Order Up!

Order Up! for Nintendo 3DS is a must have for those of you who enjoy games like Diner Dash or Cooking Mama.  The game is exactly the same as the Wii version, and the addition of the 3D graphics really make you feel like you’re in the kitchen.  You play as a chef, starting in a dirty fast-food restaurant, cooking different types of food, and maintaining the happiness of your customers, as you grow your own restaurant empire.

The opening scene of the game has your character falling out of an airplane. You get to chose if you will play as a male or female, who like all of the characters in this game, are quite ugly. You land in front of the Burger Face fast-food restaurant, your tutorial level where you learn the ropes of the game. The touch-screen is used for most everything in the game, and the tutorial level will teach you the basics of chopping veggies and flipping burgers.  After completing the tutorial your chef realizes that working at a dirty fast-food restaurant also comes with fast -food pay and the adventure truly begins. The Gravy Chug restaurant next door catches your eye and you decide to go into business for yourself.

It may not be pretty, but it’s all yours!

In your own restaurant you have to wait through a pointless cut scene while your wait staff takes each order. Once you get the ticket and tap on it with your stylus you get to cooking. The faster you prepare the food, the higher rating you get, and the more money you make to buy upgrades, improvements for your restaurant, and assistants to help you in the kitchen. Your money is also used to get you out of the greasy old Gravy Chug diner and continually purchase newer and better restaurants until you get to the top of the food chain at the fancy French restaurant, Chez Haute.

A fancy dish from Chez Haute.

Cooking of course is the main part of the game. The cooking process starts out simple, but as each level progresses you will end up having to cook multiple dishes at the same time. Timing is key in order to get the food prepared and out at the same time, before it cools down, making your customer unhappy resulting in lost points and money, or even lost customers if you take entirely too long. Customers will also start requesting special spices in their dishes.  You have to either guess the correct spice, or spend your money to have the spice revealed. Getting the spices right adds to the customers happiness and to your coins earned for those dishes. Cooking their food properly is key too, for example The Count (a vampire of course) prefers all of his meat raw.

Flip, fry, chop, stir, just try not to catch the kitchen on fire!

Around day three you’ll get to visit the Farmer’s Market where you can purchase spices from the Spice Merchant. Until you get to know your customers and what they want, it’s a good idea to just stock up on the spices available to you.  As you progress through the game and play more of Master Miyoda’s mini games, you’ll get access to  the higher rows of spices. The Farmer’s Market also has a shop where you can buy new Chef Specials to put on your menu. These are menu items you are already cooking, but with some spices added to them to make them a different dish.

Play the mini games with Master Miyoda to unlock new spices.

You can hire assistants to help you out in the kitchen. You start with the cheapest assistant, Crispin Brown who looks like your typical teenage fast food fry cook, and often falls asleep on the job requiring you to play a mini game to shake him awake. You can get him for 25g, but if you wait until day two you will get him for free.  Be careful which tasks you pass off to your lower level assistants. They will not add spices for you, so you probably want to give them easy tasks like chopping lettuce while you focus on cooking the perfect burger. Different assistants have different abilities, eventually you will get to Elita Von Snoot whose description says “perfectly cut, perfectly cooked, and perfectly obnoxious”. The only chef higher than her is Mr. Jinkies who is a monkey that never falls asleep, but can’t cook anything better than a “good” rating, so I’d skip him if I were you.

There are a number of mini games you can play in Order Up! like the previously mentioned game “Sleeping Assistant”. A game of “Special Delivery” grants you a jackpot wheel spin that could result in some more exotic items to help you create those perfect and higher coin earning dishes. There are also random visits from the health inspector, requiring you to wash dishes to keep your restaurant open. It’s an easy game, but if you do happen to fail you will be shut down for a day until you can win the mini game. I was surprised at how much content the game had, and the mini games are cheesy but fun and not so much a part of the game that they get annoying. Eventually you’ll get a visit from a food critic too, so make sure you’ve mastered your dishes, you never know when they will stop by.

I highly recommend Order Up! for Nintendo 3DS to anyone who likes these types of games. The graphics are great and really take advantage of the 3D features. The characters all have special personalities, accents, and preferences and they do a great job of making each different one stand out from the others. The use of the dual screen and the stylus work very well together, resulting in the ability to cook with great ease and minimal frustrations. I did have some trouble a couple times, and caught the kitchen on fire, but there’s a mini game for that so it’s all part of the fun.  Supervillain Studios did a great job with this game and I enjoyed every minute I spent playing. My older children also had a blast with the game, and it kept them entertained on a very long summer road trip.

Order Up! is the first full-length retail game to be offered in the eShop, a smart move for Nintendo.  Offering this game digitally allowed them to keep the price point lower, and reach a wider audience.  I’m wondering if this is also kind of a test run for the upcoming release of the New Super Mario Bros. 2, which will be available to purchase in full-retail version through the eShop. You can purchase Order Up! now through the Nintendo eShop. At only $10, you really can’t go wrong.

A copy of Order Up! was provided to The Married Gamers for review.