Just be sure to hook up an Xbox 360 controller if you want to have fun with these tasks. Not only are the keyboard and mouse controls awful, but inexplicably, Bully does not support any other gamepad. The default key assignments are laughable (who thought that using the left alt key as a main button was a good idea or that it should be the oft-hammered sprint button?), though you can thankfully reassign them to more natural-feeling keys. The mouselook camera controls are lethargic and don't improve much if you increase the mouse sensitivity in the menus (which you can access only when the game has started, not from the main menu). And in a final slight to PC game players everywhere, Bully's tutorial tells you to press "mousewheel up" and "mousewheel down" at the same time. Some console-to-PC ports need a controller to be at their best, but given Bully's brand of third-person action, it shouldn't have been one of them.
As you move from one task to the next, you will discover some of Bully's other idiosyncrasies. This is a game that does a lot, though mechanically speaking, some aspects don't work as well as others. Triggering an event or opening a door can sometimes be a pain because, for whatever reason, even standing right on top of the marker won't always generate the prompt; bicycle and skateboard controls can be loose, which in turn leads to some frustration on certain missions; and some targeting foibles can make it tough to punch or aim, among other peculiarities. And in this version, you can add the occasional crash to the list--so save early, and save often.
Your eyes don't deceive you: The outdoor environments really do look this washed out.
It's unsurprising that a port of a two-year-old PlayStation 2 game wouldn't live up to current-day standards from a technical point of view. However, Bullworth is rendered with incredible style, from restrooms dingy enough to make you wrinkle your nose to a beautifully designed carnival funhouse that hits all the right notes. Yet while Bully's art design is outstanding, it's technically problematic. For some reason, outdoor environments are all washed out; everything is fuzzy and overlit during the day, as if you turned up the gamma settings on your monitor. There are also all sorts of weird lighting glitches, like flickers and blinking shadows. Additionally, Bully's technical performance is decidedly mediocre, and the slowdown isn't limited to the frame rate: The entire game speed lurches along, slowing down and hurrying up as you move in and out of more populated areas. At least you'll get an amazing sonic experience. As previously mentioned, the voice acting is outstanding, and everything from ambient sound effects to the eccentric minimalist soundtrack strikes just the right chord. However, we ran into a number of sound bugs, such as frequent occasions when voice-over and lip movement became desynched or when speech was completely inaudible.
If you skipped Bully the first time around, you should definitely catch up on what you missed--but you shouldn't do it with the PC version. The game offers plenty of memorable moments and crafts an adolescent world that is both surreal and painfully truthful, but a poor job of porting means that you need to overcome a number of obstacles to get the most out of it. The platform--and the game--deserve more respect than this.
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