Bully: Scholarship Edition (Xbox 360)

Grand Theft Educational...
3/27/2008 12:00 AM | 1 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Now-deceased comedian Rodney Dangerfield once said, "The best part about kids is making them." Kids grow up to be politicians who rail against vice while simultaneously partaking of carnal pleasures with women of ill repute at thousands of dollars per hour. They age and become comedians such as Pauly "The Weasel" Shore or Carrot Top. Sometimes, they even pass into adulthood to become Adolf Hitler, and who the hell needs that nonsense?

The life of a child is traditionally nasty and brutish, as Thomas Hobbes suggested. In Rockstar's third-person adventure Bully, the life of a child is measured in chapters, the passage of seasons, about 20 or hours of gameplay. Short, it is not.

Protagonist Jimmy Hopkins is a modern-day Daniel in the lion's den. He's sent off to Bullworth Academy (a rather lawless cross between Andersonville and "Rock 'n' Roll High School") while mom and the new stepfather take off on their honeymoon. At Bullworth, bullying is a character-building exercise, the lunch lady hocks loogies into the school cafeteria's stew to "add flavor," and classes are a twice-a-day distraction from misdemeanors -- and the occasional felony.

Idiot lawyer cum anti-videogame crusader Jack Thompson called the original Bully "a Columbine simulator." In this, he couldn't have been more wrong. The original Bully, released in 2006 for the PlayStation 2, proved to be equal parts smart, incisive and gross. It was the first game to be set within the confines of an educational institution, and Rockstar used the rather novel venue to poke fun at adults and children alike. Bully's world was populated by parents who only cared enough to send their kids a stupid reindeer sweater at Christmas and by kids who were so dumb, they make Marvel Comics' Incredible Hulk seem like a Rhodes Scholar.

Most importantly, Bully gave players a choice. Hopkins wasn't locked into becoming the game's eponymous Bully. Sure he could stuff nerds into lockers, drop flaming piles of poo in front of the teacher's lounge, and issue Indian burns and flushies aplenty, but he could also take on the role of protector. The weak and helpless could have an ally in Hopkins and, in fact, the game steered its protagonist, via plot points, to uniting the school under the banner of peace, even if it was done by piling one knuckle sandwich upon another. In the end, it was possible to build Hopkins into a genuinely good guy.

Scholarship Edition redoes the originally Bully with a few new extras, and for next-generation consoles Xbox 360 and Wii. For Xbox 360, this means updated graphics, new missions, new classes, the addition of multiplayer games, and achievements.

More, generally, is better, and Scholarship succeeds in fleshing out the original Bully's gameplay. New missions have Hopkins dressed as a complete schmuck during a school Christmas pageant, hammering out notes to Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker;" tearing through a town's Christmas display while being assaulted by midgets -- ahem, elves; and setting up shop as a low-rent photographer forced to capture the magic of a drunken bum Santa interacting with violently repugnant children. Classes have been expanded to include math-, music-, biology-, and geometry-themed mini-games. Of these, only the Biology-themed mini-games fail dramatically; the Xbox 360 controller is many things, but a finely tuned dissection tool, it is not. Here, players are forced to connect the dots to accomplish scalpel cuts, and the imprecision of it all dooms Biology wholly.