Redlass's Full Review: Restaurant Empire for Windows
Most of the food-themed computer games currently on the market fall firmly into the casual arcade-style gaming category. Games such as Diner Dash, Burger Island, Cake Mania, Hot Dish, and even Chocolatier have food as a theme merely to add flavor to their basic arcade or adventure style format.
Even the tycoon games are typically pretty straightforward with a relatively low level of complexity.
None of these things are true for Restaurant Empire. It is a highly complex game that nearly takes it over the line from game to training simulation. Were it not for the storyline and some out-of-place offensive elements, one might almost suspect that it was really an educational or training program.
In fact, when I was at a meeting in Denver working on training for the U.S. Department of Labor and Job Corps for hospitality and culinary programs, this program came up. We were brainstorming learning activities and this games suitability was brought up along with raves at its $19.95 price tag. It is rare that educational software can be purchased at so low a price. Of course, there are some drawbacks to it as training software. I'll get to that in a moment.
Story line
The story is that of a young male chef who is taking over his uncle's restaurant. He's just completed his culinary training and plans to revive his uncle's restaurant which has suffered from the big corporate food chains. It starts out in France where he is rebuilding the restaurant and developing his reputation as a chef.
Controlling the Variables
The game allows you to hire the staff, source ingredients, choose menu items, choose prices, choose ingredient quality, decorate the restaurant, and assign chefs to individual recipes. Each of those tasks comes with its own extensive menu offering a wide range of choices. For example, when you hire employees, there is a list of different categories, different skill levels, and different salaries. You are able to adjust salary levels, which affects how well they serve the guests and how quickly they move.
There are also menu choices where you can assign money to marketing, training, and other options. There are extensive reports that track food cost, promotion money, human resource results, and overall restaurant quality.
Each scenario comes with its own set of goals--whether it is pleasing a critic, winning a chef competition, getting a certain number of stars for the restaurant, or achieving certain profit or revenue goals. There is a story that guides the goals with business partners often providing strong encouragement and even threats.
Game Style
The game is very European in its style. Meal times and restaurant jobs are based on European culture. Even when the main character makes it to San Francisco, the style stays European. The restaurant may be a steak house or seafood, but the owner is still French.
Once the restaurant opens, the customers flow in and the hired employees begin to serve them. The game can move mostly automatically unless you wish to do suggestive selling and click on each customer to try to offer them their favorite foods. Depending on the food quality you’ve selected and the abilities of your staff, you'll get a steady stream of complaints. One of the reports tracks these complaints letting you know how serious the complaints are and how many of them there are. You also have the chance to interact with some special customers who will offer to source ingredients for you, sell you recipes, or buy recipes from you.
As the restaurants earn money, the player has a chance to buy upgrades that will affect how many people come to the restaurant and how many stars the restaurant has.
Learning the game
Thankfully, given how complex the game is and how many details are within your ability to change and control, there is a very good tutorial and a decent help system with lots of hints. It takes a long time to learn the game, but it truly is strategic in nature with most of the variables in the player's hands.
The menus are all easy to find and the game is well-organized. It is easy to find most of the special menus and reports because they are placed logically and in relation to each other. It may not be easy to remember everything you need to do, but the game does everything it can to help you.
Graphics
It's also a graphic-intense game, with multiple screens running restaurants filled with a variety of customers. You are able to zoom in and out, scroll around in different directions, and take all sorts of perspectives on the different dining rooms. The movie sequences are sometimes a little jerky, but most run smoothly. The animation takes a stylized realistic look, shunning the cartoonish even when it indulges in stereotypes.
Bigoted, Racist, and Sexist
It is the indulgence in stereotypes that is my biggest complaint with this game. Too often the game not only relies on stereotypes but crosses the line into racist and sexist commentary and dialogue. There is only one female chef—the love interest for the main character. She's a timid creature who is oh-so-grateful that the main character gives her the opportunity to work as an apprentice in his kitchen. Meanwhile, everyone else is skeptical about his allowing a "girl" in his kitchen. If you play the non-story version of the game, you can choose from a wide array of male chefs (I think there were more than 20) and only one female chef.
When Miguel (the main character) opens up shop in Italy, he ends up having dealings with an Italian mobster. When he comes to California, the Americans all talk like cowboys. Then there is the first encounter with an African American chef. He speaks in pidgin English, brings in fried chicken recipes, and acts like some of the worse examples of minstrel comedy. The supplier of organic food is a hippie out of the 60s.
No Schedules?
Given all of the variables that the game did give you control over, I was surprised at how limited the staffing options were. Yes, you could hire different people who each came with their own profiles. However, you couldn't affect the working hours. Every staff member had to work every hour that the restaurant was open. You couldn't have half the staff work one shift and another half work another.
This game would benefit from some rewriting to get rid of the offensive parts. That pervasive annoyance aside, the game really is well-thought-out and deeply complex. It makes for a great simulation game, accurately portraying many of the skills needed to run a restaurant and succeed in the high-powered culinary world.
Acquire different recipes and experiment with them to see which are popular and profitable Enter cooking contests and win, to raise the prestige of yo...More at Amazon
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