Customer Reviews

Fast Food Tycoon

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This game is a lot of fun. People who are familiar with and liked the old game Pizza Tycoon will just love this one. The gameplay is very familiar, but the graphics has improved a lot. It's called Fast Food Tycoon, but really should have been called Pizza Tycoon 2.

If you are looking for an excellent game that lets you try things you'd probably never would in real life, Fast Food Tycoon is a game for you. In Fast Food Tycoon you are in charge. Design your restaurant, then hire staff, choose and create your pizzas, manage your restaurant, and probably the funnest part, defend your restaurant from the mob.

When you consider that this game goes for around $19.99, it's a very good deal if you like economic simulations. If you, like me, loved the game Pizza Tycoon, it's just a bargain and a must have.

The idea of creating and managing your own fast food chain, and then watching it function from a bird's eye view is a great one. Unfortunately, Activision failed at recreating this idea to your PC with Fast Food Tycoon. The main reason the game is a failure is because of it's confusing gameplay. It helps to use the tutorial but even after that you'll find yourself wondering, "How did I get to that certain screen that let me do that certain function." Watching your pizza(only type of food)place function is pretty cheasy also. There are very few animations and there's not many ways to edit the looks of the place either. If your looking for a solid simulaion game that will keep you entertained for hours your better off with Theme Hospital, Roller Coaster Tycoon, or one of the sim-cities. Do your cholesterol a favor and pass this Fast Food.

Pros: Cute graphics...$5 "Bargain Bin" at CompUsa

Cons: Confusing layout! No instruction manual,
Infuriating...difficult to understand, time-consuming, Interface impossible to deal with, limited control, yadda, yadda, yadda

The Bottom Line: Avoid it! The jewel case will make a great coaster for the soda I'm sipping while playing a REAL game. If your goal is to drive someone insane, literally, then this is the perfect gift. Otherwise, don't waste your money.

Summary:
The Pros:

The idea of it all. They potentially had something so good in this game.

The scenarios. Easy, medium or hard as well as "most income" or "Most popular" or "First one to make a million dollars". I liked the option of not really having any goal and just playing so that I wouldn't blink and be obliterated.

You can check on how different "target groups" are responding to your restaurant, your food, etc. Click on the target group and a little Polaroid Photo sort of thing pops up and they're either smiling or making a pre-vomiting face.

The "make your own pizza" part! Oh man this was fun! You sort through all your ingredients and apply liberally. You have the traditional meats and cheeses and veggies. You also have all sorts of seafood and insect life. Ew, right? Well, you open franchises in different countries and hey, tastes vary. What else is fun when you're making your pizza is they have a "Chopper". You can click your ingredient over the chopper and it'll dice it smaller and smaller and it's graphically correct and adorable. Cheese starts as a block (chopper chopper) and then it's a thinner slice (chopper chopper) and then it's small chunks, and then shreds, and then sprinkles. How cute! Tomatoes go from whole to halves to quarters to slices to paste! Fun!

The Cons:

I'm ashamed to say that I couldn't figure out how to play this game for the life of me. Being impatient, I just jumped on in and thought I was going to kick some butt. After about 20 minutes I was still staring at the screen, clicking on various things.

Aaaaalright, I'll take the tutorial. It turned the light bulb on in my head in terms of staffing, decoration and purchasing supplies. Frustrating though...I clicked on everything on the screen before I'd click on what it wanted me to. The graphics are loud and confusing. What does a big face mean? Staff? Syndicate? Exit?

Oddly enough when I started my next game I couldn't find ANY of the buttons that were there in the tutorial...I couldn't find the staffing, my "information history" and couldn't even figure out how to open my darn restaurant.

Infuriating! I checked out my restaurant...it had some people and staff in it...but when I clicked around it sent me to some other restaurant. I sure the heck didn't open that one or decorate it, where'd it come from? Argh!

You have the option of having things done "automatically" for you in various areas (Select them when you begin your scenario if you'd like) but doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of building your own Pizza Empire?

As a fan of sim games like SimCity and Free Enterprise (to name but a few), I purchased this one thinking that the concept of operating a fast food chain had great possibilities....unfortunately, Activision has blown this one. First, if you want instructions, you are out of luck. Next, the tutorials are meager to say the least. Throughout the game, the icons that drive everything you do are hard to decipher without using the help feature. To really start playing this game and to know what you are doing would take hours since the only way to learn it is through a great deal of trial and error (much more than any other games of this ilk).

In a nutshell, this game disappoints.

I purchased this game about 2 years ago, and I still pop it into my computer every now and then (yep .. it managed to catch my attention for that long!)
The lack of an instruction manual in this game is really no big deal -- I picked up the basics very quickly using plain old common sense. Some buttons and feautures still remain unknown to me, but this has not affected my gameplay at all.
I love the fact that within this game you can actually make your own pizzas by picking out what size you want the pizzas to be; you also have a large amount of toppings to choose for every pie that you make.
You also have the ability to decorate your actual pizza parlor. Although there are not many decor choices, you can build a fairly decent place. In the end, this game does not contain any fancy graphics, but it is based on an innovative concept that will make you play it over and over again :)

I brought Fast Food Tycoon a few years back because I enjoy playing the demo I got online. It is one of my favorite classic game like Theme Hospital.
Pros:love the graphic, you get to do other things besides make pizzas like sell weapons,sabotage your competitors, and make your own style of pizza
Cons: wish you can serve more than just pizza, and hard to understand how to play at the beginning since it doesn't come with a manual. Overall enjoyed it very much, and plan on gettting Fast Food Tycoon 2

Okay, here's the deal: I'm an avid fan of sim games, especially business and strategy sims, so I was pretty excited to see this game. I ignored all of the bad reviews (which are many), and figured that these were written by non-sim gamers. I mean, how bad could this game be? Hmm... pretty bad. Actually, really bad. Even after setting the 1993-style graphics and slow game pace aside, I still couldn't see a spark of worth here. This game definitely belongs in the bin... even then it might not be worth it.

Most games are very easy to learn, even without a manual. This game however, practically requires a degree in patience, rocket science, and psychic intuition. Its interface seems to lack basic common sense, which makes navigation throughout the game, incredibly complex.

To be fair, the concept of the game is appealing, it's just that the developers couldn't make it work. As a true sim-fan, take my word and heed the reviews. This game should not have been released. To be frank, more money was probably spent on the catchy box, than the game itself.

When you first see the box of this game, you think oh i must have one of them. Well the game is set up terrible, along with it has no instructions with is. I would strongly advise you to not buy this game.

DO NOT GET THIS GAME!!

This game was terrible, I installed it, and it was not realistic at all. I could not even find the exit button! Each button had an icon, which was very difficult to make out. I usually do not write reviews like this, but with this game, I had to tell potential buyers of this game to STEER CLEAR.

I bought this game like I have bought most sim games. This one could be alot of fun if you knew what you were doing. but unfortunatly, no instruction booklet comes with it. It does have a tutorial, but its kinda hard to follow, and its not there when you go to do it on your own. I have given this game about ten hours now and still have gone bust with each time. I have yet to win a scenario. If you dont automate the help, you cant figure out how to space them so they dont all show up at once and go home at once leaving an empty restaurant with hungry customers. You can automate everything, but what fun is that? As mentioned in another review, if you knew what your customer was thinking it would be nice so you can try to change it, but there is no way to tell. My advice is to [ignore] any game that doesnt come with an instruction manual.