“Bully meets American Pie” Agefield High: Rock the School is a wasted opportunity
An adventure game inspired by teen comedies of the early 2000s? On paper, Agefield High: Rock the School sounds brilliant. You’re a teenager enjoying your last days of high school, with bullies and jocks to contend with and girls to impress. Think American Pie meets Bully; that’s exactly what Agefield High wants to be.
But wants is the operative word here. At best, Agefield High: Rock the School is an interesting idea that doesn’t ever fulfil its potential. And at worst, it’s a janky and disappointing mess. Not only is it inspired by the early 2000s, it also feels like it was made in the early 2000s, with an awkward camera, repetitive gameplay, uninspired missions and some of the worst combat I’ve ever had the misfortune to play. And I really hate having to type that, because I genuinely wanted to love this game.
Agefield High: Rock the School casts you as Sam. He’s a new senior student at the titular Agefield High, and while he has no problem making a group of friends, he’s also quick to catch the attention of the school’s jocks and bullies. With his new friends, Sam is part of a plan to “rock” the school before graduation, impressing his crush and outsmarting his foes along the way.
In terms of gameplay, that translates into a lot of travelling back and forth between waypoints, completing very basic missions as you go. If you’re not engaging in a fist fight with a bully – complete with an awful camera, an unresponsive control scheme and a distinct lack of feeling – then you’re undertaking a stealth mission, sneaking into a girl’s room to steal a pair of her underwear, or following someone from a safe distance.
Within the first couple of hours of Agefield High I’d already repeated each of those tasks a couple of times, with little else to break up the monotony other than some trivia-based minigames that pose as school lessons. It’s clear that developer Refugium Games has used Rockstar Games’ Canis Canem Edit (aka Bully) as a template here – and while Bully was a stand-out title when it released in 2006, some 20 years later its formula simply doesn’t hold up quite as well.
Bully’s Jimmy Hopkins wasn’t exactly a likeable character, but he had a personality. Agefield High’s Sam, on the other hand, is dull as dishwater and, like most of the characters here, is brought to life with shoddy animations and less than stellar voice acting. For a game that wants you to become immersed in its world and the story it’s trying to tell, it’s very disappointing.
By far the most egregious of all of Agefield High’s issue is the abysmal combat. Sam wastes no time in getting into fights with the school bullies, at it’s something you’ll repeat often, needing to kick, punch and push your way to success. But with a camera that fights against you and no way to lock on other than awkwardly holding down the left trigger button, actually landing a hit is easier said than done. It feels awkward and clunky, and after just one fight I found myself sighing every time Sam got himself into a new scrape.
It’s a shame, because Refugium Games has some nice ideas – it’s just that none of them truly pay off. The developer has tried to add variety into the gameplay with a mix of minigames and activities, with one of the most interesting seeing you able to pick up Sam’s guitar and play a song, Guitar Hero style. But with no feedback to the notes you press and no obvious scoring method, it feels very hollow. That’s the best way to describe most of the activities on offer here, in fact: there’s a distinct lack of feeling to everything you do.
But with a rocking soundtrack that’s reminiscent of the movies it’s trying to ape (shoutout to the opening riff that sounds ripped straight from Blink 182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket album) and some pop culture nods – like a ‘rockstar’ outfit resembling Billie Joe Armstrong – there’s the odd thing that will raise a smile in Agefield High: Rock the School. I feel like most of the issues here are too ingrained to be completely fixed, but maybe a few patches and updates can make this high school adventure a bit more palatable. I can hope, anyway.
Agefield High: Rock the School is available now on PC.
