System: Microsoft Xbox 360

Also available for: Nintendo Wii

Publisher: Rockstar

Reviewer’s rating: ***

ESRB rating: Teen

Game type: Action

Kind of like: A hybrid of “Grand Theft Auto” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”

Best feature: Huge variety of things to do.

Worst feature: Loads of bugs and glitches that Rockstar promises to fix with a downloadable patch.

The bottom line: In the next-gen world of social gaming, great single-player experiences are few and far between. Developers, it seems, have mostly forgotten about those of us who play video games to escape from society rather than to connect with it.

But not Rockstar. The makers of the brilliant and controversial “Grand Theft Auto” series take their free-roaming formula back to school with “Bully.”

Originally released for the PlayStation 2 and updated here with new missions and improved graphics, “Bully” follows the story of Jimmy Hopkins, a ne’er-do-well teen who struggles to fit in after his parents enroll him in a corrupt boarding school called Bullworth Academy.

All the horrors of high school are included. Classes. Cliques. Curfews. Iron-fisted administrators. Romantic histrionics. And, of course, bullies.

But the game’s satirical edge makes everything irresistible. (Especially the girls’ dorm.)

After a slow start, the campus gates open up and the surrounding town offers seemingly infinite opportunities for fun (there’s a carnival, for instance), enterprise (mowing lawns and delivering newspapers for money), shopping (new clothes, haircuts and tattoos) and mischief (egg cars, hit people with water balloons, etc.).

It probably goes without saying that you spend a lot of time running away and hiding from authority figures. We can hear the parent groups grumbling already.