Bully - updated hands-on

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Menace to society or just misunderstood? We dig a little deeper to find out

There's more to the second chapter than just the town and the preppies, too. This is where the game really starts to open up, and so you'll get to know the faculty a little better. Believe it or not, they're not all bad; Mr. Galloway, for example, is a dedicated English teacher. Unfortunately he's also a lush, so you'll need to hide his bottles so he doesn't get fired. And despite being a cackling old harridan, the lunch lady's OK, and the fetch mission she sends you on - for things like rancid meat to put in meals - does a lot to help you learn the town's layout.

Regardless of its missions, Bully is a game with a lot going on under the hood. The world is smaller than GTA's, but it also feels a lot more intimate, and the characters behave more like actual people than faceless targets. Hell, even the crazy hobo out behind the school is fun to hang out with. And the game's weird early-'60s vibe - which comes through in its fashions, music andanachronistic cliques- gives it an atmosphere that's somewhere between The Catcher in the Rye and Animal House.

We also liked trying out the various social interactions, which range from sneaking up and giving people wedgies (or unwelcome pats, in the case of girls) to immediately apologizing for having done so. There's a lot more to the game that we can't really talk about yet, but we aren't disappointed by what we've seen so far.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
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.