Bully – Xbox 360 - Review

Well I bet everyone’s seen or heard of bully it’s made by the guys at rockstar games (makers of the grand theft auto series) well I seen a few pictures of this game and I can’t wait for GTA so I decided to pick it up and give it a go well now it’s time to get down and dirty with this review because this is going to get really dirty!

Basics :

You play Jimmy Hopkins a kid who’s got a bad attitude and a short fuse. You’ve been kicked out of pretty much every school and your mother is on her 4th or 5th marriage and she dumps you at bullworth for the year and tells you flat out she won’t be back till next year. so you have to deal with the school and it’s many many bully’s and factions such as the preps , jocks , nerds , greasers & townies.

Game play :

The game play is a sandbox so you play at first just to learn how to play and once they let off the leash your able to run around and cause as much mayhem as you like. you attend classes and for doing so and passing you unlock clothing and other bonus items such as bikes. You also interact with people in the school doing odd jobs for them and becoming friends with different factions in the game. You help the bully’s the bully’s respect you. If you beat them up you lose the respect. This game has around 70 missions in total so it’s got a lot of stuff to do and a ton of side quests to get you caught up with and little distractions such as the arcade games and the go-cart track. This game also has a major issue with locking up I finished it in about 25 hours and it locked up 8 times always during a mission or going outside (Rockstar is to fix this sometime this week) This edition also ship with the extra bonus levels that we’re not in the ps2 version so you get to fight Santa and help out him

Graphics :

This game looks alright but you can tell it’s just a little more detailed then the ps2 version because sometimes the game looks great other times it looks like plan ass some of the textures are bland and details in the walk ways and in people’s faces look really dated. I really noticed how the game looked dated at the caraval area you get on a ride and you can see the fake lights rotating about 1″ away from the Farris wheel making it look really odd. the game also has an issue with darkness sometimes it’s so damn dark you can’t see anything sometimes you can. really sloppy I think of the programmers even with the brightness turned up it’s still strains the eyes. Trees and bushes look terrible at least for the price of 50$ they could of added a bit more texturing to some of the items in the game like the roads have cracks but it doesn’t effect the bikes when driven over it doesn’t look like a real crack just a black line on the road. Come on rockstar we know GTA is the flagship but if you release a game update the graphics don’t port shitty graphics and with subpar fps. While playing this and reviewing it every time you go in an area with many cars or people or the carnival the game slows down so badly it’s almost unplayable and very annoying. at least the cut scenes looked alright

Sound:

The sound is pretty good a lot of good voice acting with some witty quotes and some funny cut scenes that can give you a few laughs. every person you meet has there own voice and will respond to you if needed if you do an action such as bully them they will scream and go get help. music is alright not much but don’t need much in a sandbox.

Final Thought:

I thought it was going to be a great game after 7 to 8 lockups while reviewing it and having issues with some of the achievements not unlocking right. The Game is very buggy I had problems with missions not completing right because of other factions coming in and making trouble. I didn’t think I was going to give this game such a harsh review but after 4 days of dealing with it crashing and locking up so much it drove me nuts. The game when it does plays well. Looks like an Xbox game maybe a bit better. And with the patch coming sometime this week it might fix the frames per second issue. and maybe fix some of the major bugs and locks. If you already own The game on the ps2 all you get with this is the winter vacation around 5 - 10 missions and a few sides and a few new outfits other than that this game is very over priced it should be 30 - 40$ personally I couldn’t recommend this to anyone except people who are hardcore and really in to the sandbox grand theft auto style games. I would wait for them to fix the issues and drop the price before buying it right now it sales for 50$ ten dollars cheaper than the regular 360 games but still way to high.

6.5/10