“In my day, we felt nothing of castrating the new boys.”

I was too much of a goody two shoes in high school to regularly get into the kind of trouble that becomes a fond memory. I got detention one time for an innocuous joke; indeed it remains a fun story to recall with my fellow perpetrators and witnesses when it comes up once in a blue moon. Bully: Scholarship Edition (a next-gen port/expansion of Rockstar’s Bully) allows players to indulge in all the mischief their conscience wouldn’t let them try in real life.

Graffiti, cherry bombs, slingshots, swirlies, fire alarms—on paper, this unique “Grand Theft Auto at a private boarding school” approach seems like a home run. In practice, however—outside of its sleepy New England coastal town setting, its solid original soundtrack, and its impressive cast of distinct characters—Bully is mostly a chore to play. Which is a problem that tends to plague GTA titles as well, so maybe it’s just par for the course. The thing is, it’s more about the idea of the thing than the thing itself. Every activity that the player can engage in is a rudimentary version of that thing. You can box, skateboard, ride go-karts, deliver newspapers, mow lawns, and a bazillion other things, but few (if any) of these modes are compelling on their own. The game is relying on the cumulative effect of its playground options, rather than its moment-by-moment gameplay, to hook the player.

After several hours of engaging in fisticuffs (I believe combat was lifted from Rockstar’s The Warriors), fetching boxes of chocolates, escorting classmates, and playing cheapo versions of Dance Dance Revolution, Qix, connect-the-dots, and Scrabble that an intern probably made as a summer project, the player takes part in an elaborate prank on Halloween night that promises to crack the game wide open. Instead, completing the mission just makes the game world three times as large, meaning fetch quests take three times as long. Sorry, but that’s not gonna hook me. I don’t even think I’ll bite.