Product Description

Order Up is a delicious blend of precision cuisine crafting and culinary empire building, all rolled into a light and flaky crust of memorable characters and humorous situations. With the Wii Remote in hand, the player will be guided from burger to chateaubriand; taught every aspect of food preparation and presentation. For anyone who has dreamed of becoming a world-class chef or restaurant mogul or both!, Order Up will deliver. The core game play of Order Up is cooking, from preparation to presentation. Preparation consists of "cutting and cooking" while Presentation refers to garnishes and "flourishes" - e.g. sauce drizzled over a dish to please the eye or the use of flame (flambé) for dramatic effect. Beyond the core, game play includes rising through the ranks of the culinary world from fast-food to world-class restaurants as chef and owner while ever-expanding your cookbook of recipes and ever-improving the quality of your equipment. Along the way you will face demanding patrons, discriminating food critics…and at the pinnacle of your fame in the world of fine cuisine you will be invited to complete in the, "Fortified Chef World Challenge" - an Iron Chef-style cooking competition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #586 in Video Games
• Brand: Zoo Digital Publishing
• Model: 802068101916
• Published on: 2008-07
• Released on: 2008-07-22
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Nintendo Wii
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .59" h x 5.45" w x 7.55" l, .36 pounds

Features

• Unlock all of the menu items in the current restaurant by earning and spending COIN. Unlock the next new recipe or new high-carbon, razor-sharp, signature series chef's knife.
• Create a Chef's Special that is better than any of the current menu items. Attract the attention of the local Food Critic - by completing the previous tasks and gain a favorable review in the local newspaper.
• Serve more than the minimum number of plates in one day - number dependent on difficulty level and stage of restaurant in the game.
• Spend COIN to buy a new restaurant.

Customer Reviews

The Most Addictive Wii Game to Date
As I've mentioned in other reviews, the Wii is not my console of choice. I bought it for my wife to keep her busy while I logged hours in front of the Xbox 360.

I bought Order Up for my wife as a birthday gift. I feel bad that three days later, she's logged about 45 minutes at the controls, and I've beaten the game at 5 hours, 59 minutes in.

The game is simply that addictive. From the first burger you make until the last visit from the food critic at "Chez Haute" restaurant, you will not want to put this game down.

Your first reaction might be to think that at 6 hours, this game is very short. This isn't untrue, but this is a game that better rewards the casual player. In my course through the game, I served less than 10 "non-perfect" dishes. I refused to serve "good" food, and instead would throw food away multiple times until earning a "perfect" score. Also, by mastering the art of spicing (which is clearly defined within the game) I was able to generate upwards of $200 per table served, and would end a "work day" with over $800 in the bank. Because of this I was easily able to keep my spices stocked, hire the best employees, and upgrade my kitchen very quickly. As a result I made money very fast, and progressed through the game with lightning speed. My wife on the other hand is not nearly as perfectionist, and is satisfied with serving Good or OK dishes. This can end up making for a longer play through the game. I say this as a good thing though - this game will entertain her much longer than it did myself.

Many reviews from gaming sites gave less than satisfactory remarks on the controls, saying that everything except folding burritos or omelettes worked well. This is simply not true. Every motion with the Wii control can be easily learned and skillfully mastered. From flipping steaks to cutting swordfish to tearing lettuce to folding crepes - I could earn perfect every time. Speed is the key, and some careful precision "aiming" with the remote helps. Also, note that in the instruction manual it states that the "nunchuk" attachment is not needed, but adds some redundant controls to ease gameplay. THIS IS VERY TRUE!! The control stick on the nunchuck offers quicker ability to scroll through your cooking stations instead of having to leave the 'A' button on the remote and reaching the D-pad. With the nunchuk connected, I drastically reduced my meal prep times. I could serve a four-guest table in less than 2 minutes.

What makes this game so much more fun is that you are responsible for running a business. At the start of every day it's up to you on how to spend the wares of the previous day. You may want to unlock some new dishes, hire a new assistant cook (you have a limit of two,) purchase the recipe for exclusive "chef's specials," or - and this was always important - stock up on spices. You could also upgrade various aspects of your kitchen, making appliances work quicker, making grills and stoves cook faster, or even make you knives sharper. In some regards this made the game more challenging because it's harder to juggle three cooking stations when they all cook faster! In the end, you spent nearly as much time outside of the restaurant as you did inside, and both areas were equally entertaining.

I will agree with others that the game could have used more depth and length. Another restaurant or two would have been nice. A two-player mode would have been fantastic. I personally would have liked to see more "mature" patrons at the nicer resturants - I got tired of the guy wearing a soup-can hat and farting on my surf-and-turf dinner... The only real dissapointing part I felt was the "delivery guy" who could bring you super fresh meat or seafood, or fresh, "organic" vegetables. The downside was you had to pay $1 to call the delivery guy, then when he showed up, had to pay upwards of $10 to pull a slot-machine handle built into his delivery truck, only to not win anything at all for your troubles!! After this happened 5 times in a row, I never called the guy again. There should have been a better reward system implemented to make this work. But obviously it wasn't needed to enjoy or complete the game. Lastly, I could not earn a perfect score on my pizza because the game wanted you to place pepperoni in some perfect pattern without any clear explanation. That, as a perfectionist, simply drove me crazy. Luckily I cooked all of 4 or 5 pizzas through the entire game.

Order Up was a very enjoyable experience that I look forward to continue playing even after I have beaten the game. I think that in itself says all that needs to be said. Serve me up another!

Good game but could have been better
This game was a great and new approach to added cooking genre of games. Although fun, I feel it was somehow rushed as well.

Story in a nutshell:
You start the game working at a basic restaurant,and as you get more stars you get to upgrade to the next level restaurant to become the ultimate cook in the end.

Pros:
Different variety of restaurants to own

Many different recipes that pertain to the restaurant (Italian,
Mexican,etc.)

Cook with spices

Ability to buy items (Spices, Upgrade you equipment, etc)

Hire help each with different abilities

Great and wonderful design style

Little mini-games (Health Inspector,flicking rats, etc.)

A little shopping place to buy your spices or special recipes

Meet the needs of certain customers by putting in spices they like

Has a humor aspect

Cons:
WAY TOO SHORT! Took me only 7 hours to beat, but I played the game on easy and still did not unlock the other special recipes so you could possibly be looking at 10-12 hours of game play. Still it would have been nice to have two more restaurants to at least fill the void possibly a Japanese, Chinese or Indian restaurant.

Repetitive at times, although there were many recipes it seemed you always did the same things with the Wii remote, nothing new or inventive many times when preparing the food.

The market only had two places to explore. It would have been nice to have a variety of markets each with it's own type of spices (Italian, Asian, etc.). It also would have been nice to walk around the market square or explore the island

Not able to improve your hired help or have them level up to become better chefs. It was a pain liking the characters personality, but having to fire them due to just getting "good" many times and not "perfect"

I don't appreciate having to see that little boy ride his bike every time and throw the paper, it would be nice to skip over that scene, the same with the customers walking in.

It would have been nice to see many more characters in the game, and they change their spice recommendations or the ingredient they like.

Better mini-games, I would have like to see different games to do. Like with the Health Inspector and the rats.

NO TWO-PLAYER MODE! That really would have added to the potential of the game. It would make it's replay value double. It's no fun having a friend just watch me play this game and not be able to play as well, or have them come in a help me when I'm in the main game.

The characters seem to be repetitive in what they say. Also, it kind of erks me that the waiters seem to be as well. Like in the Mexican restaurant we have the waiter referring to only one customer as, "Senors and Senoritas".

Overall:
I based my review towards other cooking games, and since there's only a few I know of I believe this one to be the better of them. It was fun, different ( about time we get games other then just the usual) and I did enjoy it in the little time it lasted, still you can not help to see that this game was rushed. There's many things in the game play that prove just that. This game could have had so much more potential if released a little later and those things worked out.

ZOO your in the right direction, this game has a lot of potential, just keep at it! I'm hoping to see a 2nd one sooner or later.

More than just cooking, a lot of fun
I am fairly new to wii, and I am a casual gamer. I enjoyed this game quite a bit. I did try Cooking Mama, and I liked this game more. You had more things to do than just to cook. You could control your chefs, earn new upgrades, and you had some control in the restaurant itself, and I liked these challenges.

For me the learning curve on this game hasn't been too much, I can see that if you are a more serious gamer or if you are looking for a lot of game play out of this game, it may be lacking, as the story line doesn't last too long. The graphics are decent, but the limited vocals can get a little annoying, but many are very clever.

All in all I think this is a good game. I liked that it wasn't too hard, I don't play everday. If you are a serious gamer this may not be your best option or you may want to wait until the price on this game goes down. I am definately hopeful they will make a 2nd edition, because I will definately be picking it up.