BULLY is a Rockstar masterpiece from the 2000s that even the developers themselves forgot about.

"BULLY" (aka Bally, Bully, Bully, Bully, GTA at School and ‘Dog Dog Edit’) is a 2006 video game by Rockstar Vancouver. Originally developed on PS2, but only in 2008 it reached the owners of bakery workshops. And as of 2022, you can even play it on 8 different platforms of different generations: PC, PlayStation 2-3-4, Xbox 360, Wii, iOS And Android.

Copying the Wiki should probably end here, because there will be a lot of FF written in front.

Love from the first page or review after 13 years.

Again the author will begin to remember his past years and cry.. It was December 2008, the next semester at school was coming to its logical conclusion, there were holidays and vacations ahead, but this was not my main joy. One day, returning home from school, I looked into a classic stall with a wide variety of waste paper in order to buy a brand new TV program for the next week. And then I could not even imagine that this visit would become the cornerstone in my development as a video game lover. And the whole point is that on one of the shelves of that stall there was a brand new issue of the magazine "SHPILE". At that time, I didn’t even think that people could write about video games in the press (much less dedicate entire magazines to them). And of course, money for the magazine was honestly begged from my mother on the same day.

30+ pages about games/movies/new gadgets, a beautiful double-sided poster for the wall and a DVD with various demos, music, various screenshots from games and much more. Say that it was the most pleasant event of that month – that’s an understatement. At that time I did not have the Internet, and new games appeared once a month, by choosing the most beautiful cover in one of the disc stores. Therefore, I read this magazine a huge number of times, with profuse salivation for every second game… But there was one game in this magazine, the existence of which at first I didn’t even believe (it captivated me so much with its concept, screenshots and description). And, of course, this game was Bully. Lord knows how long I was looking for it… Four long months of searching in all possible stores with discs and dozens of stunned sellers who told me, “Calm down, such a game does not exist.”.». But one day all these unbelieving N’Wakhs were convinced of the opposite, because she reached our province. And so, when the disk with it was purchased, the game was installed and launched for the first time – then the real world ceased to exist for me for several weeks, and the game itself was completed 3 times in a row.

Who would have told me, reading an article about Bully in 2008, that exactly in 13 years I will write about my love for this game already my own article..

The plot, the lamb and the psychos

The game’s plot tells the story of Jimmy Hopkins, a 15-year-old bully who moves to ‘permanent residence’ at Bullworth Academy (read boarding school). And the reason for this was the horrific behavior of the GG in previous educational institutions (fights, hooliganism, foul language, graffiti, etc.), because of which his mother places him in Bullworth, and she leaves with her new stepfather Jimmy to the Canaries (well, if not there, then where?).

And it was naive to believe that Jimmy will change dramatically and become a good boy. But who would have thought that a hooligan and not very intelligent newcomer to school would be the most adequate character among the others?. After all, very soon Jimmy gets acquainted with all the characters, groups and basic way of life. And at this moment he clearly understands that he has found himself in the lair of real psychopaths and madmen (and this is without any exaggeration, but more on that later). And since the GG only knows how to fight, threaten and lie – this becomes the main weapon in his main goal. A his goals are almost Napoleonic – take control of the entire school in one academic year (subdue all factions, remove all those who disagree from your path and gain the trust of the teachers… well, and take revenge, where would we be without that).

Actually, this is the main goal of the game, towards which we will move step by step in story missions. But, since Before us is a game from Rockstar, then not everything is as one-sided and boring as it looks on paper. Indeed, in addition to the main storyline, the player will have an open world with dozens of different tasks and plots.

The identity of this world

Many of us are well aware of what Rockstar’s game worlds are like. These are huge territories of gradually opening space, which with each new game are increasingly supplied with local events, crazy stories, interesting bonus events, etc. And the main game of this developer has always been considered GTA (I’m even afraid to challenge this title), which has absorbed all the most delicious. But what will happen if all this is not spread out over a huge location in several cities, but is cleverly placed in a small ‘student town’? That’s right, there will be an incredibly rich and composed world of Bullworth.

Open world and atmosphere.

Actually, here I want to talk about the main advantage of the open world Bully compared to series GTA. And the first thing that catches your eye is the transport system. We are all already accustomed to stealing cars and changing them like gloves. We are all accustomed to spectacular police chases and stars in the corner of the screen. We all know how in this virtual world you can drive along the sidewalks in a car (hurry up to jump, pedestrian!). And, of course, we are all accustomed to the concept of ‘death’ in games. And everything so familiar from the above, all this is simply missing in Bully.

Yes it still is Open World, where you can have a fight with anyone, anytime. But you won’t be able to hide so easily, because the only means of transport available to you are a skateboard and a bicycle (you are a schoolboy, after all), and only towards the end of the game will you be introduced to mopeds (but try to ride without a helmet on it and you will immediately see a police car on your tail, which will catch up with you in ten seconds). You won’t see any deaths or guns here. You won’t be able to rob stores and extort money from passers-by. What if you went completely crazy and hit a child/girl/adult?, then get ready to be caught in the next 5 seconds without the right to escape, after which you will be taken to the director. This world is built around schoolchildren and their concerns, and therefore the level of acceptable madness here is school-level.

Well, in what other game can you sneak into a women’s dormitory in the evening, and then be escorted out by the ear by the watchman?? Where else can you stuff your classmates into lockers and put ‘Kick me’ notes on their backs (and believe me, everyone will start kicking him after that)? Where else can you hide in trash cans (and we’re not talking about Duke Nukem Forever now) from the elders? Where else can you be caught for major disorderly conduct and then forced to mow the grass in the school yard?? Yes, this game lacks a lot of things that we are so used to in GTA, but at the same time it gives a huge number of new things that cannot be found in other games.

What about the atmosphere in this open school world?? Here I will say very little, because there are still many points ahead that will more than tell about the atmosphere of this game. But specifically in this block we will talk about the renowned attention to detail from the developers. Notes; school fights; jokes from students; posters on the walls, each of which can be read; well-trodden paths in alleys; daily notes on the news board; your room, which is complemented by appropriate interior attributes, after completing each mission; a huge variety of different ‘cosmetics’ (clothing, hairstyles, tattoos); residents of the town itself and their cozy houses on the outskirts; and a whole host of other things, what can we talk about for a very long time. All this complements the already cozy school world of Bullworth, thereby adding some sky-high points to the “Atmosphere” scale.

As a result, for me the atmosphere of Bully and its world – this is the quintessence of everything we are so accustomed to in Rockstar games. It’s clear how the developer was able to find the perfect balance between the desire to constantly entertain the player and the acceptable level of ‘fun’. And if in the same GTA you could never find the end of acceptable chaos, then in Bullworth they will tell you everything about it very quickly, and after a couple of hours of playing, you will begin to enjoy what is happening.

Groups

Like many other Rockstar games, Bully has its own groups. They are the source of the main problems of the GG, who simply decided to take a walk in the open world. But if in other games these were often gangs who were engaged in dark deeds, then in Bullworth everything is different. And how simply and at the same time competently Rockstar introduced the “gang system” into the school world – this deserves applause. Meet, here we have absolutely clichéd groups with appropriate names that will cause you a lot of trouble (or maybe not):

Nerds. Most likely, it is on them that you will train your hooligan skills at the very beginning of the game. They are cowardly and weak, but extremely unpredictable, and if there are several of them or one of them has a ruler, then get ready for a fight… “Who would have thought that he would really throw a firecracker at me?»
Danger for Jimmy: low
Uniform: green
Permanent leader: Ernest

Hooligans. Rest assured, during the first quarter at Bullworth Academy these guys will be the ones who will take you in from a running start, make sweeping moves and pester you in every possible way. But, surprisingly, they have mediocre fighting skills and a small amount of health.
Danger for Jimmy: low
Uniform: white
Permanent leader: Russell

Majors. These are narrow-minded guys with money who practice boxing and incest (I won’t comment on this in any way). They have good boxing skills, are excellent at dodging, and some of them are extremely durable.
Danger for Jimmy: average
Uniform: Aquaberry sweaters in blue rhombus
Permanent leader: Derby

Greasers. Guys from high school who always hang out near the works. If you walk through their territory, you will very quickly run into their ‘unfriendliness’. They love to fight and often with sticks in their hands.
Danger for Jimmy: average
Uniform: brown leather jackets and jeans
Permanent leader: Johnny

Jocks. It’s already scary here. Huge, extremely stupid and incredibly aggressive. Their spawn is the gym and its surroundings. If you find yourself there at the very beginning of the game, run. Strong, tenacious and knock down in one swing.
Danger for Jimmy: high
Uniform: Well, what do you think they will wear??
Permanent leader: Ted

Urban. Well, the last on this list is a group of expelled vocational school students and truants. Appear only in the penultimate chapter (it would be better not to appear). Healthy and aggressive guys who attack at every opportunity. And if you decide to run away, then good luck, because they have bricks in their hands, which they will very accurately send to the back of your head and knock you down (seriously, whoever decided to supply them with bricks even tried to fight with them in the game?).
Danger for Jimmy: very high!!
Uniform: none, which makes them even less noticeable among ordinary citizens.
Permanent leader: Edgar.

And if you think https://betirocasino.co.uk/ that all of the above is not such a big problem, then you are very mistaken. At first, I thought that all these groups would only cause problems occasionally when you came across them. But don’t forget that you are just a student at a school where absolutely every (well, almost) student is a member of one group or another. And therefore you will be on this patchwork quilt of different factions 24/7. AND any walk along the school corridors can end in mass slaughter several people at once with you in the leading role (but this is until teachers or elders disperse you).

Characters

And where would a game like this be without interesting characters?. To be honest, when I played the game in the distant 2000s, I could not even appreciate the full power of those characters with which the world of Bully is crammed. And the main reason for this is the humor and inadequacy of the characters (and this is not a minus). Due to my age at the time of 2009, I simply could not appreciate, how interesting, deep, and with what irony and satire the characters here are written. Next, I would like to list a very small part of the characters who have a lot to say about the world of Bully.

A physical education teacher who during the day threatens to bend you over during wrestling lessons, and in the evening asks you to steal several sets of dirty underwear for him from the girls’ dorm.

An English teacher and part-time alcoholic who is placed in a psychiatric hospital. But this is your friend, and therefore it’s up to you to save him.

Derby, he is the leader of the majors, who does nothing but humiliate people at every opportunity, but at the same time considers incest a family matter.

A city homeless man who will dress up as Santa Claus for Christmas and ask you to bring children to his trash bin in order to make money from photographs (the photographer, of course, will be you).

And all this is just a small part of everything that awaits the player. Previously, I tried to skip cutscenes and tried to play the game as quickly as possible. But now I enjoy absolutely every video, and I go through the gameplay component automatically. And no, this is not GTA in school locations, this is a vigorous mixture of South Park, The Simpsons, BoJack Horseman, the game Total Overdose and all this in the lavish scenery of a school campus, where you were allowed to skateboard and fight in the school corridors.

Gameplay that makes you fall in love.

And again, there’s a huge block on the line, which has absorbed all the gameplay and gaming conventions that we simply can’t help but talk about..

Control

As often happens with old games (True Crime NYC won’t let you lie), the main obstacle for today’s gamers is the controls. Somewhere it’s crooked, somewhere it’s just special, and somewhere it’s familiar to everyone. And how are things going with this very management in our bull??

It’s worth noting right away that while the controls in Bully can be customized, there’s no way to fix its features (unless with mods). Yes, at first glance it’s still the same GTA and you don’t even think about changing controls: you run WASD, fight with LMB, etc. But at some point they tell you that to aim you need to press the up arrow, at this point you go to the settings. But there you suddenly catch yourself thinking that the actions you are accustomed to on one or another button are initially divided into several different ones (a simple example: when walking, CTRL is responsible for squats, but when riding a bicycle, the same button is responsible for hitting the hand to the left in order to knock down the same cyclists). And here you can decide what’s more important to you: squat on the key you’re used to or move it to a more convenient one, so that it’s more comfortable to fight on the “lace”.

But personally my pain point was the ‘W’ button and still the same control on a bicycle. And now I will try to explain the reason. The thing is that the ‘W’ button is not only a classic walking/riding forward (nowhere could be more logical), but also acceleration on a bicycle when pressed constantly (hello GTA: SA). But if on the same skateboard the SHIFT button is responsible for acceleration (it is also responsible for running while walking), then why the decision was made to move the same acceleration on a bicycle to W is unclear to me. And yes, you’ll be hitting that button like hell while racing bikes and at the same time maneuver on D and S, but I assure you that after 30 seconds of such driving your middle finger will refuse to perceive any signals from the brain. And the reason for this is the absolutely inadequate difficulty, in which you have to endlessly press that damned W button, because in the event of a second of inactivity, the bike will slow down to zero, and you will swallow the dust of other cyclists. That’s why before each race on the Lisapets I moved the acceleration button to NUM8, so that I could easily accelerate with my second hand and change fingers as they swelled, and after the race I returned everything back. Well, by the way, let’s talk a little about missions and where your seat can get really tense.

Missions

When I think about Bully and the adventures of Hopkins, the first thing I remember is the variety of missions and small quests that the game offers. In total, I identify 6 different types of tasks for myself: main story missions; battles with factions; side quests in the open world; race; part-time job; collecting; study or lessons (we will talk about the latter in a separate paragraph). And now, a little more specifically about each of the above points (maybe you are not interested in knowing this, but I am extremely interested in writing about it).

Story missions (gold star on minimap).
Of course, touching on all the story missions means retelling the plot (and I’m not going to do this because these are spoilers). At this point I will only say the following. All story missions are divided into three types: help/showdowns with groups, help girls (and who else will Jimmy kiss for the sake of HP?) and helping teachers (and other adults in this world). Well, it is also in these missions that the player will discover new weapons, new areas of the city and receive various bonuses.

Unfortunately, this mechanic was never fully revealed in the game… Everyone always beats you anyway.

Battles with factions (red star on minimap).
Now this is more interesting. There are five such missions in total, one battle per group (well, almost). For completing these missions, Jimmy will receive passes to the themed clubs of each faction throughout the city, and with them new save and sleep points. But if in 4 out of 5 such battles all you need to do is take a task and beat a dozen people – PROFIT. That’s just not in the battle with the Botans. After all, it was the fight with these guys that destroyed all my nerve cells back in 2009. And only 3 years later I was able to complete this mission. All you need to do is beat the record of one of the nerds in a video game on a slot machine… But not everything is as simple as it seems.
Just one piece of advice – if you feel like you’ve been playing this damn nerd video game for too long, then you’re halfway through and need to play just as much more.

Side quests (blue cross on the mini-map).
Almost at the very beginning we will have access to side missions in the open world. The premise is very simple, various residents of Bullworth run up to you and ask you to do something minor (put 3 students in lockers, throw eggs at the dorm windows, swim to the buoys and back for a while, etc.). And you won’t get anything but money for it. But these tasks are interesting to others. As it turned out, Rockstar even put crumbs of plot into these minor missions. And several such minor missions can tell a small but complete story.

Race (golden cup on mini-map).
But here it will be very painful. And it’s all because of those terrible bike control mechanics. And yes, the game also has a couple of kart races, but they are so simple that it makes no sense to talk about them. Cycling races are another matter, they are scattered throughout Bullworth and there are about 4-5 of them in each district. This means that for the sake of cups, money and 100% completion you will need to ride about 25 times… And if in the same TC: NYC races were as toothless as possible and walked through, although boring, but easily, then BULLY laughs in their face. If you don’t have a couple of extra fingers that you’re willing to destroy while endlessly pressing ‘W’, then don’t even try to compete. And yes, the opponents here are ready to overtake you at any moment of the race (they are so fast and smart), and the ability to punch directly from the bike will only complicate your race. And just try to crash into something on the highway – immediately restart… Have a nice ride!

Part time job (dollar on mini-map).
The easiest to understand and explain missions. You mow the grass or work as a postman – you get paid for it. One minus – the postman again has to ride a bicycle and throw newspapers (by aiming) at mailboxes. But at least there are no rivals here, which means the difficulty is reduced by three times.

Collecting.
Well, here it’s not so much the missions, but the main hassle for those who will complete the game 100%. The essence is very simple, just as we were looking for the damned shells in GTA: SA, so here we have to search, namely: rubber bands, board game cards, garden gnomes (you don’t need to collect them, but break them) and transistors. The latter is worth mentioning separately, because there are only 5 transistors for the entire game, and you can bring each transistor found to a homeless person in the school parking lot in the evening, and he will teach you new fighting techniques. Rubber bands, gnomes and cards are pure collectibles. But even in such a difficult matter one of the lessons will come to the rescue, which will simplify the player’s life… Actually, we’ll talk about the lessons further.

Lessons

And you may have noticed that while talking about the adventures of the school bully, I still haven’t touched on the most important topic of school everyday life – studying. And yes, this is exactly what captivated me in the magazine itself, and then in the game (what a strange student, he came from real lessons to sit in virtual lessons, – "Uhh, well, I’ll rest now!"). Every day the GG wakes up at 8 o’clock in the morning and within an hour (game time, of course) a morning lesson awaits him. Every day there are only two lessons that last 2.5 hours and in them you need to perform a variety of actions (mini-games). A total of 10 different school subjects that go strictly according to schedule. Each lesson must be attended 5 times in order to unlock all the rewards for them. It’s not difficult to guess that if you missed Chemistry this week, then please wait a week so that you can get to it again. Thanks to simple mathematics, it’s not difficult to calculate that it will take you 5 weeks of game time to cover all the subjects (this is about 5-6 hours of real time, if you wake up, go exclusively to classes and then go to bed). But I’ll immediately note that going to them is not only fun, but also extremely useful for the player.

The following is a list of all the lessons, their features and bonuses for them. I understand if you don’t want to read this or if you already know everything:

Chemistry. The first lesson you will encounter in the game (if you are not a truant).
Mini-game: have time to press the right keys at the appropriate moment (the complexity of the subject is minimal, it is enough to know the location of Russian letters (YTSUFYV)).
Bonus: various firecrackers, stink bombs and other ‘weapons’ that open in your room.

Grammar. One of the most dreary and difficult lessons of all. After all, you only have a couple of minutes in which you need to do so much.
Mini-game: you have a set of several letters from which you need to compose words in the allotted time (and even after 12 years, in lessons 4 and 5, I write down the letters and compose the necessary words already on pause).
Bonus: Improves your apology and verbal bullying skills.

ISO. According to many, one of the most difficult lessons, but I disagree with this.
Mini-game: a classic toy where you need to crop the picture while dodging various obstacles (if you don’t dodge, start from the very beginning). If you played a similar mini-game at least once in ancient times, then there will be no difficulty
Bonus: one of the most significant bonuses, which allows you to kiss your classmates for gifts, and the kisses themselves give you more and more additional health with each new lesson you complete..

Physical training. The most varied and exciting lesson where you either practice wrestling or play ‘Dodgeball’ (read knockout).
Mini-game: present only in ball games, in which you have to dodge the ball, pick it up and throw it back.
Bonus: learning new wrestling techniques and improving your slingshot after winning ‘Dodgeball’.

Work. My personal blood pressure in the educational process!
Mini-game: very similar to Chemistry, where you need to press the right keys at the right time. But now it also adds clockwise or counterclockwise mouse rotation. And this is where all the evil lies, because the game doesn’t read very well what trajectory you are pedaling your mouse along.
Bonus: personal garage for bicycles and new, faster BMXs..

Photo. One of the most boring lessons.
Mini-game: as there is no such game here, every new lesson the teacher lets you out on the street, where you need to photograph certain things within a certain time (be it flags on the school grounds or various sights of the city).
Bonus: photo albums and new cameras..

Biology. Extremely entertaining but useless lesson.
Mini-game: each of the five lessons you will need to dissect different small animals using the mouse and the provided sets of tools (game 18+, don’t forget about it).
Bonus: all sorts of caps with fish, T-shirts with gills and other not very useful cosmetic trash.

Music. Hello Guitar Hero on minimal settings. Extremely melodic and not particularly tiring.
Mini-game: press left and right ALT at the right time to the beat, so to speak.
Bonus: again different clothes, but with a music theme..

Geography. The most useful lesson for those going for platinum..
Mini-game: the essence is very simple, place flags in your territories. But if it’s even easier with Europe, then already in the second lesson it will be the flags of various US states (here it’s no longer shameful to use help from the Internet).
Bonus: Tears off the locations of various collectibles on the map. .

Mathematics. It’s not clear why it is needed in this form?
Mini-game: choose the correct answers to mathematical questions (which of these is greater, how many circles are in a triangle, how many n+n there will be, etc.)
Bonus: again useless cosmetics (but the Einstein mask makes the difference)

Taschemta, we can summarize briefly. If you just want to go through the game for fun and don’t want difficulties during story missions, then spend a few hours completing these lessons, How: Grammar, Labor, Art, Physical Education and Chemistry (the latter is not strictly necessary). By visiting each of these items five times, you will make the game much easier for yourself. But if you are an ardent connoisseur of 100% completion of games or just a fan of changing outfits, then you will have to complete them all.
IMPORTANT! Never forget about biology, and it doesn’t matter which path through the game you choose. This is still the most interesting thing!

Technical component after 15 years

And this will be the tiniest point in today’s entire article. How is Bully perceived from the technical side after a decade and a half?? And let a real war between fanaticism and rationality flare up in me now, but I will still try to do it.

Sound and music. This is the easiest component to evaluate. The game does not have any incredible sound quality and does not have incredible music compositions in its arsenal that you will add to your collection. But what Bully can excel at is the voice acting and the main musical theme. Believe me, if it weren’t for the talent of those who voiced all the characters – the game wouldn’t have even a hundredth of that charm. And the musical theme that will accompany you throughout the game never gets boring and is extremely pleasant to the ear.

Graphics. But here it’s worth mentioning the obvious disadvantages. The thing is that every time I logged into Bully after a long time, one thought came to me – “WHY IS EVERYTHING SO GRAY, GRAINY AND SAD.”?». And even if this thought disappears after half an hour of play and you get used to it, it still makes sense. Color correction and overall graphics quality leave much to be desired. But together with Bully, GTA IV was released in the same year (also hello to greyness, but still this is a completely different level). But salvation comes from where it was expected. Modifications in the STEAM workshop and on the Internet will save many eyes and make the picture in Bully, if not a masterpiece, then certainly digestible.

Well, it’s worthy, well..?

Well, it’s worthy, well..?

Optimization. |Bugs, crashes and flight on modern operating systems…| How are things going with this?? Surprisingly, in 15 years of playing Bully I have encountered minimal problems in this area. The game has stood the test of time well, feels comfortable on the same Windows 10, has no problems with FPS (and even in 2009 had no drawdowns). And only one piece of advice (. ), If you don’t want to suddenly see your desktop while playing, don’t set the in-game anti-aliasing to the maximum value. This is the only bug I have noticed that can destroy your gaming session at a random moment. And there is no question of bugs in missions (or anything else in the gameplay itself). Everything works like clockwork! Well, that’s understandable, it was developed by Rockstar in the 2000s.

Timing. Well, I want to supplement this roll call with the duration of the game itself, no matter how strange it may be. Bully is not GTA: SA or IV, with their absolutely horse-like timing. To be honest, it was the incredible length and number of missions that did not allow me to complete these games completely in my time. After all, no matter how much you get into the game, after 30-40 hours you gradually move out and want to finish it all as quickly as possible (and Platinum is still so far away). And Bully has no problems with this. Completion of the game at 96% (damn bike racing… I couldn’t bring myself to complete the last stage) took me 12 hours. Yes, I know this game by heart, which is why you can safely multiply this number by two if you are not familiar with this project. But here we are talking about 100% completion of the game. But if you want to go through only the story and are in no hurry, then it will take you at most 10 hours.

And right now, after everything that has been written, I would like to touch on the topic of recommendations. If it’s still the same True Crime: New York City (Yes, I know, I’m tired of this last review of mine on TY; NYC) I couldn’t recommend it to everyone, but with Bully it’s a completely different story. In this recommendation, I will not divide users into ‘Oldows’ and ‘Newfags’, because I sincerely believe that any player can install, play and enjoy the world of Bullworth in 2022. If you have never played this game before and have been constantly wondering, “What kind of game is this? Is it worth it??», then I will answer you, – “Definitely worth it!». Feel free to buy/download Bully and go on an incredibly lamp adventure of 15-year-old Jimmy Hopkins, which will brighten up a couple of your evenings.

I’ll come back here again..

And now it’s already 2022.. The gaming industry is at a certain threshold and no one can imagine what will happen to it in a couple of years. In recent years, we have been watching how large development studios stumble and fail miserably on releases: Mass Effect: Andromeda, Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 2042, Mafia III, No Man’s Sky and the recent Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy (from the same Rockstar). At the same time, the INDIE industry is gaining momentum and attracting more and more attention from ordinary gamers.

And so, in all this bacchanalia, somewhere on the margins of forums and news articles, several thousand fans of one game from 2006 sit and greedily absorb any information about a possible sequel. And we are, of course, talking about Bully 2. Every year (for ten years now) I come across such news at least once, and every year I get sadder and sadder to read them. And just recently, rumors began to spread again about the imminent release of Bully 2, and the company’s logo even changed on the Rockstar website. And to be honest, I have never expected anything stronger than the release of this game and, apparently, I never will… I don’t believe that Rockstar, after such a major failure (GTA: The Trilogy), will pluck up the courage and put all its strength into a game that has already been forgotten by many… I don’t believe that in the near future those few thousand fans will see the sequel that they have been dreaming about for many years… I don’t believe that I will one day see on my monitor ‘BULLY 2 – *New Game*‘… I don’t believe it anymore, but I still dream..

And all that remains for me is to launch Bully every year and, eagerly enjoying every minute in this game, go through it measuredly and leisurely. Once upon a time and completely unconsciously, I escaped into the world of Bully from my youth. Now I go there just to taste at least a little of that bygone youth. All of this isn’t just one fan’s sneak peek. This is a public declaration of love for the game that 13 years ago took me by the hand and led me into the vast world of video games, leaving me there forever.