While the Grand Theft Auto series may be Rockstar's feather in it's cap, trying out new formats and genres is usually not a bad idea. The open-ended world engine of the GTA series has become the largest influence of games lately, and certainly other games can use the open-endedness; it's just a matter of putting the right elements together to make it work. While Rockstar's "Bully" attempts to do just that, it's, at times, too close in play and feel to GTA, but also suffers from being too easy overall and lacking the 'bite' that Rockstar's previous efforts had, particularly in light of recent legal problems with the company.

Story: A-

In Bully, you play as Jimmy Hopkins, a maladjusted teenager with a mother who's on her umpteenth marriage and figures that the easiest way to deal with Jimmy is to dump him in a boarding school, Bullworth Academy, for a year while her latest hubby takes her on an extended honeymoon. The school is not without its own problems. Besides being in a sorry state of repair, there's a handful of corrupt teachers, and several cliques around the school, such as the nerds, the jocks, the greasers, and the preppies, that maintain their own territory in fragile balance. Jimmy quickly realizes the school is a dog-eat-dog world and violence is usually the best resort to solving problems. He makes friends with a similar student named Gary, who encourages him to cause some ruckus at the school, but it turns out this has ulterior motives, as Mark is looking to take over the school himself, and Jimmy was his largest target in that path. By turning the other groups onto his side via either good deed or just a show of force, Jimmy works himself to become kingpin of the school, and prepares for the worst that Gary, behind the scenes, can throw at him.

Gameplay: B-

Out of the gate, Bully plays like the last three GTA games without a doubt. The game is open-ended, and based on missions much like the GTA games. The area around Bullworth includes a small town, a carnival, a well-off residential section, and it's own insane asylum, though these parts are unlocked over the course of the main plot. As Jimmy's a teenager, you're not going to be doing a lot of driving, though you do gain access to a skateboard and bicycles during the course of play, as well as a riding lawnmower and a Vespa-like moped. Missions are generally though of the same style you'd expect. Story missions are indicated on the map, and once you get the goals, it's just a matter of following around and performing the tasks as instructed. Numerous side missions exist as well (noted later). In most of the main story goals, successful completion will generally net you some dollars, as well as change the respect that one or more groups has for you. The lower the respect a group has for you, the more likely that they will try to pound your face into the ground if they even see you. A group with high respect will wave and say hi and otherwise leave you alone, and those from groups with mid-range respect may act in different ways depending; with these, you can sometimes apologize to avoid a fight, or you can even incite fights by insulting them if you want to. Girls from groups with high respect for you can also be flirted with and pampered with gifts in hopes of giving you a kiss, which will increase your health above the standard 100% up to various levels, depending on how well you've done in a particular class.

Jimmy's fast on his feat and can perform well in punching and boxing, but he also gains access to a kids-style arsenal of slingshots, potato guns, eggs, and stink bombs, to name a few, most which are handy in dealing with enemies from afar. Either by attending gym class or by helping a crazy old guy living on campus, Jimmy can also learn a few new moves that help with dealing with bullies. You can also use some of your arsenal while on a bike or skateboard. Once you've obtained certain items, you can easily refill your bag of tricks back at your dorm or most save points. When Jimmy's in combat, a dim circle shows up underneath the other opponents, showing how much health they have left as green, yellow or red, before they fall down, defeated and in pain. There's an auto-aiming feature which works about as good as it does in GTA (which leaves something to be desired) though none of the situations I encountered required me to be as precise as I needed to in GTA.

Because you're a student most of the time, you are under the constant watch of authority figures (either professors or prefects at the school, or cops while outside), and your illegal and immoral actions have to be carefully monitored. There's minor infractions, such as bumping into a profession at full speed while running, or missing a class, while other actions are much more serious, like hitting a girl. Like the 6 star system of GTA, your cumulative actions can add up, and the more violations you do will mean that the authorities will give a much more hectic chase. If they do catch you, you likely will have the opportunity to slip away (with pop-up on screen buttons to hit), though this is more difficult to do if the authorities are at full alert. If you're caught outside of class time, you'll be forced back to class, while other times will have you reporting to the principal's office; in either case, you'll lose some of your ammo for that. It's also possible to be knocked unconscious (though being beat up or by falling off a tall height), and which you'll end up at the closest medical facility, minus a few dollars.

Bully does introduce a more refined concept of time from the GTA series, both in daily changes as well as through seasonal changes, though the latter is tied to the story line. A typically day begins for Jimmy at 8am, with a morning class at 9 to 11:30, and an afternoon class from 1 to 3:30; from then on, he's free to wander without threat of truancy, though there are curfew times as well as buildings he is not allowed to be in past certain hours. However, if he's not in a bed (located at the save points) by 2am, he'll fall unconscious and wind up at a medical center. Some missions are only available at certain times as well, though it's rather easy to meet the time requirements. Of course, time moves at a much faster pace in game, a day taking about 20 minutes of play, roughly. As you progress the plot, the environs will change with seasons; holidays like Halloween and Christmas will have decorations around the campus, while leaves will change color, and snow will fall with seasonal variation. There's also variation in the weather as with GTA games.

The side missions to the game are where things can get interesting. There are 6 classes that you need to randomly attend, each with 5 levels of performance. By successfully completing one level of a class, you can gain a bonus (such as learning a new fighting skill from gym class, or being able to woo the girls more and getting a better health bonus from art class); once you've gotten all 5 levels of a class, you no longer need to attend it, which removes the truancy issues. Once town opens up, there's odd jobs you can do for cash, such as delivering papers or mowing a lawn. Randomly through campus and town, people may run up to you to ask you to do a quick favor, such as egging the girls' dorm or finding a lost dog, which can also be done for money. In the school, you can try to pick locks to get into lockers for special clothes and items, though if you're caught, you'll need to flee the authorities. There's also bike races, a number of video games, and a handful of game-wide quests to locate 75 rubber bands, 40 game cards for the nerds, several points to tag with spraypaint, and collecting photos for the school yearbook. What's nice is that some of these side missions are reversionings of old games into the GTA-like engine. Art class is a simple variation on the arcade game Qix, while Gym class includes a Dodgeball game that (to a point) plays like Super Dodgeball for the NES. The paper route mission is a 3d re-realization of "Paperboy", for the most part. There seems to be a lot of old-school homages in the design of these side games. You can also alter your appearance, though this is mostly limited to clothing, haircut, and tattoos; it's sometimes necessary to do these alternations for specific missions.

Like GTA:SA, the overall world can be traversed without a loading screen, though there are pauses to load when you enter and exit buildings and for starting missions but I believe these felt shorter than those for GTA:SA (sacrificed for more loading time at the start of booting up). As you unlock areas, the opportunity to unlock save points will be given to you (indicated by mission stars of a different color on the map) so that you don't have to travel to your dorm every single time you want to save, though a bus system allows you to quickly jump back to the school if you need it.

The overall difficulty of the game is unfortunately rather easy for those that have played GTA, and basically becomes a matter of just watching your health on the last few missions while in the process of dusting off several bullies. Fleeing authority figures is rather easy as you can outrun them or get out of their line of sight and dive into a trash to evade them, none which compares to trying to ditch SWAT teams and FBI agents at 6 stars during some GTA missions. Even if you are caught, you can button mash to get away most times, and come back to fight again another day. The missions are "go here and do that" type, all with obvious targets on the map, and thus are all rather easy to finish. Defeating your foes isn't very hard - the computer AI will sometimes get up to 3 targets to gain up on you, but it's easy to both divide and conquer such groupings as well as to force one or two away to deal with them. There's a few bosses that make things somewhat tougher, but again, it's not terribly hard. Furthermore, unlike GTA, 'dying' by either being caught or falling down exhausted doesn't have the same penalties as it does in GTA - you don't lose much cash, and while your ammo is taken away, it can be easily restocked for free. The game does take some cues to correct issues from previous problems with the GTA series, though not as far as was done in Saints Row. With many save points, you're never more than a minute's worth of travel to get to one, making it easy to save and quit if you need to. Some multi-part missions have mid-check points that you'll restart if you should fail. However, these aspects tend to add to the easiness, and combined with the GTA feel of the whole game, and it just feels like Yet Another GTA Clone, for the most part.

Value / Replayability: B+

When you save, you're given the total percentage of the game that you've completed which includes not only the main missions but all the side missions and odd jobs that are available. Once you've completed the final main mission, you have the opportunity to continue to complete side missions through the "Endless Summer". For myself, with a handful of side missions, I completed the main game in a tad more than 20hrs with about 70% completion, though I would figure searching for all the rubber bands and game cards will take considerably more time.

Graphics: A-

Graphics are a bit above what most GTA games have. Since most of the game is done on foot, the overall environment is much smaller area-wise, so more detail can be put into building fronts, terrain, and other parts of the locality of Bullworth Academy. The areas that you spend the bulk of your time in, such as the school itself and the main parts of town, have a lot of details here and their, though there's still the boxy feel that the GTA brings at times. Even parts of the map that you're only required to visit a couple times (the carnival and the industrial area, for example) show some thought in the visual appearance of it. There's a focus depth filter used throughout to give objects far away a hazy look, which helps to make the game look more realistic but takes a bit of time to get used to. While there's few dropped frames while outdoors, some building interiors (such as the main school building) put a bit of strain on the system. A nice touch is that as you complete key missions, you'll see souvenirs of those missions appear in Jimmy's dorm room, which is a nice reminder of what you've done previously. Character animation is a bit better, though it's east to distinguish between main and secondary characters in how smooth and how detailed their models are. But for those main characters, there's a lot better range of movement, action, and lip synching than GTA, since there's much more human motion involved in the game in the first place. But overall, the game feels like it's trying to grab every last bit of power off the PS2, and could have been better done on the PS3, if the engine was easily ported over.

Audio: B-

The audio side is a bit mixed. The voice actors are all spot on for their parts though there appears to be no big-name talent involved. But at least the students sound like students, instead of adults trying to act down to a student's voice. But on the flip side, the music is a bit odd and lacking. Depending on what activity and where you are, there's always background music playing (no radio like in GTA of course), and sounds like variations on a theme of 'scheming student' from cartoons or comedy movies. It's ok to start, but as it doesn't change much through the game, it gets very old quickly. The music will also quicken when you've been spotted while under violation, but the speed at which the music changes is a bit slow as not as good or useful as, say, in Sly Cooper in terms of a dynamic soundtrack.

Of course, reviewing Bully without mentioning the legal threats that it was under during the late development cycle would be overlooking the obvious. It was well known that after the Hot Coffee incident with GTA:SA, that people would be looking to Bully with a fine-toothed comb to find anything to prove the video game industry is bad. With that in mind, I wonder if this game is really the game that the developers set out to make at the start. It does feel, for a Rockstar game, awfully watered down, more from the story side than from the gameplay side. There's hints of highly debatable plots that could have been taken somewhere but are quickly overlooked by immediate actions the player has to do. While the game does glorify violence, it keeps coming back that the violence isn't done for violence's sake, but to lead the way to peace. It just feels, to me, that some stuff was taken out and while what replaced or covered over it fits well, you can still sense the edges of where the cut was made. Add in the rather simple difficulty with the game, and Bully just feels really watered down, given all the pre-press that the game was getting and what the game could have been.

Overall: B

Bully is not Rockstar's greatest work to date. While it's nice to see the variations that can be done on the GTA engine, it still feels like a GTA game at heart, though severely watered down in terms of difficulty and story. It's quite likely that many will find the game too easy, given what to expect from GTA games, normally, and then will find the pacing of the early chapters to be extremely frustrating with almost no challenges to worry about. There's some fun activities, with throwbacks to older video games at times, but if you've played GTA, you've played most of Bully before. Bully's a game unfortunately with high expectations from it's past heritage and for the controversy surrounding it, and seems to have unable to meet both, and that's likely why I overall wasn't impressed with it.