Hells Kitchen the game
by The Downloadable Beast!
(DB HQ)
Quick verdict
Game:
Hells Kitchen
Download from:
iWin
Rating:
3/5
Hells Kitchen the game owes more to Diner Dash than the Hell's Kitchen TV show. It's fun, if limited. If you love Gordon Ramsey, you'll also appreciate the recipes he's contributed.
What's it about?
If you've seen the Hell's Kitchen TV show, then you'll know more or less what to expect. A digitized Ramsey presides over your efforts to run "his" restaurant efficiently, seating (with a somewhat robotically animated Jean-Philippe) and cooking dishes to order.
In the Hell's Kitchen Fox show, two teams battle it out for supremacy before being narrowed down to individuals competing for the prize. In Hell's Kitchen the game, you play solo.
The game consists of two screens. In the restaurant, J-P has to meet, greet and seat the customers, take their orders and send it through to the kitchen. In the kitchen scene, you have to click on ingredients to prepare them and then cook food to order.
Each dish consists of one or more ingredients. The game begins with three stations (meat, fruit and veg and bread), with others added as the difficulty increases. Each dish takes a set number of minutes. But you must cook each table's orders to finish together, or the prepared food gets cold.
The balancing act is to prepare the correct ingredients in time (click on them to "mix" them) and time the food so you neither burn it nor let it sit getting cold while another is cooking.
Meanwhile, J-P will request your help in the dining room. As you send the food through, you need to click on the covered dish to have him take it to the table.
It's a time management game, but quite contrived feeling. You have to keep repeating the J-P section of the game, as each table is seated, chooses their dishes from the menu, needs serving, then needs their dishes clearing AND THEN perhaps dessert too. SIGH. Tiresome, especially when there are multiple tables to cater to.
The cooking section is also a little tedious. There is method to the madness, but it's not possible to 'back up' more than one of each ingredient, so you are constantly fighting to keep on top of the orders.
I suppose it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but considering how realistic the restaurant section is, I don't see why a chef worthy of the name would work in a kitchen where there are no ingredients prepped before service.
Once every week the format changes, and you get to spend just one day in the kitchen, divided into red and blue halves. I liked this innovation: shame there is not more of the variety, as each day blends into another without it.
Throughout, Ramsey's infamous voice shouts encouragement or criticism, though there's none of his trademark swearing -- even bleeped out for the game would have been more in character.
Pros and cons
+ Time management nightmare involving two screens you must move back and forth between truly keeps you on your toes.
+ Fair variety of jobs to do, even if they do feel contrived.
+ Loads of Ramsey recipes to print out and try!
+ Good graphics and sound capture Hell's Kitchen TV show look and feel nicely.
- Tables light up in the restaurant when you mouse over them, making it quite difficult to see which table is requesting help next.
- Shame that there is not enough variety, most days are the same old, same old.
- If you dislike TM games, this is not going to appeal to your palate.
The verdict
Hell's Kitchen the game is a fair attempt to capture the TV show. It lacks some character and is missing the essential element of team vs. team that makes the show (for fans, at least) compelling. Still, time management addicts might find it a divine recipe.