-roaming sandbox gameplay in a modestly sized world. It's just big enough to offer an ample amount of freedom and plenty of things to do, yet you'll never feel overwhelmed. The game combines mission completions with general sandbox play.

Graphics and Sound

While Bully: Scholarship Edition sports slightly improved graphics over the original PS2 version, the game still has a distinctly last-generation look, with flat textures and simplistic art design. The limitations of developing originally for the older platform do show up from time to time, mainly in the cut scenes. However, the game physics are surprisingly good, as the characters and objects in the game seem to react accordingly when action and action is applied, such as being hit, kicked, bumped, or knocked down.

The audio soundtrack is extremely good and is anchored by the background music which complements the pace and activity on screen. The verbal interactions with the characters in the game also add to the gaming experience. There are over 100 voiced characters located in the academy and the surrounding town.

Technical Issues

Upon its initial release, Bully: Scholarship Edition was plagued with technical problems. Crashes and freezes were frequent, framerates were inconsistent, and glitches in everything from character models to music made the end result something that many wanted no part of.

Read also: Scholarship Edition English

Rockstar's quick response and announcement of a patch was reassuring, however. The patch addresses most of the issues, but the framerate remains a problem. The intro movie is a jerky, almost unwatchable mess on the Xbox 360. Indoor environments often see a framerate that's freakishly fast, and rare, unpredictable bursts of 60 frames-per-second performance will take you off-guard and possibly nauseate you. Outdoor sequences are almost universally poor in terms of framerate. The framerate issues come into sharp relief during the classroom minigames, and can result in many failed tests.

Some users have reported that the game is unplayable on Windows 10 due to constant crashes.

Additional 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.

One of the modifications that found their way into Bully: SE is 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.

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. Two real creative ones are “Over the Rainbow” for getting 20 kisses from the Gents and “Dual Nebula” for setting a high score on all the mini-game Arcade machines in the game. The great thing about the grinders (such as traveling distance on bike, foot, skateboard, etc) is that they should still be accomplished during the normal course of the game. 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.

Final Verdict

Bully: Scholarship Edition is a unique and entertaining game that is worth playing despite its technical issues. The game's story, characters, and gameplay are all well-designed, and the open-world environment is a joy to explore.

Pros

Engaging storyline and characters
Varied gameplay with missions, classes, and mini-games
Humorous and lighthearted tone
Large number of voiced characters
Comprehensive stats page
The extra content in the Scholarship Edition

tags: #bully #scholarship #edition #xbox #review