NIDZUMI+

The term ‘open world’ is thrown around an awful lot these days but in mostly it hardly ever improves the experience in anyway because unless the free roaming aspects are naturally fun, the open world areas are just glorified menus. So you’ve got to give it to the grandfathers of open world, Rockstar Games, for trying something totally different with that formula.

You play as Jimmy Hopkins, a fifteen year old who gets dumped off at Bullworth Academy while his mom and new dad go away on a honeymoon. You’ll then get introduced to the various clique’s around the school. You’ve got nerds, jocks, preppies and a few more to deal with as in turn you’ll have problems with them all. These gangs have their own over-acted characters that are all unique and hilarious. One of the great things about the smaller setting is that you’ll see main characters walking around the school and nearby town area’s.

The fact that its open world doesn’t exactly mean your fully free to explore. You’ll wake up early and get some time before you have school lessons, which are effectively mini-games. The school lessons can just be ignored but if you complete them you’ll get a in-game reward that can help you tackle the many missions on offer. After you attend (or skip) your classes you’ll then have until 11pm before curfew kicks in although you can stay up another 3 in game hours until you pass out. Don’t take this structure as the be all and end all because you can just skip class but you might get caught playing truant during lesson time. Although structure is rarely seen in open world games, here it keeps the game play fresh and defiantly adds another dimension to the game although the fact that you pass out at 2am does seem a little too early.

Really with the fantastic setting and the great although slightly repetitive soundtrack, its hard not to like Bully. Actually you really have to try to find something bad about this game. At first the pacing is off but it picks up as soon as you start opening up areas outside the school and to be honest it just gets better and better from there.

It’s a shame that technically this game is just atrocious. Lock ups, sound bugs, NPCs issues, constant loading between nearly every door and the fact that the graphics don’t live up to the 360’s fairly high standards. Bully looks a lot more like an original Xbox game but maybe because it basically is albeit with a few extra missions here and there.

Bully is a fantastic game that is let down by silly bugs that can be easy fixed but nevertheless shouldn’t be in there in the first place. It’s really a shame to see something, that is filled with so much promise and so much charm, be let down by silly bugs. If you can look past them you’ll find hours upon hours of school based tomfoolery to be had and if you don’t mind saving after every other mission then by all means pick this up.

Bully is an experience worth going through if you can put the issues out of your mind, otherwise it might be best to opt for the original.