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8.2 ultra recommended
Our story begins just after you've completed Cooking Academy and won the World Culinary Workshop prize of one million dollars. Holy smokes, just think what you could do with that kind of money! You could start your own sausage and gourmet pickle stand down at the local farmer's market. You could buy an alleged haunted house and put cameras in it to see if any ghosts pop up on film. You could fund the development of your own casual game where a cat does interior decorating.
But you're determined to buy your own restaurant. And not just any restaurant, either, but one with a giant blue globe on the roof! Just because you can.
Then without warning the IRS takes away a large chunk of your earnings. (Happens to me every year.) At least the $350,000 in taxes on your winnings will go toward helping your fellow countrymen. But then you also have to pay back your culinary school loans. Yikes! Now you're left with nothing but an empty bank account and a restaurant with a giant globe on the roof... time to start cooking.
Kitchen Brigade, from Fugazo, is a time management cooking game that somewhat mirrors the style of their best-selling Cooking Academy series. You play as the owner and head chef of a restaurant. As such you're the boss of several sous chefs, thankless lackeys who you can order to do whatever you like. (As long as it involves food that can be prepared at whatever station they're working.)
Customers arrive at the counter and tell you their orders, each of which involve several steps to complete. Leaves of lettuce must be peeled, tomatoes must be sliced, beef patties must be grilled... and voila, you've made a hamburger! The faster you complete the customer's order, the bigger the tip you earn and the closer you'll be to winning an expert medal for that level. No doubt you've seen this mechanic in a thousand and one time management dash mania rush games. What's interesting is that you are also in the kitchen, and can cook as well.
You give orders to your sous chefs by dragging images of ingredients from the customer's order onto their stations. They work as fast as they can (in the beginning that's not very fast) and once done just stand at attention repeating the phrase "Ready to Cook!" until you give them something else to do. However what's neat is that you have your own island in the center of the kitchen with a cutting board, grill, gas burners, etc. If your assistants are all busy, you can drag any step in the recipe onto your station and complete it yourself. It doesn't just get done automagically as with your sous chefs - a preparation process similar to that in Cooking Academy will appear in a pop-up window. You'll have to click click click to dice vegetables, add salt and pepper, turn on the stove, flip pork chops, etc. And you won't be able to interact with your assistants until you've completed the task you've started! When you're slammed with customers things can get hectic. Hint: Always give any waiting assistants jobs first before starting on on something yourself.
But hold the phone, Cooky McCookinstuff!
Not long after you've opened your restaurant, famed chef Henri Fromage (grilled cheese sandwich lover extraordinaire) chooses you to be on his new television program, Kitchen Brigade! You and six other chefs will compete to see who has what it takes to run a restaurant kitchen in a TV show similar to Fox's Hell's Kitchen. Every ten days Chef Fromage will appear in all contestant's restaurants and order a dish. Whichever of the contestants serves up the worst food or slowest service is eliminated! And the winners receive a brand new restaurant to work in for the next ten days. If you can make it through all the elimination rounds, who knows what you might win?
The usual time management restaurant tricks are available. You can upgrade your restaurant with faster sous chefs, plates of cookies to calm impatient customers, a Food-o-Matic microwave which can cook any order instantaneously, etc. At the end of each restaurant a challenge mode will be unlocked for that kitchen. In challenge mode you face an endless wave of steadily more impatient customers, and the game ends when your first customer leaves in anger, red-faced and piping steam from his or her ears.
Graphically, I found Kitchen Brigade much more appealing than Cooking Academy. The character designs are cuter. There are plenty of little animations to keep your eyes interested in the static kitchen screen, from your hard at work sous chefs or the toe-tapping (or red-faced, steaming mad) customers. Your team jumps for joy when you complete a level. The hands on cooking tasks are well put together and the mixture of game mechanics goes a long way to give you the feel of a kitchen slammed with orders and under pressure.
No horrible static screeching noises or otherworldly whispers issued forth from my speakers, which is always appreciated!
Wonderful game and I have become quite addicted!