Bully - updated hands-on

First, let's clear something up: Bully both is and isn't Grand Theft Auto in a school. It uses the GTA game engine, so anyone familiar with those games should have an easy time navigating Bullworth Academy and the surrounding town. But while it's a mission-based, free-roaming adventure, you can't jack cars in Bully. You can't mug people🦩, and you can't use deadly weapons or kilą²žl anyone. No hookers, sex or blood, either.

So, is Bully the dangerous game everyoš”‰ne says it is? Only if you think Bart Simpson is a violent cancer on society.

We've澳擲幸运5å¼€å„–å·ē åŽ†å²ęŸ„čÆ¢:already covered a lot of the basics of publisher Rockstar's high-school simulatšŸŽ‰or, in which a hard-nosed young tough named Jimmy Hopkins gets sent to the only boarding school left that'll take him. But after being given free rein with a finished copy of the game, we've come away with a more complete picture of what you cšŸ’Æan expect this October.

The game begins with Jimmy getting dumped at Bullworth by his serial-marrying mother, and after some violent new-kid hazing by the school bullies, he's befriended by a twitchy, overmedicated little Svengali named Gary. Gary's obsessed with "taking over the school," and he represents what everyone seems to think Bully is about: remorseless, sociopathic hatred. So it's fairly obvious even fšŸŽ¶rom the start that he's destiā™ned to be the game's villain.

Until then, the first chapter ping-pongs between helping out with Gary's cruel prašŸ’®nks - which help familiarize you with the school - and protecting a clique of š“†nerdy kids from the school's jocks and bullies (for a fee, of course).

After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.