Bully: Scholarship Edition Comments by Tom Bramwell

Ah this pleases me. since I never tried the ps2 version, back in the day when I was poor, hungry and 360-less

Not sure i'll buy it again, but sending one of the teachers tumbling down a hill in a porta potty was a definite gaming highlight last year..

Pity about that bad porting.Right now I am not interested until it gets patched.

Struggling frame rate?? Doesn't bode well for GTA IV.

anyone want to compare this to teh wii version?

i've got a wii60 at the moment

"Struggling frame rate?? Doesn't bode well for GTA IV."

/pans BBB

It'll be fine.

"Struggling frame rate?? Doesn't bode well for GTA IV. "

All the GTA vids i've seen have had a dodgy frame rate IIRC.

Definitely buy it when it's patched. I bought it knowing about the crashes but I'm laughing away as it's a hilarious game. Not had any crashes myself actually (using a HDMI Falcon 360 by the way).

SJH

I am basing my judgment on release code of their engine.

"It'll be fine" - what are you basing that judgment on?

/get's out bigger frying pan

@squarejawhero: "Struggling frame rate?? Doesn't bode well for GTA IV."

Different engine. Bully is a port based on a last gen engine. GTA uses the new Rage engine (ala Table Tennis).

SD99

Your right - not sure why I am worried with Table Tennis displaying so many people on screen in a large world setting the engine can clearly handle......wait a minute.

Great review, really love this game. It was terrific on the PS2 and it's been perfectly recreated for the 360 - perhaps too perfectly given the fluctuating framerate - retaining the feel and playability of the original. It's definitely a fun and funny game, there's loads to do and it's constantly entertaining. I'd give it 9/10 myself, sandbox games don't really come much better than this IMO and it doesn't rely on extreme violence like other games in the genre either which is refreshing.

@BBB:

Bully is a port (albeit built from the ground up), and even then, not done by R*, but by Mad Doc.

GTaIV is also built from the ground up, but using the already established (and already mentioned), RAGE engine, and being done in-house by R*, so using Bully as a springboard to pre-judge GTa is illogical.

How does the Wii version hold up? I'm more interested in the Wii version and reading about the bugs and the framerate issues it might be the better choice.

interesting to see comments of 'haha X360 got a bad port', as if feeling satisfied that not only PS3 that suffers from regular poor porting?!

I got the game and now in chapter 3 and crashed for first time, but I would expect that to happen after reports of problems, frame rates not too noticeable but some characters do have a weird lightening glitches on a few times (banding effect) but mostly enjoyed playing it. To be honest I did have PS2 version but it was still in wrapper and when X360 version was annouced I decided to trade it in on expectation that X360 will equal or exceed and having it on HD. Also PS2 BC do have problems with certain titles on PS3.

Glad I got it and by the way its running on a different engine to GTA4 anyway to the doomsayers! GTA4 is build up for next gen and Bully do certainly can see PS2's assets reused and getting bland textures and chunky polygons but still worthwhile game to get! 8/10 is fair but for me its 9/10 at moment with only one crash but saving is a hassle.

@BadBoyBonnerl "Your right - not sure why I am worried with Table Tennis displaying so many people on screen in a large world setting the engine can clearly handle......wait a minute."

Oh come on - the Rage engine wasn't fully developed when TT was released, it was work in progress. They've had two years development since then. I admit early videos of GTA had framerate issues, but most games do - it's only tidied up during the last few months of development. Recent previews suggest things have improved somewhat...

"How does the Wii version hold up? I'm more interested in the Wii version and reading about the bugs and the framerate issues it might be the better choice. "

Ahh but you don't get ACHIEVEMENTS when playing Wii games. I only play games with CHEEVS, thats why I bought the 360 version. I even played the PS2 version last year but that was only because my 360 had RROD and MS took 2 months to pick the damn thing up. Oh those 2 months were hell, my Gamerscore frozen at 9872, as soon as it came back I had a 24 hour session on Need For Speed Carbon to get my score back up!

Seriously though if you have all the consoles and you're desperate to play this look into the Wii version, of course if you have a PS2 or one of the older PS3's the original is £9.99 in Game.

Not sure whether to go for this or not on two counts really.

1) I too have a wii so will withold decision until I can compare both versions.

2) (perhaps more importantly) The release of Bully is somewhat overshadowed, in my time-poor opinion, by GTAIV. Do I really want two 'similar' games (play-wise), that look pretty large, within the space of 2 months? I can't help but feel that Rockstar should have released this pre-Christmas to give it room to breath and find an audience - which it appears to deserve. I hope it doesn't suffer too much at the hands of its younger (and lets face it, more anticipated) sibling.

SD

Yes TT was a "prototype" but clearly the engine existed - so why did they deny Mad Doc access to it in creating this port of an old game some 2 years later?

Frod

I agree with the second part - but that obviously interferes with your first point. Most on here seem to be missing the point with arguments of which engine is doing what from where - which was documented on IGN long ago for Scholarship edition.

The point I am making and which you hinted at is this - regardless of engine - who the **** has allowed this game to go through to release with the inherent problems and the clear negative effect peoples perception will have due to the technical quality of it.

If their standards are such as they will allow the release of this clearly one wonders just the threshold of quality is for the release of GTA IV - I'd rather them take a few more months and get it 99%right first time - than hear how "horrified" they are that a shitty version has been released..

EDIT - Their not There lol Schoolboy error - "Bonner, detention 4pm sharp!"

@BadBoyBonner: "Yes TT was a "prototype" but clearly the engine existed - so why did they deny Mad Doc access to it in creating this port of an old game some 2 years later? "

Simply because the game was written using the old engine. If they wanted to use the new engine, they would have to rewrite the game from scratch rather than doing a port with a few graphical mods.

Switching from one engine to another isn't a quick and simple job - you're effectively replacing all of your fundamental building blocks. It's like switching from duplo to lego...

Got this on my old PS2. Excellent game with a fantastic soundtrack.

I bought the game on Saturday and played it intensively on Sunday. And it's great fun. But the movement and stuttering problems really annoy me. And, aside from the hard crashes, which I encountered two times yesterday, there are a number of glitches which made me have to restart the game. For example, when I was finishing a courier mission and returned to the target, a cutscene triggered where my character would give him his package. In this moment, another character was running between my target and my character, causing them to get stuck in each other. But because this was a cutscene, I had no access to the controls, and no way to unstuck them. Similar stuff happened four times yesterday.

I really hope this gets adressed by the patch also.

Yes, I'd be interested on hearing anyone's views in the Wii version too. I'm not having difficulties myself per se, but I'm sure the new Biology lessons would be a whole lot easier with the Wii Remote.

BadBoyBonner wrote "Yes TT was a "prototype" but clearly the engine existed - so why did they deny Mad Doc access to it in creating this port of an old game some 2 years later?"

http://www.ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id=...

"It's important to note that the 360 conversion of Bully is actually being handled by Mad Doc Software, a development house best known for their Empire Earth series. Their most recent effort for Microsoft's console - Star Trek: Legacy - looked very nice despite being plagued by control and "lack of fun" issues. As a result, Bully: Scholarship Edition for the Xbox 360 is being designed with Mad Doc's proprietary engine rather than with RenderWare (the original game engine, from Criterion) or RAGE (Rockstar's new proprietary engine)."

@bbb - I read, matey. Previews suggest, nay actually SAY, GTAIV's framerate is problem free. However I might not be suprised if there's some struggling in cutscenes, as so often seems to happen in all games these days.

Bully has nothing to do with GTAIV, regardless. It's even developed by a different team on a different engine.

Is this a budget release, or full price? o_O

SD

"Simply because the game was written using the old engine. If they wanted to use the new engine, they would have to rewrite the game from scratch rather than doing a port with a few graphical mods.

Switching from one engine to another isn't a quick and simple job - you're effectively replacing all of your fundamental building blocks. It's like switching from duplo to lego.."

Well that is exactly what they did do - see the post from YAZ above

For me, if the Rage engine was up an running they should have used it - it's really that simple for me. They could have used it as a self funding training exercise to bring new recruits up to speed.

Instead - we have Mad Doc's flakey coded port - I'll still purchase it at some point - but seems it may be better to let the wrinkles be ironed out a while.

@SJH

"Bully has nothing to do with GTAIV, regardless. It's even developed by a different team on a different engine."

Agree with the second part - but obviously people will link it to Rockstar and hence GTAIV - some through the controversy of Rockstar's bullying game should be banned yadayada - my concern is that Rockstar thought the quality was good enough for release, which it seems it clearly was not.

In fact, were it not for the level of connectivity most 360's users seem to have (silver and gold) allowing updates - this product would probably have had to have a complete recall.

BadBoyBonner

Did they develop the Wii version alongside? If so, then perhaps this was the reason. Rage is a next gen gfx engine and the Wii probably isn't up to it.

Sd99

Well TT is out for the Wii ! lol

The games locked up on me 3 times! Frame rate is terrible when you get on a bike around town. It should come with an epilepsy warning. IT's total BS! The first time I hadn't saved for 2 hours. Now I save after every mission, which is a pain in the arse because of the long loading times. Don't buy this unless you're connected to live so you can get their magical patch.... Total shit.

"RenderWare" now theres a name to scare programmers. Or certainly me. Horrible, horrible engine.

RAGE on the other hand is lovely.


That is all.

Just popped down to HMV and picked this up for £29.99.. gotta be worth a punt for that, eh

BadBoyBonner

yeah, but as you say, TT doesnt have the crowds :)

Wasn't RenderWare was used to create burnout, black and GTA ? It must be fairly good, look at the graphics that black managed on a ps2.

@DSMX - RenderWare was used for those games but while Black and Burnout looked great on their respective platforms, GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas looked ropey to me even at the time of their release but then they were far more ambitious games technically. I always felt that RenderWare was more of a PS2 engine and so few games that used the engine looked better on the Xbox despite its superior hardware. It still produced some great looking games though but like any engine it's upto the developers to make good use of it, e.g. look at how many poor looking Unreal Engine 3 games there are doing the rounds on the 360 and PS3; it's a powerful engine for sure but in the hands of lesser developers it can look (and run) awful.

Erm... you can get a haircut in the game you know and change the colour if you want! ;)

Is EG doing a wii review shortly, or no?

so basically its worth about £25 but its the same old bully..figured.

/cracks out his old save game.

F3rrari

"But underneath it all, i'd still be ginger."

+1 funniest comment this year.

EDIT - mind you I must contend that having just watched SO I married an Axe Murderer this weekend - I did imagine Mike Myers saying it while playing the part of his own Dad.

"Look at the size o' that boys heed....."

Generous score considering.

>anyone want to compare this to teh wii version?

Played both

360 has better graphics
wii's graphics flicker a lot (texture fighting) in places
wii has motion controls (obviously) makes some levels where you're aiming at screen nicer
360 version doesnt work on older machines (apparently)


I'd say a tie.. but i'd lean towards the 360 version for the better graphics (they've done the standard wii shit of not bothering to update the wii graphics much)

Why have both Eurogame and GameCentral (UK Teletext) reviewed the 360 version. I would of thought more people would be more interested how it works with the Wii controls, rather than the upscaled graphics. No?

@smelly - The 360 version has texture flickering issues, most prominently on distant buildings while travelling around the town. The colour palette is also more vibrant in the 360 version; it's somewhat washed out in the PS2 and Wii version.

Well, it's not just nicer graphics. There's more missions, and class mini games and so on. Plus EG said the Wii review will be up tomorrow.

Jesus, teletext still exists? F me backwards, I'm stunned.

Anyway, been playing this most of the weekend. Haven't suffered from any of the crashing issues that are so well documented, but this is basically a high res PS2 game. Entertaining, for a while - it's a six or a seven for me.

Some people clearly are commenting without reading the review:

THE WII REVIEW IS OUT TOMORROW

I don't want to sound like a complete arsehole, but there is absolutely no way any game which crashes the console deserves an 8/10. Broken game; disgusting. "But it may or may not get patched in the future, which may or may not fix the problems." Pathetic.

"Well, it's not just nicer graphics. There's more missions, and class mini games and so on. Plus EG said the Wii review will be up tomorrow."

Those are all in the wii version too.

Ive never played the ps2 version to compare though, but the wii version does look crap (even for a wii game)

Something which is happening quite often nowadays unfortunately

"I don't want to sound like a complete arsehole, but there is absolutely no way any game which crashes the console deserves an 8/10"


It only crashes on older machines.