Fast Food Panic! – Quick Review

If you’ve ever played Cooking Mama and have said to yourself…”What the f%#@ is the point of this game?!”…Then Fast Food Panic is for you. Fast Food Panic is a game for both the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo Dual Screen (which is the version I played) and as obviously stated, it’s a cooking game. But, unlike Cooking Mama, you’re not just cooking for the pure enjoyment of letting it go to waste! No no! You’re cooking for your own little restaurant, with your own paying customers, and your waitress that runs the front of the house. You as the chef have a dream of having the greatest restaurant there is! This gives the game a goal to reach toward, unlike the stated competitor.

Alright, no more bashing Cooking Mama. Fast Food Panic starts off by giving the player a great manga like style fresh from Japan. It makes beating each level more enjoyable only because you know that afterward you’ll be enjoying a funny little short with your two main characters. Getting through each level to get to those shorts involve pleasing your paying customers. During the first stage the inspiring chef is introduced to sushi, which is easy enough to make. Two swoops with the stylus from a rice container (this game sometimes demands perfection when doing some tasks…for example if you don’t place the tip of the stylus just right you may not scoop up anything), a bit of pushing together to form a nice rice patty, and then a little memorization game for the two toppings and there you are! A nice sushi dish for your parturient. How well you preformed creating the dish will effect how much joy your customer gets from it. Each step in creating the dish is rated from bad, good, great, and perfect. It’s not hard to achieve a perfect, but accidents do happen and as the player will learn, this game can become very hectic very quickly. Different types of customers ranging from your average people, to critics, to the fatter customers who will order up 5 meals at a time, all help give this game a different challenge. Even the front of the house chips in with it’s own problems. It seems the customers have finished eating so you’ll have to tell the waitress to clean it up. Oh a mouse is running a muck? Call the waitress! Some guests have arrived! Don’t forget to greet them! Sometimes she’ll even scream for help that will trigger a brief mini-game that can include, ringing up the total bill, cleaning off a table, putting away the dishes, or even delivering food. All these of these events add to the joy meter that must be filled before the time runs out to beat each stage.

This would be the perfect little title for the Nintendo DS if it wasn’t for a few big flaws…

The first being the actual length of the game. This game only gives you fifteen stages. Fifteen! That’s nothing for a game like this! Most player will be able to breeze through this game in just a day and it’s really a sad fact! Sure you can play a harder difficulty if you haven’t already, but it just doesn’t seem as enjoyable without the expectation of a new challenge.

The next problem with this game is the lack of multiplayer! How am I suppose to play against my girlfriend if their isn’t even an option for it! We both loved this game but it just seems to spit in our face!

Last but not least…the mini games. They’re so passable that it just seems like they threw them in. I understand that the NDS was meant to be played with the stylus but when all you’re doing is furiously rubbing at the screen with no real reward at the end…why do it? The game is just making an excuse to scratch up the screen. Not all of the mini games are bad of course just a few really spoil the bunch.

Fast Food Panic…you could have been so great! Why, why did your developers gimp you so badly? It’s an enjoyable game, but don’t pay full price for it!

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Rating: 3/5

Pros: Strong gameplay elements. Enjoyable art style.
Cons: Way too short! Lackluster mini games! No multiplayer!