Review | Restaurant Empire 2

Format: PC | Genre: Management sim | Publisher: Iceberg Interactive | Developer: Enlight | Out now: £19.99

By Christos Reid

Dining in a restaurant is something of a magical experience. You’re waited on hand and food, and you can sample the various delicacies brought to you by  staff you don’t envy. But what happens when you choose to run one of these magical eating houses?

This is the premise for Restaurant Empire 2, a restaurant sim that does everything in its power to distance itself from the cartoony pseudo-hardcore Tycoon titles without becoming less complex and engaging. A word of warning: if The Sims’ amount of depth and complexity in the everyday running of a household was overwhelming, this may be a title you’ll find hard to get to grips with. However, if you’re comfortable with complex arrangements a step below the vocational complexity of EVE Online, then this is more likely to make you smile.

//If you can’t take the heat
The concept is simple: there are two campaign options, and a sandbox mode in which there are no goals and no criteria to meet, though the logical expectation to become profitable still remains. The first campaign is centred on one Armand Lebouf, prodigal nephew of Restaurant Empire’s protagonist Michel. Starting in Paris, you’re tasked with the rebuilding of lacklustre eatery Treize en Table – something of a chore when you consider it’s currently got six tables, no staff, and nothing on the walls. The narrative flows well, taking you through dialogue-heavy conversation trees every time you speak to a customer or your uncle, but for the majority, it does its job of educating the player as to the various developments, both in storyline and customer experiences. Pay attention to the punters, as they’ll usually offer up a culinary secret to success in exchange for a little cash.

A tutorial narrated by your prestigious uncle is at your disposal throughout the campaign. It does its utmost best to explain to you the various different facets of being a restaurateur, though the mini-walkthrough is at times patronising due to its tendency to flit between explanations of complex mechanics – such as altering how many millilitres of tomato juice goes into your pasta – to how to turn a virtual page by clicking a button.

It’s here the game stumbles, as more often than not it will lead you to believe things are a lot more complex than they actually are, and vice versa, at crucial moments. The fact the entire city is open to exploration is a little surreal for a sim focused around a restaurant, although you can own several at any one time. To open up a sandbox universe to a player who will often focus his or her attention on less than one percent of the gorgeously recreated Parisian landscape seems like a wasted effort – though it adds a little more realism than The Sims’ tendency to have people simply vanish once they’re out of your house’s immediate radius.

This said, everything within your realm is controllable to a pedantic degree, from changing ingredients to make spicier or different versions of current recipes, to the ability to tear down the walls and redecorate from scratch. As with most consumers, the nicer things look (or in this case, the more eccentrically snobbish), the happier customers are, though in the beginning you’re so broke it’s hard not to have at least one person think your plastic chairs are more IKEA than modern design.

//Master chef
Cooking competitions using your protagonist avatar are by far the most enjoyable element of the first campaign, as after choosing the recipe he’ll use as his entry, you can increase his efficiency in cooking – and therefore his chances of taking home the gold – by completing mini-games, from clicking on coloured windows in the right order to simplistic, old-school timing puzzles. Remember stopping the moving line in the middle of the red zone? It’s here, along with other predictable tests of reaction time, and it makes for a refreshing break from all the heavy-duty management of your eating establishment.

Fans of the first title in the series will note that, in addition to French, Italian and American cuisine, German dishes (and locations) are now on offer. The fact you’re not limited to any one style, and are in fact able to surf the globe settling down in whatever city takes your fancy should you wish to break into sandbox mode, is refreshing, and I think any Sims fan was a ticking clock in terms of getting sick and tired of Pleasantville.

//Caviar and sandwiches
I’ll be honest: this is primarily a game aimed at people who love to cook, and the fact the recipes are the source of the game’s greatest depth serve to garnish this with more than a little verisimilitude. But sim games are tough, and those who enjoyed Cooking Mama are going to find that more than often, issues such as customer complaints and unnecessary expenses, such as paying a staff member a month’s wages only to find out she’s served one person, crop up far too often for the casual kitchen enthusiast to enjoy in a short playing period. The campaigns do a remarkable job of keeping you focused, giving you various tasks from pleasing a certain percentage of your customers, to making a certain amount of profit, all over a month. The fact that your stats for the first day of every month are duplicated for the rest as to avoid making you play an average of thirty one sessions to progress is a genius move, and keeps the pace up nicely when in comparison to other sim titles that choose longer progression due to the incorporation of so many small details.

When I first started playing, I was sceptical at best. The Sims 3 was coming out soon, and frankly, all other sim titles could jump off a bridge: I had my target. But Restaurant Empire 2 has won me over as a title I’ll keep playing post-review, if just to find out how my little French wonder-chef does in terms of his career – fairly well I’d assume, as in the chronological sequel to the first campaign, he has a wife and a colossal house. Not something for the dip-in-for-five-minutes mindset in the gaming community, but definitely enjoyable for the experience of a restaurant game that is, for once, realistic in its mechanics.

6/10

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