Taking an order is as simple as selecting a table. After an order is placed, you’re whisked off to your kitchen station. Orders are prepared by dragging ingredients (conveniently listed in each customer’s ticket) to the proper area – lettuce on the chopping board, ground beef on the griddle – and performing the appropriate action with the Wiimote.
As you advance to new restaurants, you’ll have to learn new actions. As a fast food connoisseur, you’ll be flipping burgers and frying potatoes, while in the Mexican restaurant, you’ll be folding tortillas and crushing avocados. There are five restaurants in total.
The crux of the challenge is managing multiple tasks at once. If you finish one dish at a time and leave them sitting, they’ll get cold. While something is cooking on the griddle, there’s no reason you can’t be chopping or dicing or frying. You can also hand off tasks to assistant chefs, but they can be temperamental. Some like to do some things and not others, so you can’t blindly throw them every task.
When you’ve completed a table’s order, a tapping action with the Wiimote rings the bell to call your faithful server. Feedback is immediate. If your customers like the food, you’ll score a good tip, but there are no long-term penalties for unsatisfied customers.
Above: You’ll get to know the likes and dislikes of your quirky customers over time
Order Up! offers cooking gameplay with a goal - to run a series of successful restaurants. Serving savory treats may be the focus, but you’ll also be dealing with the health inspector, dull knives, finicky customers, and rebellious chefs. It seems casual enough to jump into without frustration, but big enough that it won’t become stale before you’ve spend some time building your culinary empire, and it’s definitely not just another Wii minigame collection.
The game is set to release July 22nd, 2008, exclusively on the Wii.
Apr 24, 2008
