Fast Food Panic Hands-On

Everyone loves to cram buckets of fast food into their gaping maw, but the real dream is to make it yourself. Fast Food Panic gives you a chance to put on your hairnet and deep fry the nearest hunk of dead cow in a desperate attempt to satisfy the hungry masses always yearning for more, more, more. We had a chance to stick our hand in the fryer earlier today and came away feeling like we just needed to lie down for a few minutes.

Fast Food Nation plays a lot like another cooking game for the Wii: Order Up. You are in charge of your own tiny kitchen and must please your customers as they order items well above their daily caloric needs. When new customers come in, you must greet them by shaking the nunchuk, listen attentively for their order, and then get to work cooking it up. When your cooking task begins, the uncooked food is laid out before you and you must combine it into something edible. Flip burgers on the grill or get the frozen fish out of the fryer by flipping the remote and then get working on the fixings. You have to place the meat, cheese, and condiments in the correct order, and then you serve it to your customer.

We only played one of the first levels in the game, but it was still rather hectic. Customers not only want you to greet them in a polite fashion, but they want you to say good-bye as well. An icon will pop up prompting you to shake your nunchuk to say good-bye, but it’s easy to miss when you’re knee deep in ketchup and onions. When the customer is done eating, you have to take their hard-earned cash, and this brings up a calculator where you tally how much their food cost. If you take too long to perform any of these tasks, or if you forget to say good-bye, the customer will leave grumpy, which is as bad for business as a hair in a chocolate milk shake.

Unlike in Order Up, you can’t hire more chefs, so you’re left manning the kitchen by your lonesome. Fast Food Panic is set to come out later this year on both the DS and Wii, so check back later to see if this is a high-class delicacy or a steaming platter of rotten meat.