Brooktown High [PSP]

While large audiences around the world have lapped up some of Japan's biggest contributions to gaming, namely RPGs, some action titles and whatnot, some "experimental" content has crept its way out of the country and blessed US fans with the likes of Okami, Katamari Damacy and even the Brain Age series. But one genre that has so far stayed steadfastly in Japan is dating simulators.

Konami and Backbone Entertainment hoped to break the genre to US gamers with Brooktown High, a game where your entire goal is to pick up on the opposite sex while maintaining your grades (if you care to). It's certainly unique on this side of the world, but unfortunately we now have a clue as to why it hasn't caught on over here before.

The game starts with your character's creation. Your personality is determined by answering a few simple questions before you get to pick your name and how you'll look. Clothing is limited to start, but your allowance and possibly a job will net you enough cash to pick up some new threads as time goes on.

Each week is pretty simple. On Monday morning, you have 30 minutes (which is about a minute of actual gameplay time, give or take) to get to class, but before then you can chat it up with any of Brooktown's students. Once you go to one of the four classes, you're fast-forwarded to Friday where you'll automatically partake in any job or club you've signed up for. All of a sudden it's Saturday where you can spend your morning studying or practicing a mini-game, and then if you have one set up, you'll go out on a date. As soon as the date's over, it's Monday morning again.

The game seems rushed when you first start, but you'll come to realize that the pacing is pretty spot-on in that you have enough time to talk to a couple people and perhaps set up a date before class, and then the rest of the week flies by fast enough that you're not waiting for long. So the pacing and general idea works fine, but the actual execution is lacking in a number of areas.

For starters, you'll find yourself in the midst of the same conversations time and time again, and though they'll sometimes change on dates depending on where you are, when talking on the phone or at school you'll wind up hearing the same things over and over and over again. We had Elektra, the local goth chick, tell us her "new" haiku more than a couple times, which is as follows:

Empty plastic bag Suffocation, strangulate Gasp, gasp, gasp, gasp, gasp

There is voice work in the game, but it's of a limited nature. You may (or may not) hear someone say the first line of a conversation, but you're left to read the rest on your own. It's good that there are voices present in some form, but it's a little disappointing that there aren't full conversations here. Given the amount of dialog and music that have appeared in numerous other PSP titles, like the Grand Theft Auto series especially, we don't imagine the developers ran out of disc space (or if they did, they needed better compression).