High School Musical 2: Work This Out! (DS) Review

Let me preface this review with the following, I have never played or watched anything to do with High School Musical before. Apart from some of the news its actors have gotten into I have never had or will probably never have any reason to follow this franchise. However the target marketed for this game and the movies will know who all the characters are but even young girls shouldnt have to be told the story in such a way that this game does.

Now if youve played a High School Musical game or watched the movies before you will no doubt know the movies story. However if you havent you are going to have a hard time knowing just what is going on as the games method of presenting the story is well below par. The game starts off well enough but once youre into the game the story is thrown out the window and strung to together with choice and random quotes from the movie with a pop in character busts on the top screen. This method would be fine but the quotes are always out of context and repeated over and over again.

When not in the overall game world and in the menu and story driven moments the game looks fine, but when the characters and world switch to 3D its a whole different story. The characters that the models in the game are meant to protect look like weird and just plain ugly and for the sections of the game that a close in on the character it really shows. The games world is weirdly broken into parts and most of the resort is closed off at the beginning probably to ween players into it, which would be cool if they soon opened up more areas but it takes a while to get to that stage.

For a game based on a musical, with musical in its title and with the majority of game having music based mini games the games musical score falls apart early on and doesnt get much better. You begin the game with just two tracks for use during game play and for use in the jukebox however they are the same song just one a ballad version and the other a more upbeat version that will get stuck in your head for days after simply because you will have heard it so much over and over. By the time you unlock more songs the game is almost over. And the games music doesnt pass through to most of the mini-games either with low quality MIDIs used most of the time in games. The game recommends you use headphones but with the lack of variety in the music for the majority of game youll find you will be turning the sound off more than enjoying.
Mini games used to be bonuses or side quests tacked onto a main and full game now in the last few years this has sadly changed, Work This Out is a batch of 4 mini games tacked together with a weak story driven narrative and only one of them are any sort of fun and some are even broken.

We say there are 4 games but there really are only two types, the drag the stylus and put balls away (which might take you a few times to figure exactly where) and tap to the beat types. First off with the dragging games unless youre three years old, you are going to pass each of the games by a flying mile with the required amount to pass extremely easy and you will reach the pass grade in no time. It would be really hard to get anything less than an A+ even though the game is running at a speed which makes it impossible to grab everything.

Thats right its actually impossible to grab everything but since the game rewards you for doing even a subpar effort it doesnt really matter. The dancing/beat games are similar to an Elite Beat Agent inference but with a lot less things to do. Its just the tap tap tap bits with none of the Phrase markers its very simple and even perhaps too easy for the target market it is trying to hit. Each of the minigames is a job to do at the resort, and are marked up on a chalk board in the main room of the resort, for the first day of jobs the games are a little fun but since you repeat them again and again and dont unlock another song the experience grinds to a halt soon after.

The games story will last you a few hours and more so for the younger crowd thats if they dont get bored of the repetitiveness of it. However since the game has the High School Music branding all the way through it no matter how plain it probably wont matter.

High School Musical 2 has some good ideas but they are poorly executed and repeated the entire game over, the games target audience will lap this up but eventually they are going to get sick of it as well no matter how many of their favourite stars feature.

Graphics 4.0

Gameplay 4.0

Sound 6.0

Tilt 5.0

Value 3.0