Brooktown High: Senior Year
Could’ve studied to ace the final exam. Instead it barely gets a passing grade
Tags: Brooktown High: Senior Year Categories: PSP Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Jul 17th, 2007
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Brooktown High: Senior Year (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Brooktown High has the odd distinction of being a dating game released in America that’s not aimed at young girls. In fact, with sexual undertones, some strong language and a “T” for Teen rating, it’s pretty much guaranteed that younger girls won’t play this title, which really limits the audience it can attract. However, its problems run a bit deeper than a limited target audience.
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For those unaware, games like this make the player’s goal to woo one of multiple possible love interests through a “simulation” that involves you guessing the right responses to your potential flames’ questions based on their personalities, as well as getting them appropriate gifts (hint: the goth girl will like the voodoo doll). As it happens, Brooktown High also has you trying to just generally become the popular kid in school, as well as keeping up your studies – which, as it happens, feed into four different traits that affect how much you’ll be able to charm the game’s preppies, jocks, nerds and rebels. For example, the physics class will boost your nerd appeal, and art class will kick up your rebel trait (I guess Konami decided a “skipping school” class would be irresponsible).
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Every week of gameplay is broken up into three distinctive phases – Monday represents the school week, Friday evening represents your after-school hours, and Saturday represents your weekend. Things start off Monday morning, when you get out of bed at 8AM and have twenty minutes (in-game it works out to be closer to two minutes) to get dressed, get to school and socialize before class starts. Then you need to pick one of the four classes and run to it before the game’s robotic hall monitor catches you (apparently Brooktown High did very well in their school fundraiser last year). Friday evening is reserved for social clubs, an after-school job and/or studying and playing stat-raising themed minigames at home. Saturdays are for more time spent in your room, and going on a date if you have one.
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The game lets players play as either a boy or a girl, so technically this game isn’t specifically aimed at the females (although let’s be honest – how many guys do you know that would plunk down $40 at a Gamestop for a dating game?). However, it does seem to be aimed squarely at heteros – you can attempt a guy-guy or girl-girl hook-up, but this seems to be mainly for kicks and giggles. Sorry LGBT community, but Konami doesn’t acknowledge you here.
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Players can choose design and dress up their character using a limited selection of parts, clothes and accessories, and then they take a multiple-choice “personality test” that assigns their base stats. Then it’s off you go, with no tutorial or anything. I have to admit, my first attempt at feeling my way around my room found me accidentally heading off to school in m underwear, and the game refused to let me go back to change. You know those nightmares you had when you were a kid where you took your exam in your skivvies? Picture going to school like that on your first day. After some trial and error, you do get the hang of it, but it’s not always obvious what’s what.
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The game’s graphics are decent enough, although initially the “midgets with big heads” style will be a big turn-off for many. Word to the wise: skip the intro cinema that starts when you fire up the game. On the other hand, the game’s writing and voice acting is actually one of the best parts of this game. All of the schoolkids are surprisingly well-written, and most are deeper than their two-dimensional stereotype would initially imply. Right off the bat, my guy managed to hook up with a spiritual/environmentalist girl who seemed a bit silly at first, but a little prying revealed a girl who claims she doesn’t appreciate flirting (even though she really does), and whose parents had an open relationship that she despises. Considering that games like this usually present paper cut-out ideals for players to fawn over, the attempt to actually humanize the game’s romantic interests is surprising and I applaud it. Oh, it also deserves mention that the game scores bonus points for including the song Don’t You Forget About Me.
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The big problem is that two-minute window of socializing. You see, that’s the only one you get. Two minutes to chat up schoolmates, make friends, bestow gifts on the guys/girls you’re interested in and ask them out on a date. If you fail to do so in time, you’re looking at a Friday evening and weekend spent studying in your room. Not only does this time limit feel artificial, it minimizes the core of the gameplay to a fraction of the time you’ll actually spend playing the game.
The game is also padded out by half-hearted minigames you can play in your room to boost stats. Stuff like strip blackjack (because Poker is too complicated, I guess) and a poor-man’s DDR clone do little to enhance this game, and only increase the feeling that the developers felt the core gameplay couldn’t stand on its own.
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So the question is, does it stand? Quite frankly, I’d have trouble giving you an answer. Those time limits really halted progress to a standstill, and the PSP’s loading times slow the game down even further, meaning that it takes forever to accomplish anything, although even into the first date I was seeing characters repeating themselves, so that doesn’t bode well for the game’s longevity. I really do feel like Backbone had a winning formula here, and they would have done well to run with it full steam ahead, but instead we get little bits and snippets of gameplay mired in the frustration of a snail-like pace.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Clever writing + Good voice acting |
6.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Too little time spent actually socializing - Pointless minigames - Big-headed midgets aren’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea - Overall game pace is far too slow |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| We don’t get many dating games here in the states, which makes Brooktown High somewhat unique. Unfortunately, the slow pace and lack of opportunity to actually socialize with the other students makes this a game that does little to capitalize on that fact. | |
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Tags: Brooktown High: Senior Year
Posted by Jake McNeill on Jul 17th, 2007 and is filed under PSP Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
