In October 2006, Rockstar made a game exclusively for the PS2 called Bully or Canis Canem Edit. Now in 2008, the Xbox community can finally get a hold of this gem of a game. Although this game is made by the ‘bad boys’ of gaming, Bully is actually an ‘M’ rated game. There is no blood or guns and comes close to actually being family friendly. Sure there is mild swearing and you can get in some pretty ugly fights but this game is no where near as controversial as their other games (looking at you Manhunt 2). 

You are Jimmy Hopkins, a rebellious teen who has been expelled from seven different high schools. Your mother and new stepfather drop you off at Bullworth Academy as they go on a boat cruise for their honeymoon. Bullworth Academy is the worst boarding school in the world, there are gangs, alcoholic teachers and prefects that will bash you on sight if you do the smallest crime such as be wearing the wrong school shoes. When you start, you are unsurprisingly the most hated person in the school, and the only person who will take you in as one of their own is the nerds and a suspicious young man named Gary. You have to climb the ladder of gangs and factions such as the greasers, the preppies, the jocks and plenty more. Although it may sound cliché and a random addition to your video game library, I can guarantee that there is fun to be had here, and lots of it!

As unappealing as it may seem to go to the different classes like math and English, it is actually a good idea and well worth your time to study, because every lesson you pass gets you a bonus, weather it make you stronger, luckier with the ladies or gives you a snazzy new outfit, they are well worth attending and even studying for!

Most of the main story missions are just finding a friends belongings or bashing a nerd or jock, and as it may seem farfetched and boring when you hear this, they somehow are very fun. The missions start extremely easy and get harder but just as they seem to be getting genuinely challenging the game ends, so it is a fairly easy game to finish but not an easy game to get one hundred completion because you will need to find collectables and complete side missions like the paper route or bike and go-kart races.

Although you might hear that this is the GTA of the school yard, in my opinion it is much more like the 2005 original Xbox title ‘The Warriors’. The fighting style and hand to hand combat is unseen in the likes of San Andreas or Vice City but seems almost identical to the fighting mechanics of The Warriors, which is definitely a good thing.

For a PS2 port, the game has fairly good graphics, there are some noticeable flaws such as the hands are all one big block and the fingers of most characters are just lines drawn across the hand and sometimes you will think that Jimmy Hopkins’s head is a square but other than that, the textures are extremely well rendered and the game seems very well done.

The voice acting is simply remarkable, everyone sounds exactly like they should, and the jocks sound big and tough, yet stupid. The nerds sound hilarious and have very funny lines. Such as when a girl walks in the room, they will say something like, ‘oh my god, I have never seen them up so close before,’ it is the voice acting though that makes you love or hate the characters. Like any Rockstar game, it is just superbly done with no flaws in the voice acting whatsoever.

If you, for some crazy reason, just wanted to zip through the game fast, just playing through the main missions, then the game should take you about 7-10 hours of game play to beat. But if you want to really enjoy the game, then you should do all the classes, races, side missions, make girlfriends and become the king of the school. Then the game should take you 18+ hours. The game is fairly lengthy any way you put it but it definitely doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Clearly this is the game to warm you up for GTA 4, if not one of this year’s best 360 games.