High School Days 2

I used to wonder why the first thing some folk did when they got in from school was tune into Grange Hill (a British soap opera set in a school - ed). Surely the last thing you want to indulge in after you've just got in from a hard slog in class is watch a load of other kids get put through the same torture.

Of course, Grange Hill was intended to be a form of escapism, bearing little relation to the real thing. By the same token, High School Days 2 tries to make something amusing out of something banal. The only problem is, it's even less like a video game than it is a day behind a school desk.

Part of High School Days 2's problem is that it's following a path more readily taught by another series - Gameloft's 'Nights' line-up. Play attempts to follow much the same pattern, the bulk of it being talking to classmates and teachers to move the plot forward.

The idea is to help Stacy, your uncharismatic host, settle in at her new school. This involves walking her around an especially plain 2D setting, chatting to the characters that litter its layout when ordered.

As well as merely conversing, your repertoire includes flattering them, insulting them, attempting to make them laugh, or even offering them a gift (if you happen to have picked one up along the way), the trick being to use the right tools to sweeten, or sour, the right people.

Most of the time, you're prompted into doing what the game wants, High School Days 2 handing out the orders and them simply waiting for you to carry them out. Indeed, the whole thing plays less like a game and more a mundane check-list.

For instance, flattering, insulting or attempting to amuse friends and foe is, quite bizarrely, a matter of stopping a ball in the middle of a gauge as it swings from side to side. Miss the target area, and the game simply tells you to do it again. And again. And again.

Long-term failure isn't an option - you do what High School Days 2 says, or you don't do anything at all.

It's a tiresome set-up that comes with no class or charm whatsoever. Those you talk to act like robots and reply with the same old scripted lines, the activities themselves never entertaining nor amusing.

The whole thing feels like an entirely pointless exercise, a game you watch rather than participate in. Indeed, if High School Days 2 serves any purpose whatsoever, it's showing how difficult it is to get these social simulations right.