14 December 2012:
Order up!
There's this iPhone game I've been playing called Order Up!! To Go, and it's simply nice to play. I'm still very surprised that this fabulous game is totally free, because it's filled with so much details and programming.
Upon checking on its Wikipedia page, this game was created by SuperVillian Studios in 2008 for the Wii. There are other subsequent version for PS3 and Nintendo DS but the one I played is its free version on iOS. The developer for iOS is Chillingo Ltd, and it too has many nice games to I enjoy.
The game starts when you are dropped off a helicopter and land at Port Abello (portabello, get it?). The island is supposed to be the best place for food and such. There are three regions in the island, but you would start at the lower-left region at Burger Face.
That's the least high-class restaurant. In fact, it's actually a drive-thru window of a fast food restaurant. They really want you to 白手起家. Anyway, there's this pimply assistant who teaches you the basics like how to fry stuff or slice stuff.
There are many actions such as 'dredge' or 'saute', and you'll experience more throughout the game. You would get used to it after a while, it's the same few actions. However, some are more difficult to master. So you would want to read the instructions carefully cos they only appear the first time you see the action. Other than that there's only a small blue box giving you a 'hint' of what to do but it may not be very useful. I myself learnt how to slice after accidentally doing it correctly.
Once you learn the basics, you are sent to the first restaurant called Gravy Chug. It serves Western food in general, such as hamburger and fries or roast chicken. You own the restaurant and it's up to you to manage it.
Each restaurant has 20 dishes to master, supposedly 12 + 8 specials. But actually, there are 24 dishes in total per restaurant. If you see the menu board, there's a 4 by 4 grid of dishes and a small spot for the daily special. The first column of the grid are dishes that are sort-of backup: customers only order those when their original choice is out of stock. These dishes cost lesser but are always available.
The second to fourth columns are the 12 'normal' dishes I'm talking about. And out of these 12, 8 of them have special versions which include spices in them. There are 6 categories of spices, the five tastes plus a general category. Within each category there are four spices which progressively unlock with each restaurant bought. Anyway, the specials are separately bought, provided you have the required spices as well.
So yes, you have to master 24 dishes in total. At the start of each restaurant you are given 3 dishes to start with. Before you begin each day in the game, you have to stock up dishes. The game would tell you how many guests there are for the day, and it's up to you to gauge what you should stock. Each dish you stock costs an increasing amount of money. If you stock wrongly or disproportionately then you'll lose money at the end of the day.
Actually I personally feel that the stocking becomes a problem only when you start the second row. At the first row you are able to better gauge. As for the third row where you have all dishes available, I too have a method to gauge so for me that's not a problem. It's only the second row where it's neither here nor there.
Whenever you buy all dishes from a row, you would receive a food critic. He tests your ability to serve all perfect food for what he calls 'table of four'. (He orders the four dishes in that row always.) Speaking of perfect, there is a meter to tell you how good you are at the actions.
For example, when boiling, you would wait till the arrow point to the green 'perfect' range before collecting. You don't want to remove it before when it's at the 'good' range. Over-cooking is also no good. Other actions like slicing are more demanding. You slice around 5 times for each ingredient. To get a final 'perfect' score, you need to score all perfects.
In case you don't, there's always the choice of thrashing the ingredient. It doesn't waste money but wastes time. And time in turns costs you money because impatient customers pay less. However for the food critic I suggest you to thrash unless it's perfect, so that he pays the maximum amount possible. He often pays up to 400% of the original worth.
Getting back to the thing about spices, sometimes there are special customers. They are introduced progressively throughout the game. These special customers wish for a certain spice added to any of their ingredients. (One dish consists of three or four steps generally.) There's no penalty if you don't add it but they pay the normal amount. Adding the correct one gets you around 50% more money but adding the wrong one may see them walking out and not paying at all.
These special customers are actually not picky on the exact kind of spice, they just want the correct category. So it's not that hard remembering who wants what. However if you forget, there's a small spot on the recipe where you can click to remind you. Subsequent clicks do get chargeable though, especially in late restaurants where you are expected to remember.
The game uses silver and gold coins. Gold coins are given to you rarely once you get achievements, or unless you buy them using real money. Silver coins is the main currency that people pay you in. Almost every purchase you make can be paid in either silver or gold coins, so there's a choice there. It's of course more worth it to pay in silver coins, because there is no fixed exchange rate and sometimes 1 gold coin = 40 silver ones but other times 1 = 100.
Each restaurant you own (there are five in total) will have a Yelp score. It's like a rating system based on 10 aspects. Most of the time you would easily begin with 50+ points already and it's not difficult increasing the score. Once you reach around 75 points you get a gold star on the Yelp score screen.
Also, do be careful of your restaurant's cleanliness. After around 4 or 5 days without cleaning the restaurant, you may be visited by a health inspector. He would demand you to scrub clean 7 plates within 50 seconds. It is doable, but your finger may be very heated after it all cos you're really rubbing the screen furiously. Not a good thing to do, so rather clean your restaurant frequently.
The restaurant can be cleaned through the newspaper, which is dropped in front of the restaurant every day. There's a section where you can choose cleaning services, and also upgrade your equipment. There's another section that employs helpers, but I don't think you'll need it. Besides, the real good ones require gold coins.
I've been playing this game since 2 months ago or longer. Previously because I was having O Levels, I only played one 'day' per day. Depending on which stage of the restaurant you are in, one 'day' may take 10 minutes to half an hour. This is because the number of guests increase per number of dishes available, so if you have all 20 be prepared for 30+ guests.
A warning though, this game is rather battery-seeping. A 20 minutes game (average one) would take around 10% of your iPhone battery. However, there are impressive graphics to compensate. I especially like to part where the chef (you) walks in every time there's a new restaurant. It is done as if it's a TV show and they're filming some cooking show.
The characters inside do speak too, so that's kind of a titbit for players. However after a while what they say gets repeated so I sometimes mute the voices. There is also another downside which is the frequent showing of ads. They show a 30-second clip when you switch between restaurants and also feature a banner advertisement when you're cooking. This makes it difficult to move left and right and sometimes I click on the ad and burn my dishes.
However, because this game is completely free (including purchasing new restaurants; payable in silver coins) I personally don't mind it. You get to skip the video ads after around 5 seconds. As for the banner ads, it disappears after a while so not a big problem.
The game just had an update two days ago, and they are planning on having another restaurant I think. I'm certainly looking forward to it. I'm currently on the third restaurant (Italian cuisine) and it's similar to Western cuisine, so I'm having a nice time. The second restaurant serving Mexican cuisine was a bit sian cos I don't really know Mexican culture anyway. Seems distant to me, but it's a US game so hey.
There are many more tips and tricks but I'm not telling all. I think I've said so much already above. If you play the game you'll realise more along the way, so no fret. Also, this game is the kind where you can make it big if you 腳踏實地 earn money, so there's no need to cheat or buy gold coins.
I would certainly buy the Wii or PlayStation versions, but I have neither Wii nor PlayStation. Never mind, I'm contented with the iPhone version. I'm very impressed with the game, because it has continuity while not being boring.
Tiny Tower was something like this too, but after a while clicking to stock and order was a bit boring. Here, the dishes are always different so there's a different set of actions. And this makes it not boring for people like me, and I think you would feel so too.
Go try it if you haven't, it's really a snatch for a free iPhone game. I think if they had to price it, $3.98 wouldn't be too expensive. In conclusion, 96 / 100 would be my score for it.
TTFN.
Sorry for the lack of pictures, although I know normally reviews include them. It's difficult for me to screen-capture on my iPhone and transfer it over, so yeah I ain't putting any pictures. However the link at the iOS store does include some pictures there.