Price: $19.99 $19.99

As a college student with little disposable income, I rarely buy video games in general, let alone when they're shiny and new. But with Bully I was enticed by the intelligent dialogue and the interesting concept I found in the trailers, and I bought it days after its release.

I deeply regret wasting my money like that.

While most of the best dialogue is in the trailers, that aspect of the game is still reasonably fresh and entertaining. The story itself was adequate and passably engaging. I expected and hoped for a lot more flexibility than I got, as I thought that the concept of a game like this would be much more interesting if we tried to find our own way, like a lost boy would in real life, instead of having our way strictly set forth before us. Gameplay also leaves something to be desired, as Bully is cloned from the Grand Theft Auto series, which is understandable given that it's made by Rockstar, but hardly acceptable, especially since all improvements to the style are minor and unimpressive.

More worrisome is the extreme ease with which I accomplished everything. Frankly, I'm a pretty poor videogamer, and relatively simple challenges tend to give me trouble. But in Bully, I was able to beat the game without much difficulty, and I didn't have a very fun time doing it. Class is easy, races are easy, minigames are easy, fighting is easy. It's hard to see the point.

Ultimately this game might be worth a couple of bucks, like as a rental, but buying it is simply a waste unless you want to get your kid a Grand Theft style game without the originality or strong violence.

This is an exceptionally fun and well made game that contains a great deal of style and humor. I think most GTAers will have a good time with this.

I really like this game, the story telling and the town you can explore (although I would have liked more added in the way of sandbox play), the game play is very similar to GTA, but the story is more intriguing, mainly because anyone who didn't think high school "was the best time of my life" can relate. Even after completing the story I had fun things to do but most of the game is in the missions, and I'm not able to waste hours having mindless fun the way I could in GTA never really achieving anything more then seeing what I could get away with.

It gets props for bringing most of the fun of GTA into a less violent and more tongue-in-cheek environment. If someone wanted to get a game similar to GTA but without the brutal violence, this would be the game to recommend.