(Originally published to Glitchwave on 6/26/2024)
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Bully
Developer: Rockstar
Publisher: Rockstar
Genre(s): Open-World
Platforms: PS2
Release Date: October 17, 2006
Let’s discuss a topic I don’t think I’ve ever touched on in any of my reviews: the concept of a “hard T rating” and a “soft M rating.” This discussion might alienate the international audience I may or may not have, but the ESRB that classifies the content ratings of video games across North America is the homegrown organization whose practices of which I am the most familiar. I’d probably be denied a position on the executive board that finalizes these decisions, but I decree that there are too many games rated “M” that are either tame enough to allow younger gamers to play them without parental guilt just as there are games tailored for an adolescent audience that are far too risque to warrant the mild categorization. A prime example of the former that I never understood is Halo unless it's simply due to the expulsion of alien blood by the spraying of bullets that cements its rating, and labeling that as “mature” is something I fundamentally disagree with from an ethical standpoint. On the other end of the “T for teen” spectrum, Bully, another open-world IP from the visionary masters of the genre at Rockstar, pushed the standards and technicalities of what constitutes a mature video game to its absolute breaking point.
It’s baffling that Bully ever saw the light of day, much less the fact that the ESRB did not bestow the new IP from the renowned gaming provocateurs at Rockstar with the most extreme of cautionary content warning labels. In their neverending escapade to push the envelope of what was permissible in a video game before being tried in court for acts of ravaging society at large with obscenities, one would think that a series in which the player mows down pedestrians on the city streets or plays as a fucking serial killer would be difficult to surpass in fanning the flames of outrage. However, Bully forwards the developer’s pension for pissing off parental figures by going backward: to the youthful era of one’s adolescent days. As virulent as the backlash to Rockstar’s previous franchises was from older arbiters of supposed morality, they could at least admit that those games steered clear of any characters or NPCs under the adult age bracket. Of course, Rockstar dares to void the minor clemency by crafting what is essentially a high school game revolving around teenaged characters in their anarchic, open-world format that put them on the shit list of parents and politicians everywhere. You can imagine a game that places children at the helm of the violence and chaos was sure to garner a metric shit ton of backlash from the same people, and Rockstar certainly received their fair share of death threats and even unreasonable demands to sabotage their own business by taking Bully out back and executing it as an act of repentance for their sins. We gamers know from playing plenty of Rockstar’s other games that the studio’s output tends to be more substantial than the amoral smut as rumored by indignant outsiders, and Bully is no exception. Rockstar has plenty to satirically divulge regarding the American high school experience as profoundly as whenever they comment on the state of urban American life and culture in their best-associated series.
Just to clarify, Jimmy Hopkins, the protagonist of Bully, is not the eponymous descriptor the title is alluding to. However, his truculent disposition has caused a chain of consequences that have led him to get expelled from every high school east of the Mississippi. As a last resort to preserve the fifteen-year-old’s status as a student, he’s transferred to Bullworth Academy, an educational institution whose student body seems to be especially unruly and incorrigible. If the common comparison made between school and prison holds any legitimate parallels, then Bullworth Academy is like Oz Jr. if the brutal maximum security penitentiary was co-ed. In addition to the daily bouts of violent chaos between the students, Bullworth Academy is akin to a correctional facility because the typical high school cliques fracture the social dynamic as rigidly as native tribes. The nerds and jocks are self-explanatory as two sides of two dramatically opposite social spectrums, but Bullworth Academy also houses gangs of snooty preps, retro-chic greasers, and a group of kids in white polo shirts who torment the other kids so frequently that they are considered to be the designated bullies of the school. While these groups are drastically different, what unites them as bonafide Bullworth material is that they are all insufferably hostile assholes. Even the supposed meek and feeble nerds regularly pick fights with the other kids, even if it usually results in them writing a check that their asses can’t check. While Jimmy’s rough and tough attitude fits the school’s atmosphere like a glove, he can’t bear to stomach the dissension and cruelty between his peers. To bring Bullworth to a state of repose, he devises a plan with the smarmy Gary and timid Petey, the other “outsiders” in the school, to climb the apex of the social ladder and bring balance to Bullworth via becoming the alpha dog and taking control of the school’s social hierarchies.
While Jimmy is critical of the violence and daily humiliation the Bullworth students subject to each other, he certainly doesn’t shy away from inflicting pain and suffering on his peers if he’s provoked. As one could probably infer from my previous prison comparisons, every waking moment at Bullworth is a fight to survive. In fact, as soon as Jimmy steps through the front gate on his first day, the bullies immediately start sizing him up and swarm him like a pack of yellow jackets. But Jimmy is not a delicate little flower ready to tolerate any form of abuse. Messing with Jimmy is like poking a bull, and you’ll live to regret your decision once he’s shown you the horns. Bully’s combat, whether it be for defensive purposes or to cause narrative dissonance by bullying underserved students for the player’s own sick pleasure, is fairly nuanced for hand-to-hand fisticuffs. Pressing one button in quick succession will make Jimmy deliver a series of haymakers that will be enough to subdue most of the students, and Jimmy can block and dodge the blows from harassers while targeting them with the back trigger. Jimmy can learn new combat skills through the wrestling courses in gym class, and some dirty, government-grade moves from a mentally ill, homeless Korean War veteran who sleeps in a secret outdoor alcove behind an abandoned school bus on campus. Jimmy also has the ability to grab folks by the collar to leverage his body blows more accurately. When one of the students Jimmy’s been roughing up is on his last legs, Jimmy can perform a “fatality” in the form of a classic bullying technique like an Indian burn, hitting the victim with his own arms, pinning him down and hocking a loogie down someone’s throat, etc. If the assailant is too formidable or Jimmy is short on time, he can also take advantage of his surroundings to enact other feats of antisocial pastimes like shoving kids into lockers and trash cans. Dunking their heads down the school’s toilets while holding down the flush mechanism is also an option in the school's bathrooms. Bully also supplies Jimmy with a plethora of supplementary tools of mayhem fitting for the mischievous arsenal of Bart Simpson or Keith Moon: stink bombs, firecrackers, cartons of eggs, and a slingshot with inexhaustible ammunition so Jimmy is never handicapped by his lack of combative range. The rocket launcher and spud gun are some dangerously mighty weapons that can stop the football team’s quarterback dead in his tracks. Still, none of the violence in Bully will be fatal to any of Bully’s various NPCs no matter the potency of the firepower at play. The total lack of bloodshed in Bully is probably why the ESRB deemed the game appropriate for the age demographic the majority of the characters fall into themselves. Briefly incapacitating the NPCs as they writhe around in agony is definitely not on the same scale of graphic violence as messily ending someone’s life with a bullet to the brain. Still, while the violence in Bully isn’t as permanent or grizzly, it's arguably more upsetting from a certain perspective. Most gamers haven’t been involved with any mafia activity or have faced the dire consequences of flirting with that seedy underbelly, and citywide massacres on the street rarely occur. However, I’d be willing to bet that many gamers have traumatic memories of being verbally harassed and more severe, physical instances of belittlement at some point in their lives as depicted in Bully. It hits a raw, personal nerve that GTA does not. If the combat of Bully doesn’t conjure up any unpleasant memories, then the amount of debauchery one can create as Jimmy is a smashing hoot and a holler. Who says you need to commit murder to have a grand ol’ time in a video game?
However, just because Jimmy isn’t committing crimes liable to send him behind bars for the rest of his natural life doesn’t mean that the authorities are going to turn a blind eye to his antics. Roaming the halls as pervasively as the students are the prefects, glorified hall monitors common among real-life private schools. Normally, the role would be assigned to senior students as an additive credit to their light school schedule, but there is no way any of these towering, broad-shouldered jerkoffs aren’t old enough to drink yet. They’re a bunch of goons hired on like rent-a-cops that receive payment to delightfully put teenagers into submission, projecting their insecurities that stem from being brutalized in their youth. This is why they charge towards Jimmy for the slightest misdemeanor and considering he’s as turbulent as a wild dog in a butcher shop, they’re going to get a hearty amount of cardio exercise on the job. However, these prefects, or any other authority figure, can’t apprehend Jimmy for the slightest inkling of misconduct like the police force in the GTA games. The “trouble meter” isn’t an accumulation of bad behavior that escalates the degree of authoritative pushback with continual felonies. It’s a two-sided scope of a heated warning and getting busted when caught depending on the severity of the action. Jimmy will be slightly reprimanded if he’s found agitating any of his classmates of the same age range and gender, but assaulting any girls, middle school kids, or adults of any varying vocations will warrant a trip to the principal’s office. After the visitations start piling up, the prim and conservative Bullworth headmaster Crabblesnitch will be forced to strike Jimmy down with the furious disciplinary hammer of law and order. However, as much of a pest Jimmy is proving himself to be, Crabblesnitch cannot expel him because that sensible punitive measure conflicts with the construct of a game’s fair error margins. His decision instead is placing Jimmy in a productive round of detention where Jimmy mows the grass of Bullworth’s scattered lawns (or shovels snow in the winter). Even though this process technically constitutes as a minigame, the tedium of pointing Jimmy around riding an automated lawn mower makes this demanded section anything but enjoyable. Still, that’s the brilliant intention of this punishment for Jimmy’s misdeeds, and it's grating enough to incentivize the players to keep their noses clean, as Crabblesnitch often says.
For as unwelcoming as Bullworth is for all who are unfortunate enough to be sent there, it’s ironically the most close-knit setting Rockstar has ever crafted for one of their trademark open-world titles. The progress initiative for the studio during the PS2 era when their open-world formula was still in an infantile state was to widen the expanse of a game’s world with every subsequent project. After managing to integrate three significant American west-coast cities onto one disc with GTA: San Andreas, some players might be disappointed in the modest and restrained world that exists within the bounds of Bully. My argument against this rationale of bigger equating to being better is that Bully’s boundaries ensure that the player will understand the environment on a more intimate level. One way in which Bully benefits from being tightly constrained is how it allows the player to get better acquainted with Jimmy’s fellow Bullworth attendees. Why anyone would want to ingratiate themselves with these vicious reprobates is beyond the point. What astounds me is that each student, no matter their significance to Jimmy’s goal of reaching the top of the popularity mountain, is a distinctive character due to their constant presence in the foreground. For instance, Trent, the blonde bully, is one of the few gay students at Bullworth, who will make subtle suggestions for Jimmy to take his shirt off around him once he earns the respect of his clique. He’s relegated to just a number on the bully team during any mission where he and his tenacious friends are relevant to the plot, but his slight social tendencies speak volumes about why he acts out as belligerently as he does. Algernon, or “Algie” for short, is a pudgy nerd who reacts to all forms of animosity by wetting his pants. He awkwardly uses “hip” street lingo (that I have no idea where he picked up. Isn’t this game set in the late 1970s/early 1980s?) when Jimmy chats with him and can be seen smoking a cigarette in the parking lot on rare occasions. Something about Algie’s behavior outside of the missions tells me that he isn’t all content with his nerd footing and desperately wants to be perceived as cool outside his social group. Sorry to tell you this buddy, but you were destined for a lifetime of playing D&D (or “Grottos and Gremlins" as it's referred to here) and fearfully soiling yourself just by your name alone. Gloria, a middle schooler who holds no gravity to the plot whatsoever, is constantly mentioning historical figures like Machiavelli and Oscar Wilde in passing, showing her precocious love for fine literature. These are a few examples, but I promise that there is at least one interesting factoid about every student at Bullworth regardless of whether the camera overtly targets them. The player gradually comes to know every kid like an honest-to-God schooling experience. How often are all of the notable GTA NPCs simply hanging around the map minding their own business? Not even the modern open-world games that make San Andreas look diminutive in comparison could pull that off.
If the player does grow bored of hopping through the academy’s halls and causing mass riots in the boy’s dorm room before breakfast time, Bully’s map does expand in the same way that the GTA games reward progression milestones. Bully’s narrative is divided into chapters, ending one by defeating a clique leader and moving on to the next one. After conquering the shaved gorilla that is the Bully leader, Russell, the second chapter unlocks the privilege of stepping outside of the academy’s jurisdiction to the outside world of the town’s metropolitan areas. The first location that Jimmy can traverse is the commercial district and the ritzy suburban hills of Old Bullworth Vale where the nouveau riche preppies reside as well as some of the more esteemed members of Bullworth’s faculty. Once Jimmy tackles the greasers, their hangout of New Coventry to the east opens up, an area reflecting their blue-collar style and sensibilities. Eventually, the Blue Skies Industrial Park is open for business, where the sight of trailer parks displays an obvious income imbalance among Bullworth’s residents. Most players will likely be thankful that the game isn’t confined to the Bullworth campus just to stretch their legs and get some fresh air, but I’m of the belief that a game should think twice before offering a non-linear, open-world environment as it could be an unfilled waste of potential. Fortunately, Bullworth’s greater borders are just as sprawling with the opportunity to make mayhem like in the student-infested corridors of the academy. Because the map is succinctly designed, there isn’t a wasted kernel of space like the common case in broader open-world games. Also, Bully’s open-world identity starts to flourish when the downtown districts are open in more than simply expanding the parameters of the playground. For a quaint, podunk New England burg located along the water, Bullworth surprisingly offers plenty of activities. The places of commerce include a barber shop, a comic book store, and a market that conveniently sells all of Jimmy’s various wanton wares. Jimmy can gear up in the boxing ring to beat the living shit out of the preppies in their preferred sporting pastime, and the winding roads are perfect to race the greasers on their bikes. The epicenter of merriment in Bullworth is the carnival up on the hill that never leaves town. For the low price of one dollar per admission, Jimmy can partake in the classic carnival fare of shooting galleries and bell ringing, participate in go-kart races, and place a monetary bet on which midget will knock the other down in a freakshow exhibit. I guess exploiting the physically disabled was a stone of sensitivity left unturned in GTA that Rockstar implemented here as a staircase thought. Still, whether or not the extra content beats in Bully are tasteful (who am I trying to kid here), the town of Bullworth proves that an open-world map doesn’t have to take a half hour of real-time to traverse through to leave an impression on the player.
But everyone knows that you can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat and in this context, I’m alluding to having to prioritize attending class over gallivanting about town like a hedonistic wastrel. Lest we forget in the whirlwind of beatdowns that Bullworth is still a place of learning. Every day at 9 AM and 1 PM, two seminars are conducted for two typical school subjects, and Jimmy is expected to arrive in a punctual manner as part of his journey to becoming an exemplary scholar (yeah, right). Of course, the game doesn’t force Jimmy to take the studious route, but be aware that the prefects will take his truancy as a golden opportunity to trounce him. Besides, the developers have managed to make the most mundane and nerve-wracking aspect of school at least tolerable by gamifying the curriculum. English class is a word scramble, geography class involves matching flags to their countries/states, and music class is a rhythm game where Jimmy begrudgingly plays percussion instruments accompanied by the most tone-deaf group of amateur student musicians. The rhythm-oriented sequence of chemistry class is the only undercooked (or under chemicalized) minigame of the bunch, and it's obvious the developers couldn't think of something stimulating that coincides with the subject. Perhaps a methodical mixing process like the animal dissection minigame that comprises the workload of biology class would’ve also proved to be too similar, but at least it would’ve required more than minimal effort. Even if the player finds these classes to distract from the prankish frolicking they could be having, the developers always make this obligatory part of schooling worth their while. Passing Jimmy’s classes will grant him various perks and rewards for his uncharacteristic diligence. Acing chemistry class will allow Jimmy to craft the long-range tools with a chemset in his room, and wooing the teacher with self-portraits in a Centipede-esque game in art class will guarantee a higher boost of health when he macks on one of the girls with the fiery romantic passion of Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity (or on Trent. Hey, it gives Jimmy the same additional layer of health.) Jimmy may question the school’s bureaucratic authority every day, but he’ll never wonder how the material he’s expected to learn will factor into his future like many other high schoolers.
Bullworth’s unorthodox way of graduating is setting Jimmy free from his schooling obligations once he’s successfully completed five classes per course. Once the commitment has been lifted, it gives Jimmy a bevy of time to engage in other offerings. Because the missions become more prolonged as the game progresses, Jimmy is going to need that liberated period to cram in enough activity before he drops like a ton of bricks at 2 AM. The time spent each day in Bully is contingent on a time limit, an abundant eighteen-hour stretch between when Jimmy’s clock rings to signal a new day and when his body collapses like a robot whose batteries have been depleted. Even if the player is enjoying the degeneracy, it’s critical to abide by Jimmy’s bedtime more than any other engagement in the game. Passing out anywhere else but Jimmy’s bed at the deadline, or at least the floor of his dorm room, will leave him in a vulnerable position that the other students at Bullworth are too eager and unscrupulous not to take advantage of. The demerit for pushing Jimmy beyond the threshold of alertness is similar to what happens when the prefects or the Bullworth police force seize and detain him. His special tools are confiscated, the double coat of health planted on him from lip locking is removed, and Jimmy will have to visit the school store to repurchase his shoes and other clothing items that his peers have liberally stripped from him in his unconscious daze. Giving the player a bedtime to spare our narcoleptic boy both his possessions and his dignity (and his virginity, probably) may seem counterintuitive for the freeform open-world genre where the constraints should be loosened. However, setting a time limit to how much trouble Jimmy can get into is another positively immersive aspect relating to the realm of school life.
Between balancing school and Jimmy’s (a)social life like all teenagers, he mustn’t forget to accomplish his mission of ascending the Bullworth throne by completing the missions. Throughout the chapters, the arc no matter which clique Jimmy is dealing with is essentially the same. One member of the clique will take interest in Jimmy from the word of mouth he’s been generating on campus and once Jimmy reciprocates, they’ll have him perform a few tasks for their personal benefit. Soon, Jimmy will anger the clique to the point where they’ll bum-rush him whenever they see him in their peripheral vision. Jimmy’s antagonizing tactics vary from clique to clique, but they usually boil down to acting against their interests with another clique or seducing their token female member (entitled prep girl Lola, promiscuous greaser girl Lola, and type-A cheerleader Mandy). The chapter culminates with Jimmy facing off against the clique leader as a “boss battle”, with Boy Wonder Petey providing assistance. For a bunch of high school kids duking it out, the climactic missions that cap off a chapter are quite epic thanks to the solid pacing and build-up beforehand. While the gratification of completing an elongated task is felt, I can’t say that the difficulty adds to that sense of accomplishment. I’m not sure if Rockstar intentionally made Bully easier than any of the GTA games on the same system because the game can be legally played by non-adults, but failing any of the missions was an occurrence that happened only a handful of times rather than what was a trial and error process for Rockstar’s “mature” franchise. The only clique that managed to make Jimmy wave the white flag as he curled up in a pained fetal position were surprisingly the nerds, thwarting his raid on their fortress at the observatory with the engineering genius of potato launchers. Even if most missions in Bully won’t make the player grit their teeth, at least the variety on display will hold the player’s interest. Jimmy will challenge the cliques to bike races, prank the jocks by pissing in their Gatorade cooler, and escort the nerds through a spooky funhouse while using the animatronics to cease the pursuit of the jocks running after them. Do not sleep through the Halloween mission where Jimmy and his allies pull the prank of the century on the gym teacher. There are also arcs pertaining to the workplace squabbles of a few of Bullworth’s teachers in the mix of each chapter that provide a momentary distraction from its focal point. Galloway and Hattrick are always at each other’s throats because the self-righteous math teacher has a problem with the English teacher’s propensity for the bottle, and Burton the washed-up gym teacher can’t keep his grubby mitts off of elicit paraphernalia involving girl’s nude photos and their undergarments. The panty raid he has Jimmy perform for him is one mission that I think the ESRB might have glossed over when they stamped this game with a “T” rating. While I’m at it, I’m pretty sure the lunch lady drugged and raped the chemistry teacher on their “date.”
The cliques can also get cross with Jimmy because of that bastard Gary’s scheming. Considering all Gary does after backstabbing Jimmy is ruin all of the progress Jimmy makes with each clique, he’s obviously intended to be the primary protagonist as opposed to a Jimmy versus the world angle his quest would imply. Gary is a great antagonist to Jimmy because his characterization provides a contrast that shows more insight into Jimmy’s character. As some characters say, Jimmy is a tender soul behind his rocky, coarse exterior. He’s the epitome of chaotic good, even if giving him this label would result in him telling me to shut up and call me a dork or something. Jimmy genuinely wants his classmates to get along and realizes the only way to achieve this idyllic state of tranquility is to strong-arm the instigators. Meanwhile, Gary is a tried and true narcissistic sociopath destined to either have a jail cell adjacent to Hannibal Lecter or a career in politics. His mission of school-wide dominance stems from his sinister desire for everyone at Bullworth to grovel at his feet. He’s what Jimmy is perceived to be at first glance without any character context, and he exists so the player can see what an upstanding and moral character Jimmy really is despite his harsh methods. It’s a shame then that the developers didn’t know what to do with Gary and how to integrate him as Jimmy’s nemesis properly. The conflict between Jimmy and the cliques and his conflict with Gary does not have that smooth synergy the developers believe it does. After the first chapter, Gary is cast aside as a character that is rather spoken about rather than interacted with, so the occasional moment where he shows up to throw a monkey wrench into Jimmy’s goals feels shoehorned because he doesn’t feel significant. The way in which the developers try to assert Gary’s significance is nonsensical because of his underlying character context. Everyone on campus knows Gary and is aware that he’s a sadistic creep; so aware of this fact that he holds a special designation as the one kid that everyone leaves alone in a school where they all insist on badgering and persecuting one another. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense as to why they’re so susceptible to being manipulated by Gary when he hires burnout kids around town to hurt every clique in a specific manner and sabotage Jimmy’s credibility as a result. I don’t know who else could potentially serve as the game’s penultimate boss if not Gary, but the final moments with him feel abrupt. As anticlimactic as it sounds, the game should’ve left Gary out of the loop and ended when Jimmy brings together every clique at Bullworth in perfect harmony.
Bully is a game filled with piss and vinegar. It’s made of snips, snails, and puppy dog tails with a shot of Fireball Whiskey, or whatever makes teenage boys such pugnacious creatures besides the testosterone flowing through their systems. It’s one of the angriest games I’ve ever played, with every character interacting with a level of malevolence unbecoming of real people. Bully is another trademark Rockstar caricature of a facet of humanity unexplored in their other series, and it bites at the American school system and the social castes within it just as hard as GTA does with society at large. To call Bully “GTA for kids” because of its less severe surface content is entirely reductive, and I think I’ve proven why by using its mean-spirited tone and suggestive mission objectives as examples. Yet, the game does not share GTA’s prevailing cynicism, as Jimmy Hopkins’ hope for peace and unity in this ugly establishment conveys the underlying thought that despite an individual’s differences, we can still coexist without any contention. This lesson can be valuable to a teenage demographic, and the snotty, rambunctious aura of high school life that Bully exudes will probably resonate with them the deepest. Rockstar’s most juvenile and compact open-world game is perhaps my favorite of their output.
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