Bully [PS2]

The morning bell has rung for the school of hard knocks as done by Rockstar's Bully. Young Jimmy Hopkins, equal parts red-haired rapscallion and misunderstood waif, is a modern-day Daniel in the lion's den that is Bullworth Academy. Only instead of faith, Hopkins has a mean right hook and a slingshot.

Now that the clouds have lifted and Bully can be evaluated, it's safe to say that attention-seeking crusader Jack Thompson is an ass. Bully is as much a Columbine simulator as, say, Mario Superstar Baseball or Ape Escape Academy. In its published form, the third-person adventure Bully is many things: oftentimes clever, sometimes wonderful, and occasionally gross and mean-spirited. Its protagonist embraces violence and is not afraid to employ it against both children and adults, and the game itself offers no pleasant valley Sunday, pie-in-the sky happy ending.

What it does offer is humanity. And choices. The characters in Bully ring true because, simply, they're us. This means that Hopkins can become the Bullworth's most entrenched bully, torturing the weak and helpless, doling out Indian burns and flushies as if they were Halloween treats, and performing misdeeds up to and including battery, vandalism, theft, and destruction of property. Or he can choose a different path, and defend those who can't protect themselves. In these simple choices, Hopkins can find himself; in turn, Bully locates its heart.

School days at Bullworth involve two classes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Here, minigames are the order of the day; successful completion of a lesson increases Hopkins' skills or gives him access to new items. In chemistry class, players have to punch out a series of gameplay buttons in the proper sequence. English class presents a word jumble. Art class offers a Qix-style game where players have to draw boxes while avoiding moving enemies to uncover a picture. Out in the real world, there are Punch Out! and Paperboy-esque games to play, and various locations also hold arcade games, one of which -- and this is not an exaggeration -- features a monkey flinging its feces in order to knock down bananas to make (what else?) more excrement.

Variety proves to be one of the game's great strengths. It's usually leaden death when an action video game loads its plate with minigames, but Bully adheres to the golden rule of good gameplay design by keeping these segments short, fun, and largely optional. Even the game's lawnmowing segments, seen primarily when Hopkins has fought the law and the law won, are never quite the punishment they're made to be.