Bully Coming to 360, Wii

Bully will make its way from the PS2 to the 360 and Wii.

Bully, the novel PlayStation 2 game centered on a 15-year-old protagonist thrown into a reform school, will be coming to the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii with some additional content.

Released last year, the original garnered an 8.7 rating at Gamespot. It put you in the shoes of a teenager who had to navigate the social cliques of a full-time high school and featured open-ended gameplay, complete with numerous minigames and sidequests.

Produced by Rockstar's Vancouver team, the new game, subtitled Scholarship Edition will appear this winter. The previous title held a Teen rating.

Source: IGN

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While the violent component doesn't really grab me, I'm fond of Rockstar's approach to game design. Even if not particularly new, it's a good example of how non-linear games can be received by an audience who many companies have tried to suggest is only into linear and short games.

'Bout time the Wii gets some of that as well.

I'm only a few hours into Bully on the PS2, but so far it doesn't seem any less linear than Oblivion was. Maybe that changes further on?

I wouldn't call Bully "non-linear"; as far as I remember there weren't many optional missions, and most of them only had one way to complete them.

Instead of "non-linear", maybe you mean "sandbox" - a game with an entire world to play in, and a more or less optional plot to follow. Once you've gotten past the first chapter, you can go almost anywhere in Bully's game world and forget about completing the story in favour of doing street races on your bike or go-kart.

Also, Bully isn't all that violent anyway. You have the option of random, unprovoked violence, but getting away with it is much more difficult than I remember in Grand Theft Auto. Most of the aggression is directed towards antagonists who deserve it; Jimmy Hopkins stands up for the weaker kids against the real bullies and misanthropes, rather than just picking on random people.