The ending was so anti-climactic though.
Jimmy vs Gary > Niko vs... uh, well, whatever Niko did at the end
What Niko did in the end, at least in my case, was to gun down 50 guys effortlessly only to have to do it again several times as I: spoiler (click to show/hide)
1) lost the escaping boat by not staying close enough to the shoreline
2) lost the escaping boat by not trusting the game to give me a jump over some rocks
3) lost the escaping boat by thinking that I should blow past the armed group of thugs near a ramp, after the game told me to head for a ramp to jump onto the helicopter, then chasing the thing four more blocks, finding another Unique Jump ramp, flailing off that, then wondering what ramp they were talking about
4) lost the escaping boat by seeing the actual jump, then hitting it on the edge, failing to make the cutscene happen
5) same thing again
6) and one more fucking time
7) then finally got the cutscene and finished the rest of that godforsaken mission without anything else exciting happening
BULLY is the best "GTA game" since GTA III. The team that made it learned from every single other Rockstar game, and synthesized (hi, Patel!) it into a nearly perfect GTA and Warriors game which references high-school mischief movies instead of heist films.
The fight mechanic is FUN. It's not as deep as The Warriors', but it's arguably more fun. You can give jocks melvins and toilet swirlies. The presentation's nice, too. Those "establishing shots" to mask the brief load times on entering buildings were a genius move.