It's funny looking back just a few years ago, when the cooking genre didn't even exist. Who would've thought a game centered around one of the least desirable, lowest paying jobs in the country would actually sell like hotcakes? Fast forward to the present, and there's no shortage of Cooking Mama ripoffs out there -- most of them lacking that game's charm, usability, and overall level of quality.
Order Up! for the Wii is not one of those games. In a lot of respects, it actually manages to trump genre pioneer Cooking Mama at its own game. It's a food preparation-themed minigame collection under the guise of a simplistic restaurant simulator, with a dash of Nicktoons-style humor and animation for good measure. None of the ingredients in this recipe are that appealing on their own, but Order Up! ends up much greater than the sum of its parts.
The heart of Order Up! is the cooking, and using Wii remote gestures to flip burgers, chop carrots, and stir pasta is totally intuitive. There are a few movements that are unreasonably tricky to properly execute -- folding burritos, for instance -- but at the end of the day it's mostly fun and easy. Besides, if you come across a particular ingredient you're no good with, you can always just hand it off for one of your hired goons to take care of.
The ultimate goal in Order Up! is to guide your pudgy little chef to stardom as the greatest cook on isle of Port Abello. Doing so requires working your way up the dining food chain -- from fast food to an upscale French joint -- using your earnings to fix up your restaurants, hire assistants, and purchase new menu items. There are distinct benefits to each choice, but rocket science this ain't; these decisions never reach even Sim City levels of micromanagement. Still, the game's somewhat repetitive minigames are sweetened by the steady progression of mastering all of the recipes an eatery has to offer, building up a clientele by learning your individual customers' tastes, and impressing the food critic and health inspector enough to move on to the next part of town.
For all the sim aspects of the game brings to the table, Order Up! still suffers from a serious case of monotony. Getting the money to advance to the next restaurant -- of four total -- requires you to prepare many of the same dishes ad nauseam. On top of that, even though the style of food changes when you move on to the next diner, the overall structure of the game does not; you still have to clean up your kitchen, purchase all the recipes, and once again appease the health inspector and food critic. By the end of the game, I felt like I was running on a treadmill in front of a green screen -- sure, the scenery was changing, but I wasn't really going anywhere.
It's a real shame, then, that the best part of the game kicks in at the finale. The dialog throughout Order Up! is at least on par with most modern cartoons, but it really culminates in the final, Iron Chef-style showdown. The color commentary and cutscenes during this cookoff are seriously chuckle-worthy -- funny enough to wonder why the rest of the game wasn't structured like this. Furthermore, with the framework for head-to-head competitive cooking already set, why isn't there any multiplayer whatsoever in Order Up!? It'd certainly help extend the game's replay value beyond the four or five hours it takes to complete.
Really, though, if you dug Cooking Mama or any of its clones, Order Up! should be right up your alley. Despite being a more than a little repetitious (what cooking game isn't?), Order Up! builds on the groundwork laid by those previous games and comes out all the better for it. Just don't be surprised if you start to nod off while boiling up your 35th batch of macaroni and cheese.
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8.0