Rockstar Vancouver's Bully is a game that has been deep in the shadow of the publisher's flagship series, Grand Theft Auto, ever since its announcement. Everyone from parental groups to gamers to frenzied rabid lunatic lawyers were expecting this game to be Grand Theft Auto in a school. And to a degree, that assessment is 100% correct - not so much because the game gives players a license for the same kind of wholesale bloody havoc that the GTA series is known for, but because of the game structure and witty personality it shares with its older, more psychotic brother.

Welcome to the asylum

Jimmy Hopkins is not a child, not yet a full-fledged Rockstar-brand thug. After his mother's XXth marriage to yet another rich husband, Jimmy is dumped at Bullworth Academy while his questionable guardians take their year-long honeymoon. Bullworth is an interesting place: part boarding school, part 80s teen movie homage, and part lunatic asylum - a place where the principal and other faculty believe that only a steady diet of neglect and abuse will be able to forge their students into upstanding citizens of the future.

This premise is inarguably Bully's greatest strength. Probably moreso than any game that isn't an RPG, Bully benefits immensely from it's wry, heartfelt, somewhat cynical but ultimately positive personality. As I was finishing the game's last mission, I felt a level of satisfaction that I rarely get from a final boss battle, not so much because the battle itself was anything spectacular, but because I had grown to hate the game's primary antagonist because of the various crap he'd done to Jimmy and me. Rare is the game that exudes enough personality to elicit that kind of reaction, but Bully is one of them. Nearly every character has a unique voice and personality.

The strong "sense of self" that the game has is largely due to the amazing presentation. While the characters are far from the most impressive polygon models you'll ever see, they bring across plenty of attitude in their animations and designs. Morbidly obese nerds waddle the same way you remember them doing and jocks will tackle people indiscriminately from behind to amuse themselves. It's all very convincing. The environments are refined, detailed, and uniformly well-realized, with nothing standing out as out of place, which makes the game world seem all the more alive, even if it's not a lush world chock full of bloom lighting effects and fancy bump-mapped terrain.

But if there's any major factor in bringing the game and its characters' attitudes across, it's the sound. The voice acting is superlative. There are no big celebrity names like Grand Theft Auto has, but everyone sounds great. Jimmy, whose voice we naturally hear more than anyone elses, has all the toughness, sarcasm, and the vaguest hint of vulnerablity that you'd expect from a kid who's got his entire school against him. And as good as the voice is, the music is its equal. Though really understated and fairly low key, it really helps the game come alive with a sort of everyday whimsy that is perfect for a game that takes place during the proverbial "school daze."

Too cool for this school

But if personality is what sets Bully apart from the pack, gameplay is what makes it familiar. And boy, is it familiar. I'll be honest: I came to the game kind of expecting a different experience, maybe heavier RPG elements or something. Seeing how far removed it is thematically from GTA (running around in school as a kid versus being a drug/crime/entertainment mogul) only reinforced that feeling. But from the purest gameplay standpoint, Bully is nearly identical to GTA, but with a few marked improvements.

Melee combat, for example, is significantly deeper than in GTA, aided by charge-based attacks (the longer you hold the button down, the more damage) and grappling. Bikes and scooters aren't all that different from what they were previously, but the addition of a skateboard was pretty inspired. It's a good balance between the breakneck speed of a bike and Jimmy's regular dashing speed. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that you can't do too much in the way of sick skateboarding tricks, though. Tony Hawk, what hath thou wrought!?

Some of the improvements are a bit more significant, though. Weapons-based fighting benefits a great deal by having an aim mode that locks the camera behind Jimmy's shoulder so you can take out enemies with greater accuracy. But the weapons themselves - well, let's just say the only difference between a a grenade in GTA and a firecracker in Bully is that the grenade does more damage. That's not to say that all of the weapons have direct parallels - a lot of the weapons in Bully are non-lethal, for example - but I'll be damned if firing that potato gun at point blank range into some preppy's abdomen felt very different from cutting guys in half with a shotgun in GTA.

Probably the biggest changes in Bully's gameplay are tied to the theme. For example, wanton wholesale violence is no longer tolerated. You can smack around guys your own age without too much trouble, but hit a girl, younger kid, or adult, and the authorities will be on you in an instant. Without the high-powered military arsenal available, fighting off these do-gooders is generally more trouble than it's worth. The game even rewards you for doing the right thing in certain cases: you can only unlock certain weapons and skills by actually attending class, for example.

In spite of this, though, lot of things about Bully's gameplay feel familiar. You may be dealing with nerds, jocks, and preps instead of Ballaz, Yakuza, and Mafia, but the effect is the same. Tick one faction off and you'll end up getting into altercations if you tresspass into its territory. The implications are a bit more severe in Bully (since you don't have the option of just running people over), but the effect is the same. A bit more disturbing is how you can smooch on girls you've flirted with for what amounts to the same effect as employing the services of a sex professional in GTA. I guess CJ and Tommy Vercetti were just engaging in really enthusiastic first base in the back of those cars.

Most likely to succeed

Ultimately, what Bully amounts to is comparable to what Tim Schafer did in Psychonauts. Here's a game that is for all intents and purposes a pretty entry in a popular genre, but it manages to distinguish itself because of its artistic vision and themes more than its gameplay. Not to say that the gameplay is bad - it's actually a bit better than its more notorious older brother. But's it's not the main draw. Bully is about something that many of us found quite elusive when we were actually there: having fun in school. There's no carjacking, no fatalities, no blood, no guns, no drugs, and no prostitutes. But in spite of that, this game's lineage is clear. And that is definitely not a bad thing.

· · · Lee Francis