Eat My Bomb!

Sometimes, everybody gets it wrong. When Rockstar announced the game Bully, the video gaming media and gaming watchdog groups went nuts. Not because of screenshots, videos, or descriptions of gameplay, but because of their immediate assumptions about the nature of the game. With a name like Bully, it’s hard to blame them, but they could have at least asked. Contrary to these hasty assumptions, Bully is not a child beating simulator. It’s the story of a rebellious teenager who has been dumped at a boarding school by his disinterested parents. Could it be that Rockstar is trying to send a message here about parental responsibility? Maybe, but let’s save that topic for another day and get back to what Bully is really about.

I’m bullying the hell out of these beakers.
Yes, there are fights, but you know what? You don’t have to participate if you don’t want to. In fact, I’ve spent most of my time at Bullworth Academy attending classes on time and making friendly with the class nerds. Now if I wanted to, I could ditch class every day, team up with the jocks, and beat the crap out of classmates all day. It’s a matter of choice and I may play Bully several times to see what outcomes are possible.

The faction system in Bully is pretty straightforward. Align yourself with the nerds and you lose standing with the jocks and vice versa. Since I’m hanging around with the dork contingent, the bullies tend to attack me whenever they see me. When this happens, I jump on my skateboard and drop some marbles behind me then hilarity ensues. Interactions with NPCs are reminiscent of Fable where you target a player and then choose from a set of ‘emotes’ that are mapped to specific buttons. These emotes include greetings, insults, flirting, etc.

The fighting in Bully, when it does happen, is fairly simple. You grab a guy, punch his lights out, then move on. New fighting moves become available after a successful wrestling match in gym or when you learn them from the bum behind the schoolbus. As far as…what? Oh you want to know more about that bum? Yeah well there’s this grizzled homeless veteran who camps out behind the school’s broken down bus. When you bring him parts for a transistor radio, he teaches you new fighting moves that he learned in the corps. I wonder what he’ll do when he finishes building the radio…

That’s it for now, but I’ll give more updates as I continue. After only 2 nights of playing Bully, I’m hooked. Back to chemistry class!