Bully: Scholarship Edition (Wii) Review

Bully: Scholarship Edition is a fantastic game that provides a great balance of action, story and fun. Some people will inevitably look at it as a years-old PS2 port and ignore it in preference to something newer and flashier, but to do so would mean missing one of the best games on the Wii. While the story is somewhat juvenile and the graphics very last-generation, the overall experience Bully provides is greater than the sum of its parts.

Bully thrusts the player into the role of Jimmy Hopkins, a teenager who has been kicked out of every school he’s been to. Jimmy’s mother and new step-father, in an effort to get him out of the way while they take off on their honeymoon, have enrolled him in Bullworth Academy, a boarding school where bullies, jocks, nerds, preppies and greasers fight for control of the school and even the prefects are happy to use violence on anyone who gets in their way. It’s certainly not the kind of place that is going to be kind to the new kid.

Even the teachers are happy to use blackmail, threats or even a bit of the old ultra-violence to get what they want. Into this tinderbox walks Jimmy who, while being no stranger to using his fists to defend himself, just wants to avoid trouble and finish the school year. Unfortunately, Jimmy is instantly set upon by the school bullies which kicks off a chain reaction that sees Jimmy on the path to fixing up the problems at Bullworth Academy, something he must juggle between attending classes and keeping out of trouble.

That is one of the things that makes Bully so much fun to play. Just because Jimmy is on a mission to right a few wrongs, it doesn’t mean he gets to skip class or cause too much mischief. In fact going to class and achieving passing grades is one of the essential parts of the whole Bully experience. Bullworth Academy, when not the venue for petty crimes and gang warfare, is a living, breathing school with classes and plenty of social interaction.

Half the fun is found in just helping Jimmy attend school and make friends. The social interaction part of the game helps open up the various missions that Jimmy must complete, with the story progressing as the player works their way through tasks ranging from simple fetch-quests to protection missions and straight up fights. Completing missions soon opens up various areas in the nearby town of Bullworth and more room for Jimmy to run amok. Helping people from the different cliques at the school and in the town is an important part of the game, as doing so will either increase or decrease Jimmy’s social standing and affect how the game’s characters interact with him. The player must balance this social interaction carefully and deal with any negative effects Jimmy’s actions bring about.

The overall effect is that it makes Bullworth Academy and the town of Bullworth feel like they are alive. Actions have a reaction, annoy one group and their rivals will like you more, deal with a problem and the cliques will offer help or stop trying to beat up Jimmy. The game’s pacing is, for the most part, good. The story does tend to drag a bit by the end, almost as if the developers had some arbitrary number of gameplay hours to achieve, but there is always something to keep the player interested. If game developers continue to make games that are more cinematic in style and delivery, they really must begin to use the film industry’s mantra on editing – if it’s not necessary to the core story, cut it. The story itself is simplistic and tries too hard to convince the player of its “depth”, but it has its own charm in a B-grade movie kind of way.

Much of the storyline and humour is juvenile in nature, but it will still get a chuckle out of most players and is reasonably well written, with great care taken to not push any boundaries too far. One advantage of the long story is that there is plenty to keep players busy. With 20-30 hours of narrative and a wealth of other things to do outside the main storyline, Bully offers a huge range of tasks, errands, jobs and mischief for players to indulge in. With the fantastically realised town of Bullworth just a short ride from school, players can realistically get more than 50 hours of entertainment from the game. Add in a basic but fun multiplayer mode and Bully offers some of the best value for money of any single player Wii game to date.

Bully gets almost everything else right too, including the Wii-specific control scheme. The game is controlled with the Wii-remote/nunchuk combination with some very effective motion controls and IR-aiming thrown in for fighting and using weapons. It is obvious time was taken to port the game over properly instead of just adding in some “waggle” and calling it a Wii game. Motion control is also used effectively in many of the mini-games and school classes that Jimmy can access. Overall the game controls fantastically, but whether or not it is preferable to using a standard controller is purely up to the individual taste of the player.

Graphically the game is a little disappointing, with a bland art style that could have done with a bigger colour palette. Characters are modelled well and individuals are distinguishable from one another without the need for close examination. Considering the game was originally developed for the PS2, its graphical shortcomings are understandable and because the game is so thoroughly enjoyable, it is forgivable that no great effort was taken to improve the way it looks. Where Bully really excels though is in the audio department, with fantastically performed voice work really giving the characters their own personality and helping the player to distinguish between the many students and residents of the town of Bullworth. The musical score is also top-notch and it complements the game well.

Bully is one of the Wii’s great games and it is disappointing that due to its age, name and origin as a PS2 port, it will not get the recognition or sales success it deserves. Aside from some immature moments in the story and its tendency to drag on, Bully is one of those games that will keep almost all players interested right until the end and beyond.

Setting the game in a school and actually making the school work necessary was a stroke of genius and shows the developers were not afraid to push some boundaries and really work within the limits of the setting and characters to come up with something unique. The motion controls work well and show that most third parties are simply being lazy when they can’t get Wii action games to control as well as, if not better than, those on the PS3 and Xbox 360. In a way it is unfortunate Rockstar insisted on such an intentionally confrontational name as Bully is a superbly crafted game that could really appeal to more than just the hardcore gamer demographic. As it stands, the name will turn away much of the Wii crowd and limit the broader appeal it may have. Superb.