High School Hook Ups

Ah, high school. I remember it well. Every day was a barrel of laughs, half the guys had muscles bigger than Arnie and looked like they were in their mid-thirties, and the cute girl with curly hair you secretly fancied ended up starring in a low-budget stripper movie.

No, wait. Hang on, that's Saved by the Bell.

Either way, if, like me, your school days were spent trying to ignore the big red blotchy mountains that had sprouted on the side of your face overnight, and the closest you ever came to being 'cool' was when you inadvertently flipped the bird at the headmaster while picking your nose, High School Hook Ups is going to seem a little odd.

In fact, it's hard to imagine that anyone's school genuinely resembles the one portrayed here. Drawing on all the worst elements of the likes of Glee and High School Musical, High School Hook Ups forces you to take on the role of the new kid in school.

The game's life long lesson seems to be: if you want to make friends, you need to lie. A lot.

No class

Indeed, while fitting in is no doubt high on anyone's agenda when they get to school, High School Hook Ups really does take this to the extreme. Progress relies on your ability to say what you think potential new friends want to hear, rather than what you actually want to scream at them.

And scream you most certainly will. So vapid are the game's one-dimensional cast of characters, it's a wonder anyone would want to breathe the same air as them, let alone bond. Yet bond you must.

As such, most of the gameplay focuses on selecting the answers that will garner the most positive response from a choice of three. The correct responses are usually obvious, with almost every single character you come across falling neatly into one of two boxes: shallow but pretty, or geeky but friendly.

It's a setup that resembles a much more linear take on Gameloft's own Nights series, with conversation broken up by running errands around the school to please your new buddies.

Within the first 15 minutes of play as the game's male lead (you can also play as a lass if you so choose), you'll have stolen an entire wardrobe and had a makeover Gok Wan would be proud of simply to impress your friends. Friends that, more than likely, you'll later abandon as you abandon every single value you hold dear simply to move up the social hierarchy of cool.

That would be perfectly acceptable, and indeed even entertaining, if the reward was unlocking some new form of play that actually involved you engaging your noggin.

Instead, all that's served up is more of the same, with the odd mini-game – using a swinging gauge to score hoops at basketball, or taking a Maths test that most certainly won't train your brain – thrown into the mix to stop you switching off altogether.

Which, in truth, is exactly what you should do. Infected with the kind of moral spectrum you could fit on the back of a fag packet, High School Hook Ups is neither enlightening nor fun by any definition.

Showing just how easy it is to get the Nights formula utterly askew, this is one class you'll definitely want to skip.