How did this silly game suck me in so hard? I've logged 2 hours of game time with no end in sight. That's actual play time, it's been more like 3 since I've turned it on.
It turns out that cleverness can make up for almost anything.
The gameplay is fairly obvious in some ways, especially if you have ever cooked in real or virtual life. The Wiimote is wonderful for this, you actually chop, flip items in the pan, tear off lettuce leaves, and so on. Does it feel like the real thing? Of course not. It's a pretty good video game version, though. Some of the bits of cooking are quite difficult to get just right (my bane is the lettuce thing), but quickly the game gives you the option of skipping the onerous tasks by giving them to an assistant to prepare. It's a nice feature even though I realized early on that by not practicing these motions I will never get better at them. Oh, well, that's why you get to hire more assistants as you need them and earn enough "coin".
Even a cooking game with nice controls and a bit of a challenge gets boring after a bit, though, which is where the cleverness comes in. Every so often they throw you a mini-game, from a mid-shift game to shake your assistant awake to a very funny rat-flicking challenge. They come up frequently and you can't get out of them. I actually had a lot of trouble at first figuring out how to flick rats and I still don't completely have the hang of it, but luckily, if you fail to rid your restaurant of rats the health inspection mini-game is quite easy. Yep, the Health Inspector will shut you down until you prove you can really get your plates clean!
The point, though, is that these games wake you out of your cooking stupor and get you more engrossed. The monotony that most games suffer from is decimated.
There is also a tiny bit of management to your restaurant ventures but it is very rudimentary, involving mostly upgrades and spices. The game gives you a mini-tutorial on all of these different gameplay aspects as they open up, which is nice. They don't take long and they usually tell you just what you NEED to know.
I just got to the end of the first restaurant, where the food critic comes to evaluate your greasy spoon. It's a little bit crazy how excited I was to manage a perfect recipe and plenty of praise from the critic.
I wanted to stick with the game to this point at least just to see what happens when you open your second restaurant, a Mexican one.
Oh, it's so wonderfully kitschy (cactus chairs!) and just adorable. This game may have the worst graphics I've seen on a home console (even for the Wii) but it manages to take advantage of the crappiness somehow. Even the food is cute and is kind of making me crave some tacos.
With a new restaurant comes not only new recipes but new spices to buy and more assistants to choose from. There are also some new characters and a really tough (for me) folding technique.
Oh, did I mention the characters? To add complication to all matters, your customers have personal preferences like how well done they like their meat and what spices should be in their food. You end up memorizing them a bit and the names are rather Rowling-like, obvious clues to their favorites, like "Tex Porterhouse" liking barbecue sauce and "Sweet Tooth" loving all sweet things (even when completely inappropriate).
You can go back and forth between your restaurants, too.
So, I should get to bed but it's been a fun night. Do I think I'll hang on to this game for all that long? No. Would I recommend it to a friend? Maybe, if they like this sort of thing. I would recommend it for kids, for sure, because it's definitely got some good basic lessons for them and they'd probably have an easier time mastering the motions than I did. Still, it's a nice, fairly mindless distraction that I will enjoy right up until it goes into the mailbox.
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