Order Up!

System: Wii
Developer: SuperVillain Studios
Publisher: Zoo Games
Genre: Cooking/Simulation
Players: 1

Starting off as a trainee in a stereotypical fast-food dive in Port Abello, Order Up! gives players the opportunity to own and operate various establishments before graduating to a high-class restaurant, and have themselves crowned the top culinary artisan of the world in the Fortified Chef World Challenge.

Upon starting, there's four selections available. There's options to start or load a single player game (up to four save slots can be used), begin a Quick Play session, or enter the Options menu (which lets you adjust various sound settings or view the game credits).

The first port of call in the single player game is to choose your chef – either male or female – as they sit in the cargo hold of the plane. Whichever you choose to be makes no difference to the game, apart from the chef's appearance. Once chosen, your chef will literally drop into Port Abello to begin their culinary career.


Your rise to cooking stardom begins at Burger Face, a small fast-food shop. This is where you'll receive training in completing orders; from reading the order ticket to preparing specific ingredients, as well as learning when items are properly cooked, this shows all of the basics before you actually have to prepare orders for customers. All preparations use the Wii-mote's motion recognition in a certain way, whether it's stirring a pot of spaghetti, carving slices of ham or flipping burgers on the hotplate. The game also makes use of the Nunchuk, although this is optional. The Wii-mote's D-pad (or the Nunchuk) is used to navigate with the left and right directions; up and down control the zoom level so you can keep track of the action. Ingredients in progress can be easily checked on by hovering over them with the pointer.

Throughout the game you'll be required to cook numerous meals, ranging from burgers and fries to Mexican food (such as tacos), Italian food (spaghetti) or seafood (calamari). Some meals require a little extra kick – to do this players must use 'Chef Spices' to add a different twist to the food. This is done by pressing the - or Z buttons, which will show a menu of available spices; it's best to keep a decent stock of spices on hand as lacking even one of these when required will result in a failed order.


Spices are obtained from the Farmers' Market of Port Abello. Before you can use them, the stall owner (Mr. Miyoda) will determine your worthiness to wield the six various categories of spices with a test which involves showing off your vegetable-slashing dexterity. Using the correct combinations of spices will earn you a tip bonus from your customer, and possibly unlock new menu items – using barbecue sauce on the meat while preparing a burger changes the meal to 'BBQ Burger and Fries' for example. Recipes for new meals can also be purchased from the Black Market stall at the Farmers' Market.

Once your training at Burger Face is complete, your objectives will be shown at the start of each day as you seek to get a five-star rating on each of your restaurants. Each day begins outside the restaurant, with a signboard and phone booth nearby. The signboard lists all of the meals currently available at the restaurant and the phone booth offers you the chance to speak with the mysterious 'Masked Judge' (who sounds suspiciously familiar...) - he'll pass on various tips to assist you in your culinary quest. You can also call Ned the Delivery Guy; he'll turn up instantly, and for a fee offer you the chance to win special ingredients for your meals. Meals that involve these ingredients will earn extra tips from customers, so the day's takings can be very profitable, depending what you win.


Also showing up in front of your restaurant is a young paperboy known as Nugget, who rides past and flings the day's newspaper at your feet. Through this you can upgrade certain equipment, clean up your kitchen and even hire an assistant chef or two. That's right, you don't have to do everything yourself – in fact the game provides you with your first assistant for free. You can have two assistants helping you prepare orders at a time, simply by dragging ingredients to their portrait. Each assistant has different skills as well; Larry Cheezler increases the amount of Chef Specials being ordered, which will earn more tips, and Crispin Brown specialises in frying. Using assistants has its own downfalls though – their preparations will rarely be rated as 'perfect', and they have a tendency to fall asleep. When this happens, you'll have to complete a mini-game to wake them up by shaking the Wii-mote in the required direction. Only one assistant is immune to sleep: Mr Jinkies (a small monkey with highly amusing preparation animations) will never nap on the job, but is unavailable for the majority of the game and has no other specialities.

TIP: If you're short on cash, point at Nugget as he rides by in the mornings and press A to knock him down. You'll begin a Duck Hunt-esque mini-game in which you have to catch newspapers to save Nugget's job, and he'll give you some coins at the end if you've done well enough.

Some customers are regular patrons of your various eating houses, with each leaving a comment on your cooking so you can improve – usually involving the use of spices. Each has their own spice preference – Salty Sam prefers salty food (as his name suggests), Hootenanny Pete needs his food to have a strong smell, and Maria Papita Rosita likes her meals with spicy garnishes (such as jalapeños). Other regulars prefer their food cooked a certain way – Count Steakula is a fan of raw meat and absolutely hates garlic, and Dusty Keister wants his food as close to charcoal as possible. Preparing for Dusty in particular can be a problem – if not monitored closely, any cooking item (apart from cold ingredients) has the very real possibility of setting your kitchen on fire. If this happens, you have to put out the fire as quickly as possible in a mini-game with the Wii-mote acting as a fire extinguisher – eventually it runs out of pressure which must be built up again by shaking the control. If your restaurant burns down, that means no more profits for the day – and your shame will be in the newspaper for all to see. Sometimes when starting the day's work you'll be 'honoured' with a visit from the Health Inspector, and you'll be required to complete another mini-game: cleaning dishes before the time runs out. This isn't too challenging, though.


The controls for Order Up! are reasonably responsive, and make the game fairly easy to play. There are the occasional hiccups and recognition failures though, which can cause some ingredients to be poorly prepared (notably carving meat and folding burritos/fajitas) but any foodstuffs that don't meet the standard can be thrown in the garbage at the player's discretion. Again, there's a downside – too much throwing away can cause a rat infestation, and you'll have to use the most devastating anti-rodent weapon available in a mini-game – a coiled finger – to flick the squeaking vermin into submission before your customers notice the purple plague-carrier parade in your kitchen.

Order Up! also requires strategy – keeping food hot earns better tips, so keeping the completed meals waiting will lower your takings for the day. To combat this, players have to prioritise their own cooking and passing of ingredients to assistants to ensure there's as little a gap as possible. Each completed meal will appear on the counter with its own thermometer to show how hot it is, and once all orders have been completed, players have to signal the waiter/waitress to serve the customers. Keeping customers waiting will also lower your monetary rewards, so prompt service is necessary – a certain assistant will prevent this from happening should you choose to hire him.

The day after you earn four stars for a restaurant, your next challenge will appear: the Food Critic. Earning your fifth star requires you to successfully prepare a meal for him, without the help of your assistants. Completing this task is reasonably easy though; once you serve him, the Critic will rate your cooking skill, and if you pass you'll be free to continue at the current restaurant or unlock the next one if you have the funds to do so.

Not only must you achieve five stars for each restaurant, but you have the previously mentioned goal - proving yourself in the glory of the Fortified Chef World Challenge, which is set on a luxury cruise liner and bears more than a passing resemblance to Iron Chef (both in name and in atmosphere). Playing in culinary combat against the Fortified Chef Champion, you must cook three meals to the best of your ability, and the chef with the best score at the end wins. Each chef will take turns to cook the meal, with the Champion having first billing. Succeed in producing better meals and you'll be treated to a cutscene in which the true identity of the Masked Judge is revealed (if you hadn't guessed beforehand), complete with Star Wars reference as all good cooking competitions should be. Don't expect your win to be easy though. :p


As mentioned earlier, there's also a Quick Play option which is for players who don't want to bother with the extraneous story and just jump in. Four patrons will order separate dishes, and it's up to you to prepare and serve the orders. Game play is exactly the same as in the main game, including earning tips for your cooking, although these aren't attributed to any save games. Control tips appear in this mode for each new ingredient – while helpful (it could also serve as a tutorial if needed), these get in the way if you know what you're doing. Unfortunately there's no option to turn the tips off at all (a problem which also appears in the single player game, particularly when it comes to mini-games).

The graphics aren't spectacular (being cel-shaded they're not going to strain the Wii's capabilities too much) but they're appropriate for the atmosphere being portrayed. The game is also fully voice-acted (the only exception being generic customers); each assistant has their own voice and personality, as does your waiter/waitress and the more prominent regular customers. The sounds also add to the kitchen atmosphere, with realistic effects for chopping, frying and slapping burgers on the hotplate. Background music for each restaurant is what you'd expect, with El Fuego playing La Cucaracha at one point, and Stuffolini's music, while light-hearted, sounding like it could be in a Godfather movie (or at least backing music for Fat Tony on The Simpsons).

Order Up! is a game that should appeal to a wide audience – it's got plenty of humour, responsive controls and an easy learning curve – there's no pressure to unlock the new restaurants until the player is ready to move on. After getting into it, the lack of variety on different control schemes is noticeable (there's very few new methods of preparing ingredients as you progress through the game), but this serves to make the game accessible for the wider audience. The main aspect that's missing is the inclusion of a multiplayer option – challenging your friends in the various restaurants of Port Abello would have been a decent addition to the single-player gameplay, even in a turn-based fashion such as that used in the Fortified Chef battle.


Score: 7.5 "Good buy"

The game is easy to get into, with enough details lurking under the surface to make things interesting, although it's not a particularly lengthy gaming experience. There are some drawbacks – the occasional problem with motion recognition and the frequency of assistants falling asleep on the job can be frustrating, but otherwise it's a well-presented game that's fun to play. There's not a lot of replay value once the game is completed, as most recipes will be unlocked during the course of the game and there's no real incentive to continue once you get everything, as well as there being a lack of multiplayer, but it's a worthy title for a quick gaming session.

It's also made by the developer with the best company website of all time. :p

Review by TheChimp