Review: Brooktown High: Senior Year (PSP)

Being a European-based site, we unfortunately never got to experience the life of an American high school senior. If it's anything like this game, though, we missed a great experience. With four classes, a bevy of teens gagging for it, and apparently a school which is only open on a Monday, it must have been amazing.

To truly describe the limitations of this dating sim, it's best to describe a week in the life of a Brooktown High student. Once your character is created and his personality in place, you're flung straight into the game. The first day is Monday and naturally it's a school day. So, once we get our character dressed in what we believe is how the kids look these days, we head out the door. The disappointment starts when you discover you can't investigate any of your house outside of your own room, and leaving via the door automatically transports you to the school. Once there, you fight through the slowdown and go and speak to the first girl you see (in this case, it was the goth chick). The choice of phrases is terribly limited and sometimes so vague that what you think will be a compliment turns out to be the opposite. In this example, we were told how stylish we look, but choosing the seemingly polite option to say what we thought would be "oh no, we don't look that good" ended up pretty much calling her a slag. Good start.

After about three minutes, we found ourselves late for class. In the most lazy example of design ever, Brooktown High isn't so much a school as it is a corridor. Yes, just one corridor with the only decent decoration being a couple of vending machines and a basketball court. Further cutbacks ensure you only have four classes (Art, French, Physics and P.E.) and, once entered, you see the clock spinning around with each consecutive day flashing up on screen. That's it. In the space of five minutes, your entire school week has ended and you find yourself in your room on a Saturday morning. The weekend (well, just Saturday) also ends abruptly: you can spend time playing the three appalling mini-games or use the computer to buy clothes or register for an afternoon activity or job. Once you click on your desk to study a specific subject, the same clock you get in class signifies the time spinning forward and you wake up Monday morning for the ten minute-long week to begin all over again. Chances are you won't be able to handle many more 'weeks' because you'll soon realise your time should be spent playing something else.

For what has been touted as a dating sim for the western market, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of sexual themes going on. You don't even see any hand-holding, let alone a kiss (apart from the misleading opening cut scene), making the whole thing seem utterly pointless. It doesn't help that the many females often spout the exact same lines they said the week before. The whole game just becomes repetitive in the space of half an hour. The only real saving grace is the graphics, which are quite good (apart from the slowdown), and Brooktown High does have decent voice acting, which plays on the clichés found in the game. The music is also passable, even though it does feature a number of tracks which can make a deaf person cringe.

The whole concept of Brooktown High is appealing, but what the developer Backbone Entertainment has done is given us the most boring and lifeless look at high school life imaginable. With only three mini-games, repeated dialogue and a lack of options, it feels like we've only been given half a game, which is probably the case. If this is indicative of most dating sims, perhaps this is why we don't get many of them on our shores.

Rating: 3 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver