Bully: Scholarship Edition Impressions February 13,2008 - A few weeks ago, we published a preview for Bully: Scholarship Edition. Well, we’re back with another one, but this time we were able to sit down with both upcoming versions of the game. Rockstar showed off one of the PlayStation 2 missions, but we were also acquainted with a few of the new missions and a couple of the multiplayer minigames.

We started our playtime with the Wii version. As stated in our previous coverage, there isn’t a big focus on utilizing the motion sensing to its fullest. Sure, you fight as you would with Wii Boxing, but there aren’t any drastic movements you’ll have to make. However, one of the new missions, Nutcracking, uses the Wii remote and nunchuck as most other games would. In the mission, you’ll be forced by your hippie music teacher into “saving” the Christmas pageant by performing a couple Christmas songs on a xylophone. To play, you simply swipe the nunchuck and remote down in accordance with the notes. The timing is a bit tricky, because it plays perfectly if you hit it as it comes in, as opposed to swiping when it fills up the box. When you beat it, you’ll unlock a Michael Jackson-like jacket. Bitchin’.

After some story-geared missions, we trailed into multiplayer mode. The games don’t take place within the school—or, at least not the ones we played. With the Wii controls, it gets somewhat tricky, especially if you over-exaggerate the slightest bit. There are a decent variety of minigames and they are all based on your school classes. In biology, we dissected a rat. Your scoring for this is primarily based on your accuracy, but time counts as well. We also tested ourselves with some geography. This was pretty fun, but we certainly showed our lack of knowledge when it comes to European geography. We also took a swing at the math section, where you must be the quickest to answer a series of questions. The multiplayer is fun, but it is obvious most of your time is supposed to be spent in the story mode. Also, multiplayer will be offline-only. This makes sense considering it doesn’t take place within the world.

After some multiplayer, we toured Bullworth Academy on the Xbox 360. The graphical upgrade is incredibly noticeable, even to a nearly extreme degree. The game wasn’t built off either the PS2 game’s engine or the RAGE engine, but it wasn’t entirely built from the ground up either. We were told that the game could have easily gone with a completely realistic style, but they wanted to keep the cartoon-like aspect alive. That was probably a damn good call, considering how much fire they come under already. Still, seeing Bully on the 360 was very pleasing to the eye. Rockstar also informed us that it uses the 360’s power to do a lot more with lighting, namely make it real time. As time progresses, you’ll see the environment gradually get darker.

On the 360, we took a look at another new mission. This one will have you help out the “real” Santa Claus, who is a bit down on his luck. We won’t go into it too much so you can see it unfold for yourself, but if you’ve wanted to beat down some elves, definitely complete this mission.

We didn’t notice many glitches for either version of the game. The only problems we encountered came on the 360 version, which was about a 2-week old build. They did not come naturally, though, as they only happened when we skipped into certain parts the game on the developer kit. They didn’t affect the environment; the game merely wouldn’t respond to left stick movements. Since this build, many of the kinks have been worked out, but Rockstar is taking the next few days to take out the final ones.

So with only a few weeks until release, gamers who have already moved onto the next generation will get their chance to stomp around Bullworth Academy and set it straight. We had a lot of fun with what we got our hands on, so we can only imagine the retail version of Scholarship Edition will meet our expectations. Look for Bully: Scholarship Edition out on store shelves March 4th.

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