Brooktown High for PSP review
Brooktown High is a spectacularly bad game. You will see the entire game in 20 minutes, no kidding. I had a bad feeling when I noticed the manual’s Table of Contents was wrong, and it was confirmed by very little gameplay.
It starts out with some hope. The intro features great music and video, and you take a little personality quiz to determine which of the four cliques you fit into – Nerds, Jocks, Preps, or Rebels. Then, you design your character… although if you’ve seen screenshots, you know that the faces are a bit homely. Once you do that, you pop into your bedroom.
It’s Monday morning, 8am, and you have to be in class by 8:30, or risk being caught by the freaky robotic hall monitor and zapped, and possibly suspended or expelled. The problem is, that in-game half-hour goes by in about three minutes real-time. And this is the only time you have to interact personally with other characters, meet new people, get favors, and such, although to be fair, time stops while you’re talking to a person. The navigation is a bit difficult – your character moves so fast and people stand so close together that sometimes you end up talking to the wrong person – and once you start a conversation, there’s no way to back out of it. You have to talk until the other character decides he/she’s done talking to you. And good luck trying to find a character who’s been named if you don’t know what he looks like – names aren’t displayed until you talk to a character.
On your first morning at school, you are approached by a girl who gives you a painful tutorial – first, after you complete each tutorial item, you have to start the menu trees over, and several of the items have 2 or 3 submenus. Once you finish the tutorial, you can meet other people, but make sure you’re headed for class by the second bell. You can pick from only four classes – art, physics, P.E., and French. Select a classroom, and be surprised – a video of your week flies by in seconds. That’s right – you don’t play the week… it just goes by, and you only take one class per week.
Friday night comes, and you can choose (via your in-room computer) to be in an after-school club or take a job – not both. These also zip by in seconds, as a video only, just like the week. Or, you could just study – which goes by a little slower; in perhaps 2 minutes. You’re confined
to your room during the weekend, and you automatically get put to bed at midnight. Saturday morning hits, and this is your time to call friends (*if* you can get their number), hit the Internet for some shopping, play some minigames, or study. There are 3 minigames which must be unlocked, although 21 Knickers, the first, is unlocked almost immediately. It’s a strip-blackjack game (you only get down to your undies.) BoogieTron 5000 is a bad DDR clone, and Tongue Twister is a… get this… it’s a kissing game, and you just don’t want to read about it, trust me. If you’d rather shop, unless you have a generous allowance or a high-paying job, you usually have money for only one item each week. Studying goes by just as fast as on Friday, so Saturday is over in about 5 minutes if that’s your choice. It ends at 6pm, and somehow, there is no Sunday in this game… wham, you’re back to Monday morning!
There is just nothing to DO in this game. The little socializing present repeats too quickly and there is too little time available to do it in. The graphics are okay, although as noted before, the characters aren’t anything to look at, but I do have to compliment the sound – it has a good soundtrack. The loading times are frequent and long, as are the autosaves, though you can turn those off. I daresay loading takes more time than the week passing takes.
Bottom line: This game had some potential, at least for the younger crowd, but they completely blew it. I am not sure I would even classify it as a game – perhaps a complex minigame; that’s how little there is to do. It’s just not fun. This game calls itself a dating sim, but even The Sims does a better job at that. Don’t waste your time or money.
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