Bully
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Bully (originally known as Canis Canem Edit in the PAL region) is an action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar Vancouver and published by Rockstar Games. The game was released for the PlayStation 2 in October 2006. A remastered version subtitled Scholarship Edition, was developed by Mad Doc Software and released for the Wii, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows in 2008. It was re-released for the PlayStation 4 via PlayStation Network on March 22, 2016. An updated version of the Scholarship Edition, subtitled Anniversary Edition, was developed by War Drum Studios and released for mobile devices on December 8, 2016.
Plot
In the town of Bullworth, 15-year-old Jimmy Hopkins is dropped off by his parents at Bullworth Academy after being expelled from seven other schools. He then goes to meet the principal, Dr. Crabblesnitch, who tells him he must "keep your nose clean, or we'll clean it for you," meaning he must behave himself. Soon after, he meets Gary Smith and Pete Kowalski, with whom he subsequently forms friendships. Gary assumes the role of Jimmy's mentor, and introduces him to the five "cliques" of Bullworth Academy; the Bullies, Nerds, Preppies, Greasers, and Jocks. The two decide to form an alliance to assert dominance over the cliques, but Gary eventually betrays Jimmy by pitting in a fight against the leader of the Bullies, Russell Northrop. Jimmy emerges victorious and tells Russell to stop picking on other students, to which Russell agrees. The two become friends and Jimmy earns a lot of respect from the Bullies. Jimmy then decides to gain control of the other cliques and restore peace at Bullworth.
Why It Isn't Gonna Bully You
- The NPCs, rather than being background people who have little interaction with the player, are quite lively. The player can talk to them and perform various activities, such as doing errands. This applies both to the Bullworth students and the town people. They also can get bullied and interact with other people as well, be truant etc. Also, there are not 2 NPCs that look alike, all of them have their own look and personality.
- Just like in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, there are tons of sidequests and storyline missions, which are varied in nature. A few examples include secretly taking photos of other students and people, sneaking up in an asylum (which requires some stealth) and even a fetch quest (with a boss battle).
- Because the game takes place in a school, there are classes to attend. Jimmy can only attend two classes a day, and passing them earns you new skills as well as increase Jimmy's health by 25% with the max being 200%. The final class, however, will have girls no longer request gifts.. There are six classes in the main game with the Scholarship Edition adding four new ones:
- Chemistry: It involves the player pushing specific buttons as they pass through the box on the screen. The rewards for passing include: Firecrackers, stink bombs, itching powder, get a full inventory of items instead of half, and you can use the chemistry set as many times per day as you want.
- English: The player is given six jumbled letters, and must arrange the letters in the jumble to form as many words of three or more letters as they can. The rewards for passing include: Apologizing to bullies more effectively, better taunts even when shoving, and apologize to Prefects, Faculty, and Police for minor offenses.
- Gym: There are two activities: Wrestling and Dodgeball. Wrestling class is used to unlock new fighting moves, while Dodgeball improves Jimmy's accuracy with the slingshot.
- Art: Plays out much like the 1980s arcade game Qix; Jimmy must guide a pencil around a rectangular playfield with a background designed to look like brown paper. He must use this pencil to mark out areas by drawing rectangles with it. Each time he completes a rectangle, inside it the background disappears and an image of Ms. Philips sitting on a sofa appears beneath it. Once 80% of the image is revealed, the stage is won. While trying to complete the image, he must dodge three kinds of enemies: Pairs of scissors travel around the border and the lines Jimmy draws; erasers travel across all unrevealed areas in diagonal lines. If either kind hits either the cursor or any part of an uncompleted rectangle, Jimmy loses one of his three lives. As Jimmy passes Art classes, the enemies become faster and more numerous.
- Shop: Jimmy is relegated to working on bikes. The minigame involves tapping buttons and rotating the analogue stick on the controller in accordance with the direction given on the screen. As the difficulty of the minigame increases, more buttons and stick actions are added, and the number of given directions is increased. Passing levels of Shop unlocks successively better BMX Bikes.
- Photography: Involves the player taking photographs of various sites and people within a time limit. The rewards include a photo album, the yearbook, a bigger photo album, a digital camera/color photos, and earn double the tickets at the Carnival.
- Biology: The player must maneuver a scalpel along a dotted line, somewhat like a connect-the-dots game while under a time limit. The reward for each class is clothing, which includes a Muscle Shirt, Hazmat Headgear, Bass Hat, Alien Costume, and Pig Head mask.
- Music: Just like Chemistry, it's a rhythm-based minigame. The rewards are clothing, which incudes Music Keys Shirt, Band Shirt, Music Jammie Shirt and Pants, Marching Band Outfit, and 80’s Rocker Outfit.
- Geography: Jimmy must correctly match the flags to the unlabeled countries on a map. Each mistake made takes 5 seconds off his timer, a score below 70% fails the class. The rewards are clothing and rubber band, G&G Card, Gnome, and transistor collectibles are marked on the map. The clothing include: Eiffel Tower Hat, Racing Outfit (you may just get the Racing Hat), Panda Outfit (you may just get the Panda Head), Pith Helmet, and Explorer Outfit.
- Math: Involves a timer to answer questions of the following type: Answer a basic math question, which is the slowest/fastest object, which is the shortest/tallest object, which is the smallest/biggest object, how many triangles/circles/squares. The reward is clothing, which includes: Genius Hat, Math Shirt, Shut Your Pi Hole Shirt, Hip 2 B Squared Shirt, and Nerd Outfit.
- The Scholarship Edition features improved graphics and exclusive content which was unavailable in the PlayStation 2 version, including eight new missions, additional characters, four new school classes, and new unlockable items and clothing. In addition, single system 2-player competitive multiplayer minigames have also been added.
- To make the game more realistic, there is a mechanic in the game known as the Trouble Meter. Whenever Jimmy breaks a rule, it will fill up, and depending on the rule he breaks, the meter will fill accordingly (For example, doing minor offenses won't fill it a lot, but breaking a severe rule will max it out and get you in a lot of trouble). There are three bars on it, which depending on how many are filled so, will have the Prefects or Cops chasing you about until the bar goes to zero, which not only makes the game realistic, but also challenging.
- In order to simplify the gameplay, there is also a time mechanic which can tell you when to go to class, to sleep etc. It also runs during missions (with a few exceptions, like in Boss Fights), so if you are being truant or break a rule, the authorities will also try to send you back to your current class (if in campus), to the university (if in the town), or simply bust Jimmy (and fail the mission), which makes the gameplay more engaging.
- You can go to an carnival and ride a rollercoaster and play cool carnival minigames like Strike Out, High Striker, Shooting Range, Splish Splash etc.
- There are arcade minigames as well. There are four of them. Those games are:
- Nut Shots: It is a side scrolling game in where the player takes the control of an flying squirrel in where the player must kill hornets, bats and eagles. The high score is 69900.
- Monkey Fling: It is a game in where the player takes the control of a flinging monkey that shoots poo at spiders and he must eat bananas to earn points. The high score is 333.
- Future Street Racer: It is a game based on WipEout and F-Zero. The goal is winning the race. There are two versions of this game. FSR 2165 is a top-view perspective view while FSR 3D has a 3D perspective view.
- Con Sumo: In this game, the player takes the control of a sumo and the goal is gaining the most weight by eating healty food and avoiding the rotten food which decreases the weight meter or die if the player has empty weight meter and the puffer fishes that kill the player instantly. The more the weight earns, the bigger and slower the sumos, food and the hazards they are. The high score is 1010 lbs (Original and Scolarship Edition) and 800 (Anniversary Edition).
- Like Grand Theft Auto, you have various ways to escape the authorities, such as hiding in lockers or garbage cans or even apologizing to them.
- Great graphics, even for 2006 game standard, with all character model are really great detailed while the game trying to being an cartoony look.
- The Xbox 360 is also great too, with great lighting for interior to making game more realistic.
- The game parodies the idealized high schools thought up by John Hughes and Peter Engel as Jimmy will force all of the school cliques to unite in the name of peace, which falls apart in less than 24 hours.
- It captures the school atmosphere very well.
- Solid controls, especially in the Wii version.
- Well-written story.
- Because Jimmy can't drive cars, the player is instead given a skateboard and bikes to ride.
- Great soundtrack, the walking theme is really catchy and one of the best open-world soundtrack games ever seen, you can hearing it for so long.
- A really cool variety of weapons. You can fight with your bare hands (and pull off some cool combos), slingshot (which has unlimited ammo) or use other weapons you find in the street or buy (with limited ammo).
- Jimmy himself can be customizable with a great variety of clothes and items. You can, for example, adapt him to a clique that you like or make a unique outfit for him.
- Speaking of Jimmy, even though at first he appears like a bad and short-tempered guy, he is actually quite respectful to others and he even helps them most of the time.
- The game's humor is considered to be very well written and hilarious, with lines such as: "Like how to get shot by your own side?", "You're acting like a dummybean! Stop it!" and "You want a kick in the balls?"
- Excellent voice-acting.
- Awesome boss battles with each bosses has own strategy to compete.
- Tons of outfits that you can unlock in various and even ridiculous ways. For example: If you get busted in the campus three times, then you will be forced to attend detention and do some tasks. If you complete all of those tasks, then you will be rewarded with a prison uniform.
- The game also has a bonus chapter where you can complete any side-missions you didn't complete in the story mode.
Bully Qualities
- The PS2 version suffers from long loading times.
- Some users have reported the game being unstable on Xbox 360.
- Plot hole: How does Jimmy know who Edgar is and that he's actually the leader of the Townies despite not being established earlier in the story?
- The Anniversary Edition for mobile has some annoying glitches. For example:
- Whenever you knock out a student on a bike and steal it from them, the camera can glitch out for a split second. Although not really annoying at first, there's also a chance that it will start glitching for a few seconds, or even worse, the camera can glitch out of the map, with the only thing you can watch is the darkness (which also means that you have to wait for a few seconds for the camera to get back to Jimmy)!
- The graphics also look inferior on the Anniversary Edition, although it is slight excusable because it was released in 2016, when phones were not yet as powerful as the console, it is inexcusable that still exists in the 2020s, when phones became as powerful as the PS3.
- This game can't run normally on the newest Android version (10 and up) due to lack of update since 2019, unless the mods to play on the newest Android version to play this. The iOS however is fined, but the game sometimes crashes at some point.
- No auto-save function (excluding the Anniversary Edition, which does have one). While this can be excusable as earlier games didn't have one, this becomes much worse on the PC version with pointer 5.
- The PC version was a very bad port at launch, but Rockstar Games soon fixed it with patches.
- Some game-breaking bugs.
- A glitch-induced one in the mission Glass House. Jimmy is frozen and unresponsive to the controls during the Mission Concluded screen, but Mr. Hattrick is not frozen, and will run up and bust Jimmy while the game ignores the player's controller input.
- During "Complete Mayhem", the game will not allow you to leave campus, lest you receive a Game Over. However, there is indeed a way to leave the school: go to the side alley by the library and follow the path until you reach the mine shaft. From there, you'll be able to reach the asylum grounds without getting a Game Over, and from THAT point, you can enter the town. All of the rioting cliques that fight each other on the school grounds will now spawn anywhere in town (even within the shops), and apart from a few cars that drive by, the place will be completely deserted (however, cops will still spawn if you attack the citizens in the cars). Once you approach the school gates, the game will shut down.
- The aforementioned PC version introduced an infamous game-breaking glitch that happens on modern PCs, more specifically the ones which have processors with more than 2 cores and Windows 10, that causes the game to crash for no reason at all at various periods. Thankfully, there was released an official patch, which can be downloaded here.
- Even then, it still has a tendency to crash.
- Three of the four new classes in the Scholarship Edition only give you clothes that do nothing upon completion.
- Some characters can get a little annoying, such as Lola or Algie. The Jocks and the Perfects are the most unlikeable.
- Some cutscenes are unskippable.
- In the original version of the game, any mission you failed to complete before moving on to the next chapter would lock the player out, preventing you from getting 100% Completion. This was corrected in the Scholarship Edition which allowed you to do any mission you missed after completing the main game.
- What constitutes a "good" snapshot in the photography missions isn't always obvious, which leads to some weird moments as you take the same picture over and over from slightly different angles and distances until you finally find one the game will accept.
- The game is somewhat easier in comparison to other Rockstar games such as the Grand Theft Auto series. Notably, the final boss is very easy to beat.
- To achieve 100%, you have to do some obscure things, like 200 wheelies, give 50 wedgies, kick 100 soccer balls, and more like it. Bare in mind, this isn't told to the player at any point, which will leave players confused and resort to googling what to do.
Reception
Bully received positive reviews on all platforms, and the PlayStation 2 version received multiple Game of the Year nominations and awards.
Controversy
The game came under fire before release for its title and gameplay among parents and educators, who also noted the adult content in previous Rockstar games such as Grand Theft Auto. Groups such as Bullying Online criticized the title for glorifying school bullying, though they ultimately held judgement until its release, causing it to be renamed “Canis Canem Edit” (“Dog Eat Dog” in Latin) in Europe and Australia. You can bully people and pick fights in game, but in the missions and most sidequests, you're bullying on behalf of victims of other bullies.
The game was also banned in Brazil. In April 2008, Brazilian justice prohibited the commerce and import of the game. The decision was taken by judge Flávio Mendes Rabelo from the state of Rio Grande do Sul based on psychological findings by the state psychology society, which claims that the game would be potentially harmful to teenagers and adults. Anyone caught selling the game would face a daily fine of R$1,000.00. However, it was only in 2016 that Bully became free to be released in Brazil and all Brazilians can now obtain Bully legally, without paying a fine.
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