Games of Tomorrow: 2 Cool 4 School

It seems easy enough: go to high school, get your diploma, move on with your life. For some, however, graduating just isn’t as important as being a dick. Sure, getting suspended a time or two never hurt anyone, but these losers got the boot for good, or worse yet just bailed on their own. While they may seem like total failures to the teachers and counselors around them, they almost always go on to lead successful lives as garbage men, janitors, petting zoo helpers, or carnival snack stand attendants. Yes sir, dropouts live it up. Sleeping in their parents’ den, periodically emerging to proclaim ”We don’t need no education.” If all this dropout talk is getting you down then stop reading, because that’s all you’re getting in 2 Cool 4 School.

The gameplay consists of finding a high school building and entering it. Seems easy enough, but remember that the characters are fucking morons because they dropped out of school and therefor can’t read maps or dial phones. Sure, it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. You get to play as 1 of 4 different dropouts: Lucy the street mime, D’Angelo the CVS Pharmacy clerk, Clifford the Meals-On-Wheels driver’s co-pilot, or Rupert Beck-De La Santos, the cheap man-whore from your local corner. It’s your job to try and guide these folks to a life of success. In other words, mission: impossible.

The first quitter you can choose is Lucy, the 21 year old street mime. After phoning in a death threat to her global studies teacher at age 16, she fled school and stopped speaking in public for fear of having her voice identified. She was headed down the wrong path in life when she happened to bump into the greatest mime ever, the aptly named Pablo The Greatest Mime Ever. With Pablo acting as her guide and mentor, Lucy quickly lit up the streets with such classic acts as her ”I’m stuck in a box” routine. But she realizes this can’t go on forever. Ever see an old mime on the street? No, because they either get a real job or kill themselves. Alas, she dreams of something more. To achieve her goals she needs an education, something that hand gestures and creepy silences just can’t offer.

D’Angelo the CVS Pharmacy clerk is a 42 year old Cuban defector who lives in Miami. Though he only made it to 10th grade, he lasted way longer than anyone else in the history of his family (the previous record was 5th grade). He quit school in the mid 1980′s to pursue a job making Members Only jackets, a career path that he felt would lead to millions of dollars. When the fad went out of style (around the time people realized that Members Only jackets were retarded), D’Angelo’s chances of getting a real education went out with them. Can he lead a Members Only revolution and finally get out of the register-jockey game?

Clifford the Meals-On-Wheels co-pilot had it all as a sophomore. He has the looks, the ladies, and the brains. Unfortunately, in the summer between 10th and 11th grade, a pasta sauce accident impaired his vision and led to Clifford needing freakishly large glasses. And as everyone knows, the bigger the glasses get, the faster your popularity goes straight to hell. In an effort to fit in with someone, Clifford began hanging out with the only people that would accept him: the Dungeons & Dragons nerds. Homework and hygiene quickly took a back seat to dragons and spells. Eventually Clifford’s GPA was a less-than-impressive zero. Teachers politely asked Cliff to leave the school, and seeing as this would allow him more dice time at the D&D table, he happily obliged. That was 10 years ago. Clifford is now a 27 year old homeless man trying to save up for a lot in a trailer park, and is hoping that Meals-On-Wheels is the answer to his problems. As we all know, Cliff is going nowhere in life with a job like this. It’s up to you to help him out, lest he die an early death (probably involving something that starts with “S” and rhymes with fuicide).

Last and definitely least of the group is Rupert Beck-De La Santos. Rupert is a 46 year old male hooker who hangs around a street corner looking to get it on. Some may say that the saddest part about Rupert is the fact that he’s a fat, balding prostitute, but most will say that the saddest part about him is the fact that he actually believes people would pay money to have sex with him. Where did it all go wrong? It began when Rupert was expelled from high school for shitting in a water fountain 20 minutes shy of his graduation. The whole situation was a heartbreaker for Rupert and the rest of the Beck family. Things got even more confusing later on in life when Rupert woke up in a pool hall after a night of heavy drinking. It turns out he had married a man named Ramon De La Santos, a man he’d never met and has still never met. He doesn’t plan on getting a divorce, however, as he feels being a 46 year old male prostitute is bad enough without adding “divorced” to it. Can Rupert finally hang up his work clothes (a neon green thong and a half-ripped Ultimate Warrior tank top) and get back on track?

In the end, you should walk away from 2 Cool 4 School with at least three lessons:
1) Dropouts always end up in ridiculous jobs that nobody else would dream of pursuing.
2) The last name “Beck-De La Santos” will only occur as the result of a drunken mistake.
3) Dungeons & Dragons hurts more people than it helps.

You’ve got to love an underdog story, though. And really, is there a bigger longshot than these people becoming credible human beings? There’s a better chance Herman Munster is sworn in as Commander-in-Chief. Lastly, to the people who are surely going to write in angry letters saying “I’m a high school dropout and I’m doing pretty well for myself”, here’s our response in advance: Working at Lady Footlocker is not “doing well”, and shame on you for stealing the computer you’re reading this on, because there’s no way you have enough money to buy one yourself.

- Ludlow & Poser