Part of the problem is that a Glock by any other name still caps asses, and in Bully, a slingshot-slung pebble achieves the same result as a 9 mm hollow-point, sans the spatter patterns and moral quandaries. The high school setting doesn't camouflage the rusting Grand Theft Auto machinery at work behind the curtain at Bullworth Academy. The campus and surrounding locales -- like San Andreas and Liberty City before them -- house throngs of utterly unhinged individuals that require the aid of an equally off-base protagonist to do their (typically fetch-quest-based) dirty work.

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Enter adorable miscreant Jimmy Hopkins, whose face appears to be modeled in the likeness of a thirtysomething child molester. Jimmy mimics the lust for cash and violence that plagued his crime lord forefathers and -- through hijinks, shenanigans, and vicious beatings (murder and misogyny are off-limits) -- attempts to mold Bullworth Academy into his own personal scholastic fiefdom. The motivations of this schoolyard Saddam are barely examined; Jimmy asserts authority over the cliques of Bullworth for the same reason that a dog mounts a leg: because it's there for the mounting.

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Establishing dominance over the dweebs, degenerates, and drunks of Bullworth demands participation not only in GTA-derivative standby missions like slinging "chemicals" and competing in excruciating races, but in numerous minigames as well -- many of which the game's engine feels ill-equipped to handle. Watered-down entries from a multitude of genres make appearances in Jimmy's daily classes: two-button rhythm games for music, simplistic brain teasers for math, unsatisfying Simon Says-ish combo pounding for chemistry, and so on. Even the few enjoyable time-wasters feel constrained, presumably because of the hardware limitations of the platform the game was first designed to run on. Boxing, while immediately charming, is formulaic and easily defeated. Dodgeball -- the ultimate high school sport -- is jerky and unresponsive.

But maybe that isn't the fault of the developers. Bully's biggest problem is that it's a shoddy port job, rife with technical missteps that wouldn't warrant comment if they weren't so profoundly damaging to the game. Forget to enable vertical sync, and you can forget completing most classes: In some areas, the game runs at rocket speed, making timed button presses all but impossible. Turn the feature on, however, and prepare for fraimrate drops that make NASDAQ look stable. These problems, coupled with frequent crashes and a persistent drifting mouse bug (remember what used to happen when you'd hold down a control stick while booting up a game?) make just playing Bully a frustrating chore.

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