Bully

Thanks to my lovely Mr. Cosmic, I've been in contact with lots of new (to me) games on the Playstation 2. I've been having a ton of fun catching up with games I never had the chance to play intensely before, namely Resident Evil 4, Driver, God of War, among others. The one I've been playing more and more of, however, is Bully (also known as Canis Canem Edit).


The game, created by Rockstar Vancouver, follows the story of Jimmy Hopkins, a 15 year old boy that is sent to a boarding school while his mother goes on a year long honeymoon with Jimmy's new stepfather. Bullworth Academy is not exactly heaven, and is filled with bullies, preps, nerds and greasers, all apparently ready to kick the new kid's ass. It's your job to stand up to them and, through various missions, prove yourself as the new tough kid.

Since you're in school, you need to go to class as well. When you successfully attend a class, you unlock new abbilities or moves that will probably come in handy in the future, so it is convenient to attend at least a few classes.


You need to complete your missions to advance in the game, but besides those missions, you have a big world that you can explore and interact with. It's a lot of fun to get new weapons, enter in bike races, or go to the carnival play all those "games within the game".



Apparently this game has been the center of a lot of controversy (at least when it came out), but I can't say I agree with that. Sure, it's called BULLY, and you have to fight a lot throughout the game, but in most of the missions you even have to protect the weaker kids from other bullies. I don't see the game as condoning bullying in any way, but I guess videogames have always been an excellent scapegoat for this kind of issues.

I'm yet a long way from finishing it, but I've been having a lot of fun with it!

I'll leave you with a video review I found.