"When a game's this bad, I panic too!"

I’ll admit it: I have a problem, I love to rip on bad games. But seeing as all the good games are already overflowing with reviews, I’m stuck with games like Panic Restaurant to review. Oh well, you the reader, can bask in my sardonic wit.

GAMEPLAY 3/10

First, let’s talk about plot. You are a chef named Cookie (hee hee, pun), and you are walking to work one day when you get pelted with some fruit by an evil chef named Ohdove (a parody of the word ‘hors d’oeuvre’ – which basically means appetizer – and yet another pun) who tells you that he’s taken your restaurant. Just like that! So it’s up to you to guide our hero through his restaurant in order to stop Ohdove and reclaim what is rightfully his! Sounds both noble and stupid, because it is. Oh well, moving on…

The game, in my opinion, falls under the category of “seemed like a good idea at the time”. The people at TAITO said “hey gang, let’s make a food-themed game! People like food! How could it go wrong?” Well, you’re about to find out…

The game’s entire being revolves around the concept of food. However, food just doesn’t have the adrenaline-pumping risk, thrill, or danger that makes a game worth playing. Since I cook, I can assure you food is largely boring. Preparing a meal, eating, cleaning up, it doesn’t add up to quite the thrill of, say, slaying Dracula or shooting robots. As a result, this boring premise for a game doesn’t really relate to any technical aspect of the game like level layout or anything such - except in the appearance.

Let’s start with the levels. The levels are named for parts of a six course meal (appetizer, salad, meat, etc…) which is cute, but not at all relevant to that level’s design, enemies, or anything for that matter. The first stage, Appetizer, is you guiding Cookie to his restaurant. Seeing as you’re outside in the streets, I fail to see how that has anything to do with the concept of an appetizer. The levels themselves aren’t too much to shout about.

They are linear – which is forgivable, since almost all platform games are linear – but they don’t really have any of the little bells and whistles that spice up a stage. They have the standard pits and spikes (in a restaurant? How is he allowed to stay open? We’re talking major health hazard, people!), but there isn’t much else that you can’t get in just about every single other platform game. There are pits and spikes and moving platforms and such, but they aren’t really used in any sort of combination or relevance to the level layout. Rather, they are thrown in at times to keep the game from being too deadpan. Often they are combined, such as falling icicles as you hop from platform to platform over the bottomless pit that is the freezer. However, throwing a bunch of level obstacles together doesn’t always enhance gameplay – often quite the opposite. You ever heard the expression “too many cooks spoil the broth?” (Ironically, since this is a restaurant themed game, TAITO never has). This is frustrating, not challenging. Not to mention the sprinkling of enemies where they can corner you and knock you off platforms (I don’t know why, but when Cookie is hit by an enemy, he gets the urge to do a backwards hopscotch, often into a pit. Maybe he had a stroke or something.) My favorite of these obstacles is in level three where you must jump from bubble to bubble over a scalding hot pot of soup that’s the size of an apartment building on its side. That part is fun because the bubbles pop so you have to somewhat time yourself. It’s simple in the sense that you only have to jump from platform to platform – no knives or junk aimed for your head or anything – but the act of jumping from platform to platform was made to be more difficult – the platforms are small and they will pop, so mind that. But even that idea of a temporary platform over a deadly fall was overdone when the game was released (1992). So basically, the levels are totally standard faire – no originality at all, really.

But my biggest gripe is that, since this game is based off of a six-course meal, there are only six levels! And to make matters worse, they can all be beat in UNDER A MINUTE!!! I spent, all together, thirteen minutes to play this entire game!! That, friends, is what we call injustice.

Okay, onto Cookie. Cookie is an unremarkable hero. No real strengths or weaknesses as a fighter. But his real shortcomings are the resources with which he fights. When the game begins, you have only two hearts; so if you are hit twice, you die! As the game progresses, you can upgrade this to four, but that really doesn’t help much. Because in this game, either you don’t get hit at all, or you are constantly swarmed.

Cookie’s weapons are food-themed and somewhat endearing. You have as your base weapon a frying pan with the shortest range of any weapon in gaming history. You can find upgrades such as a spoon (longer-range frying pan), fork (use it like a pogo-stick! Impossible to use!), and plates (the best – a long range weapon that somewhat aims downward). There’s also the invincibility pot – just put it on your head and ain’t nobody gonna mess wit’ you! The upgraded weapons are certainly an improvement from your pan, but here’s the catch: if you get hit, you lose your weapon and go back to the frying pan, which is super lame. However, there are like, four weapons in every level, so you average a new weapon every fifteen seconds. In the end, however, it doesn’t matter as all enemies are killed with one hit from any weapon. But the fork is by far the worst because you have to hit the enemy with the point on the tongs and not the side or you take damage. Though there is potential for violence in cookware, these weapons are just used for whackin’ and in no way actually improve gameplay.

The enemies are equally pitiful. The idea is, all the food in the restaurant has mutated and turned evil. Except there not all that evil, or dangerous, or anything but pathetic. As I’ve mentioned, food doesn’t allow for action or adventure; and nowhere is that more true than in the enemies! We have, for example, the roast turkey that charges at you, the pizza that charges at you, the carrots that first pop out of the ground then charge at you, the bread loaf (or is it a hot dog? Who can tell with an 8-bit color palette?) that charges at you by hopping, you get the idea. The enemies have extremely retarded AI; they’re repetitive not just of themselves, but of all enemies throughout video game history; and many of them do not have any sort of behavior qualities that pertain to the foodstuff they are. Some do, and these are the better monsters in the bunch. My favorite enemy is the toaster because he shoots toast at you. Toasters toast bread, and I am glad TAITO did enough culinary research to incorporate that into the game. As I’ve said before, all enemies are killed with one hit (Yawn), and when they die, they give you a coin for the slot machine (I’ll get to that). Except if you die, you lose all your coins, which sucks, because it’s very easy to die and you need those coins; otherwise, it’s even easier to die and, worse yet, game over! The bosses are a bit more engrossing and interesting. My favorite is the first boss who is a Jiffy-Pop-popcorn-skillet-thing. As you whack him, he puffs up until he explodes and sends popcorn raining down upon your head, only for you to repeat the abuse. But what it all comes down to is that the bosses have mind-numbingly simple patterns of movement and attack. You learn them after three seconds, and the you can go in for the very easy kill. Afterwards, they explode raining coins down for your reward. The monsters are simple, but they are often in locations that make it hard for you to hit them, but easy for them to hit you. I guess this is supposed to pass of as challenge and difficulty.

At the end of every level, the coins that you have accumulated are used in a slot machine game where you can increase health, score points, and get extra lives. This may seem novel, but have you ever seen the slot machine players at Las Vegas? Know why they look like the walking dead? Because slot machines suck!! And this one is no exception! Pop your coins in, and watch as you get only two in a row and lose. What is supposed to be a perk is just an annoyance. But what really gets me worked up is that you need the slot machine to refill your health – it doesn’t refill when you start the next level. That you have to rely on a game of chance for your survival in the next level, that doesn’t add any level of depth or interest to the game, it just makes it that much more difficult to get anywhere.

To conclude, gameplay in “Panic Restaurant” is already very standard fair, but in addition it is totally bogged down by all sorts of shortcomings and flaws that turn a ‘blah’ game into a ‘blech’ game.

GRAPHICS 4/10

I was largely unimpressed with the graphic quality of the game. To refer to a comment I made earlier, I couldn’t tell if the bread-loaf enemy were a bread loaf or a hot dog. Backgrounds vary; Some levels it looks as if someone took some good time and effort to make the game look nice, and in other levels the Background appears to be an afterthought. The sprites themselves have a very cartoon-y vibe, which is totally fine. I see no problem with that. As a result, many of the sprites are under-detailed and look like caricatures, but this is a very lighthearted game, and the cartoon look suites it perfectly. The color palette of the game is a let-down. While not bad, it relies very heavily on orange and yellows for just about everything. I know this is Nintendo, but you still have a range of eight colors, and it is very possible to use eight colors and make games look beautiful – Castlevania II is a prime example of this. Since the game does have a very cartoon-y look and feel, it would not have been out of place for some of the colors to be a bit more bold and diverse. Henri Matisse was a Fauvist (a group of French artists who believed in the emotional potential of color, so their paintings are very bold and bright); he often painted portraits of people with turquoise skin and pink hair; and now he’s considered one of the greatest painters of the 20th century. Go figure. My point is, Panic Restaurant could stand to be a little more diverse with the color wheel.

SOUND 3/10

The music is very short, very repetitive, and extremely synthetic. It’s bleep-bleep-blip-bloop on repeat for the entire level. Rock & Roll isn’t the devils music – this is!! Sound effects sound just as bad, and I quickly found myself turning the sound off and turning Iron Butterfly’s “In Agodda Davida” on. (By the way, I beat the entire game in the duration of that song.) I really have nothing to say about the sound – I turned it off too soon.

CHALLENGE 2/10

There is none! The game flips between mind-numbing simplicity and annoying frustration. Neither of these is fun, and if there was ever a balance between them in this game, I didn’t find it. And might I remind you, I beat it in under fifteen minutes.

REPLAYABILITY 1/10

There is almost no replayability because you shouldn’t play it a first time. And for those who do, they will find no reason to go back and play it again.

OVERALL 3/10

It actually comes out to be, according to my math, 2.65/10. But I am generous and round up. But no amount of rounding can save this game.

Panic Restaurant, to put it simply, is a joke. And not a funny one. This game has no redeeming qualities to make it worth playing; plus the quality of the gameplay is so poor it only ruins any shred of credibility the game or TAITO had. I don’t think they are in business anymore, and this is most likely the reason.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/20/03, Updated 06/20/03