Burger Island Review by Meryl

Meryl

Burgers must be the new black of casual gaming because this is the third burger game I’ve run into in recent months and they’re not sequels or related to each other. Burger Island resembles Diner Dash: Flo on the Go in that both main characters run into a bad situation in a tropical locale and must find work. Instead of Flo, we step into Patty’s shoes. Appropriate name, no?

Start by ordering the game in Kiddie, Regular or Jumbo Size. OK, so that translates into easy, medium or hard in game-speak. I like the take on “fast food speak” in the game’s menu and options.

Patty’s sailboat wrecks and she finds your way on a beach with no money and no I.D. Aha! Patty spots a “Help Wanted” sign — great opportunity to earn some dough. Unfortunately, the burger stand is located in a place where no one eats. The senior couple takes you in and praises your work. One day, they announce they’re retiring and leaving the restaurant to Patty.

.Too good to be true, indeed. The couple gets the heck out of the Dodge — actually Mount Tikikola Beach — and takes advantage of the tax break. Something strange happens when Patty enters the burger joint. She meet Pierre, a French guy, who shows her the ropes. OK, a French guy on an island? Weird, but we’ll put up with his haughty attitude since he’s all she’s got for learning this business.

In Burger Island, Patty doesn’t see the customers — just the trays and the orders. Actually, customers sit at the tables in the background, but they’re not in my face to pressure me to complete the order quickly. Instead, I glance at the thermometers next to the trays to gauge the customer’s impatience. This is heckuva lot better than seeing customer faces turning red.

One neat feature that takes getting used to — if you have an item in your hand (such as buns), you can put buns on all orders ready for buns. This could also be a downfall. Sometimes I get wrapped up in working like a assembly line that I forget about something that’s cooking and it burns.

As soon as profits come in, Patty can use the money to buy new recipes from some Tiki guy to keep the natives coming. Unlike most food entrepreneur games, Patty makes one item per round rather than a mix (burgers, fries or drinks). But even so, the game challenges players to keep the orders straight and not overcook the food.

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While one round might call for milkshakes, the milkshake could be vanilla or chocolate. So players have to watch out for that. It gets harder as I add more secret recipes to Patty’s repertoire. Eventually, I deal with nine ingredients for one recipe and that turned me into a patty melt.

Burger Island comes with 60 levels, over 30 recipes, over 40 ingredients and five burger restaurants. It’ll be tough to get bored with this mix. If you like the heat and want to stay in the kitchen, you’ll like Burger Island. The game is a typical fast food entrepreneur game that should keep fans of the genre satisfied.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
• 800 Mhz Pentium III or faster
• 128MB RAM
• DirectX v9.0 or above

System Requirements: Windows Vista

• 800 Mhz processor or faster
• 512MB RAM
• Graphics processor that is DirectX v9.0 or above capable

We give Burger Island a 3.5/5 diamond rating