Chef - Full Release Review
I first came across Chef shortly before it entered early access and reviewed
it back then. My verdict at the time was to wait for updates. So
now that the game has reached it's 1.0 release let's jump back in and see
what's changed in the last 18 months.
Chef is a tycoon game by Italian developers Inner Void and published by
Digital Tribe and sees you start from nothing and build your restaurant
empire! You need to manage the various aspects of you restaurant from
setting the menu, devising new recipes and ensuring there are staff
available. You will also need to cater to diverse clientele.
My immediate experience upon launching the game for the first time following
release was for the game to hang and crash back to my desktop with an app not
responding message before it had even loaded me into the main menu.
After a couple of attempts I managed to load into the game to be greeted with
a message advising that this isn't the end of the road for Chef, however any
save files from prior to version 0.9 are now no longer playable (not unusual
for early access games).
|
| Customising my avatar |
I took the opportunity to start a new game in light of this and started with
the familiar character creation screen which existed before. This allows
you to choose from 13 bodies and then select from a variety of hairstyles and
colours, and expressions. You also select your difficulty here from
Normal, Hardcore, Relaxed and Sandbox. Hardcore and Relaxed modify the
base game difficulty as you would expect with the former being more difficult
and the latter more relaxed. The Sandbox mode is one of those games
where they don't see sandbox as complete creative freedom.
Starting into the sandbox version (new for the full release) you are given a
budget of $100,000,000 so whilst not a 'true' sandbox, it is a huge amount of
cash. Another limitation of the sandbox game is that you don't have
access to the full repertoire of ingredients or recipes and require to gain
experience and unlock these as you go. A nice touch, however, is that
you can still play through the tutorial if you wish to in this mode.
Unfortunately this mode just doesn't hit the mark with me as it doesn't
actually fit the definition of a sandbox and is more of a challenge or career
type mode and appears no different to the standard game modes with a massive
budget, achievements are even available allowing you to achieve the True
Tycoon achievement for bank balance just by hitting play.
|
| Deciding where to begin building my empire |
For the bulk of my review I decided to play in the Normal game mode. The
immediate thing I notice is that the menu for selecting your first restaurant
has been completely redesigned. Rather than simply being a menu where
you browse listings of available properties, you are now presented with a city
map from which to choose your starting block. Each of the sites has a
variety of modifiers which will affect how you will manage your
restaurant. These can have negative effects such as rat infestations at
night, suffers from old and unreliable wiring or being haunted, or positive
effects such as higher traffic in the area, lower rent due to being outwith
the city or a nearby amusement park attracting a wider variety of
customers. Each location also has a preference of the customers who will
visit from cheapskates wanting a cheap, low quality meal, to vegans, foodies
and even gourmet connoisseurs who have high budgets, but specific
requirements.
After selecting your first restaurant you will receive a confirmation box
which reminds you that you will be able to buy a new restaurant in the future,
however that will depend on how successful you are. After arriving at
the restaurant you are asked whether you want to play the tutorial or
not. I would recommend playing through it as there are some quite
complex aspects to the game and they aren't always the most intuitive.
|
| The basic setup for my dining hall |
The first course of business is to start furnishing your restaurant.
Remember your budget whilst you do this as you don't want to blow all your
cash in the initial phase and not be able to afford staff of
ingredients. During this phase you are asked to place enough decorations
to lure cheapskates. This was something I particularly struggled with
until I discovered the three icons in the top left which indicate you current
decoration in relation to the themes of rustic, modern and elegant.
Hovering the cursor over these will show you how each of these themes will
attract the various types of customer.
What would a restaurant be without food? You need to create and manage
your menu to attract a variety of customers, but also make you money. In
the menu screen you simply drag an available recipe from your list into the
menu. An important not here is that when a menu item is added to the
menu it displays the cost price so you will want to increase these to allow
you to have an income. You can also easily see what equipment your
kitchen is missing as the equipment icon will be red instead of an off-white
colour. Your final course of business before opening is to hire your
waiting staff and any additional chefs to help you in the kitchen.
|
| Setting up my first menu |
Once you are happy with your setup you can open your restaurant. This is
done through the decisions and policies menu. These are very similar to
the policies you would see in city builder games and determining your cleaning
regimes, staff salaries and advertising budget across a variety of
media. Select the option to open your restaurant, un-pause the game and
wait. Then wait, and wait a bit more. At this point your
restaurant is going to be running itself with staff directing guests to tables
and preparing/serving food automatically. This is the bulk of the
day-to-day management for the game unfortunately. From time to time you
may get a review on Chef Advisor. These will act as a guide to indicate
how well you are doing in terms of prices, menu variety and generally keeping
your guests happy.
The aspect of the game which should be the most fun is in the designing of
your own recipes. This system works by selecting an unlocked template
and combining your available ingredients to make an acceptable recipe.
As you add new ingredients you will see feedback regarding the flavour profile
and an overall score for the dish. Sometimes it is clear what is
influencing the score, for example using chicken and bacon together increases
your score as they complement each other, other times it can be quite
confusing. For example there is a blanket trait if you use a vegetable
in a dessert it gets the "wait what?" tag. This means that converting a
simple sponge to a carrot cake actually results in a penalty to your dish
score. For me, this aspect of the game just didn't feel as fun as I had
expected unfortunately.
|
| Designing a tasty pasta dish |
After playing about and making a couple of recipes, fitting out your kitchen
with some more equipment and adjusting your menu offering and prices there is
just a lot of waiting about in the game. Eventually you will gain skill
points which you can use to improve your staff, or unlock new recipe
templates. You will also have points to spend in the ingredients screen
to unlock new ingredients, or higher quality versions of ingredients you
already have access to.
On paper this box ticks all the boxes for me - it's a tycoon game, restaurant
isn't a theme that's been done over and over, it's got gorgeous cutesy
graphics and has a nice variety of game systems. The game, however, just
doesn't press my buttons. My main complaint is that it just doesn't feel
like there is any consequence to deal with. I mostly get positive
reviews, I have a cashflow coming in but there is just a lot of waiting.
Once I've set up my tables and kitchen it just runs itself. I don't feel
like I am having to react to anything and the lack of any clear defined
objectives just make the game feel a bit flat for me. And whilst a lot
of tycoon games run themselves, Cities Skylines, Planet Coaster, RollerCoaster
Tycoon, I don't feel like I'm lacking in things to do to occupy me.
My previous verdict was to wait for updates and to be honest, I don't feel
that the game has changed enough for me to be saying to rush out and get it
as it does still feel very similar. Whilst I can see how some people
could enjoy the game, right now, I'd say save your money and to give it a
miss based on the 1.0 release. The game is available now on
Steam
for £15.49
Chef - Full Release Review
Reviewed by Parcival
on
August 25, 2020
Rating:
Reviewed by Parcival
on
August 25, 2020
Rating:
Post a Comment