ripping with the trademark satire and biting wit of a true Rockstar classic, Bully is just as fun now as it was more than a year ago on PS2. It’s an irreverent and unapologetic snipe at the silliness and foibles of life in secondary school, while it simultaneously embraces the fond nostalgia most of us have for those days. A few new missions, a bare bones multiplayer mode, and updated graphics are all nice additions, but none of them give Bully the sheen of a true next-gen game. Despite this, Scholarship Edition stands strong on the merits of its clever gameplay, brilliantly realized locale, and a willingness to skewer every schoolyard stereotype imaginable.

Bully’s gameplay is remarkably straightforward, rarely veering off the traditional open world formulas. Plenty of missions are fetch quests and protection jobs, but each one is cleverly disguised under a veneer of cunning narrative. A few objectives offer more unique challenges, like stealth missions sneaking into the school, bike races, or panty raids on the girl’s dorm. Regardless, there’s always something to do or a new activity to try. Pacing is perfectly handled – just when a location or situation is starting to feel stale, something new pops up to draw your attention. It’s in this element of gameplay that this new Scholarship Edition takes the biggest strides. By adding just a few more classroom activities and some new missions to periods in the game that previously felt a little barren, it feels like the puzzle is finally complete. It’s easy to adopt that “just one more mission” approach while playing, and that’s a good thing.

There are some notable frustrations that are more noticeable now on a next-gen console than they were on the PS2. Frequent loading sections as you move in and out of buildings, enter conversations, and other events are a pain. Characters in the world regularly wig out and start walking into walls or glitching as they bump into each other. It feels just a tad technically unpolished beside a gameplay package that feels so solid.

Much will be made of the addition of local multiplayer, but I’m not convinced it adds that much. In one-vs-one tournaments, you get to tackle sets of minigames, from speed photography to who can best dissect an animal in biology. It’s a clever and amusing diversion, but you’ll be back into the single player pretty quickly, if I have my guess.

Bully was a fantastic release late in the life of the PS2, and I’m pumped that the folks I know who’ve become gamers this generation now have a chance to experience it for themselves. For those of us who’ve already had our fun the first time, I’m not sure a second run at high school is really in order.