Import Review: Japan's ability to produce a steady stream of wacky games with bizarre premises has never been questioned, but sometimes games come along that still manage to surprise and impress with their sheer strangeness. Ore no Ryori is definitely one of those games. It brings the action and thrills of owning a restaurant to your Dual Shock-equipped PlayStation. And who would have guessed it would be this cool?
The Coo-Kingdom (get it?) is under attack by the evil Frog's army and his robotic chefs! Only an idealistic young chef has the speed, skill, and seasoning ability to put an end to the evil Frog's plans for food domination. To defeat this amphibious epicure, our friend will have to best the Frog's minions through nine levels in a variety of cooking challenges, from the easy-as-pie ramen battle to the complicated and frenzied French battle.
Once customers start coming into the restaurant, their orders will begin to accrue on the side of the screen. After selecting the order you want to fill, a wide variety of cooking-oriented minigames must be quickly completed before you can prepare the food in question. For example, the easiest recipe, ramen noodles, requires you to chop onions, boil the noodles, and add soy sauce for flavoring.To cut the onions, you move the onion left and right with the left analog stick and chop it by moving the right analog stick up and down. To speed things up, a variety of cooking tasks can be chained together. Chop all the onions for your ramen, and you can save time by boiling all your noodles at once. Once you set the noodles to boil, you'll have to keep an eye on the indicator to make sure that you don't overcook them. Each individual event and activity is scored from 1 to 10, with a number of indicators letting you know when you've poured just enough beer into the glass or your noodles have the preferred firmness. Likewise, points will be deducted if you cut your fingers when chopping or burn your french fries. Tougher cuisines will require more steps, will offer fewer chances for chaining, and will require speed, precision, and careful resource management in order for you to advance. In addition to cooking tasks, a number of other, more detrimental, events can occur. Calling the police to pick up a drunk, chasing a thief, and stomping out a number of cockroaches are but a few examples - fail to complete these in time and all of your customers will storm out in a huff.
After completing the initial trial, you'll square off against one of the frog's minions for a one-on-one battle. A scale measures the customers' feelings about the restaurant, prompting a win when someone hits the top or someone hits the bottom. Chain events together or clear out all of your customers, and you'll add a chore into the other person's lineup to slow his or her progress. The addition of the game's two-player mode and a handful of other bizarre little Dual Shock exercises boost the game's somewhat lacking play value to acceptable levels.
Sporting a visual design acumen similar to that of Parappa the Rapper and Unjammer Lammy, Ore no Ryori is cute and attractive, but it isn't exactly a technical marvel. The music and sound effects definitely enhance the game's charm. Each restaurant challenge has a catchy, appropriately themed song to accompany it, and then you hear techno-remixed music for the competition with the evil Frog's robots. A variety of hilarious voice samples extol or deride your cooking virtues and greet customers, creating the aural air of a Japanese restaurant.
A delightful little game recently inducted into Sony's PlayStation The Best series, Ore no Ryori is a quirk-fest that just about anyone can pick up and enjoy. Like Parappa and Lammy, Ore no Ryori isn't the longest or most replayable game, but its personality, charm, and fun make it an excellent addition to any library. Iron Chef fans, take heed!
