Bully: Hands-On Preview

Extensive playtest of Rockstar's latest, as we question the controversy and get to the bottom of what this promising school adventure is all about. New videos, too.

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Not one, but two trips to Rockstar have been on Kikizo's packed meeting schedule lately, both involving some quality time with Bully, and neither leaving doubt that we could be looking at an instant classic in the making.

The name change in PAL-land to Canis Canem Edit - 'Dog Eat Dog', in Latinese - isn't due to complaints as some would have you believe (after all, the name doesn't change the content, does it?) but in fact Europe licensing issues - and secretly, of course, everyone's still calling it Bully in protest.

Set in a New England border school in a nondescript time period, the game is thoughtfully described by Rockstar's Hugh Michaels as an 'interactive comedy adventure' aiming to get more than a few chuckles out of players, and balancing the formula with storyline, engrossing atmosphere, and perhaps even a serious message.

School is a setting that has worked well in countless other media like TV, movies and books, and one that Rockstar thinks will work really well for a game. "What we've tried to capture is the essence of mischief and fun that people associate with their time at school," explains Hugh. "They weren't all good times but they weren't all bad either."

Rockstar Vancouver's first title is hardly the cynical, irresponsible product that newspapers for stuffy sixtysomethings have the inability to comprehend. An instantly captivating title, its focus is on storytelling, characterisation and artistic expression - not school violence, which is an undertone by comparison, and only ever reflective of what any student sees every day for real. The aim is not to terrorise, but to survive in high school - something many users will be able to relate to. Kids are and always have been evil, after all.

From the game's opening cinematic, it's obvious that players are in for a nicely acted, thoughtfully landscaped story. "A lot of games don't really concentrate on story, but the videogame audience is very sophisticated when it comes to story," reckons Hugh. The opening scene shows fifteen year-old Jimmy Hopkins being driven to his first day at Bullworth Adademy by his mother and stepfather, who Jimmy has more than a slight aversion to.

Hopkins - old enough to be a user of the game which has been given ESRB Teen and BBFC 15 certifications - has been expelled from every other school around, and Bullworth is his last chance to get things together. You'll spend a year here, so it's probably going to be advisable to keep your head down to start with (not, as if to destroy our earlier argument, run and start the first possible fight once you're through the gates, just to see what happens).

It's not easy to 'fit in' at first; you don't always know what's going or what people are taking about. "Jimmy is a tough kid, but he's not a malicious thug. He's not there to cause trouble. The fights he does get into and the trouble he makes, is often in defence of himself or weaker kids around the school."

The fighting is quite cartoonish in style; there's no blood or physical damage. No one dies. You'll see them get knocked down, but they're still moving about and talking. "We're not showing anything that doesn't happen in real life or that isn't shown on TV at five in the afternoon, or in blockbuster high-school dramas," Hugh explains. "It's a topic that a lot of different entertainment media have been allowed to deal with, with no fuss at all. It's a perennial topic for entertainment. We just want videogames to be allowed to deal with the same thing, and no one's set a game in a school since the Spectrum days.

"Maybe by bringing new stories, themes and settings that are obviously popular with modern culture, we can bring new people into videogames who have been put off by the few game topics that are always repeated."

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