Restaurant Empire

by IGS

Product Features

• Armand is a young chef who has stumbled onto the chance of a lifetime -- take over his uncle's restaurant and try to turn it around! From there he'll see if he can take his success to other parts of the city, and start a Restaurant Empire.
• Every aspect of the restaurant is under your control -- decorate the place to attract your clientele, then design the kitchen and dining rooms for maximum speed and efficiency
• Acquire different recipes and experiment with them to see which are popular and profitable
• While you're doing this, you'll get the opportunity to expand your business -- but be careful, because the massive OmniFood Corporation doesn't like competition
• Enter cooking contests and win, to raise the prestige of your chefs and the popularity of your restaurants

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000094FR7
• Item Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: March 15, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,388 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Restaurant Empire is the first game that faithfully recreates all the challenges of building and operating a restaurant franchise through a unique blend of business-simulation and RPG gameplay.

Starting with nothing except some cash and a passion for food, build a restaurant from the bottom up--hire waiters, decorate, even cook the meals! Buy, build, outsell and, underprice your competition.

Featuring three culinary capitals to operate in, five restaurant cuisines to choose from, over 30 unique chefs to interact with and nearly 200 recipes to source, your business sense and culinary taste will be tested to the limit.

Not only do you control every aspect of running a restaurant from buying your restaurant to choosing its cuisine and decoration; you will also travel and meet with people that will help you establish your name as the greatest restaurateur the world has ever seen!

Will you use your culinary wizardry to out-cook chefs? What tactics and strategies will you employ to buy out the competition? You decide. With a combination of business strategy and role-playing game styles plus a free-form sandbox game mode, three huge cities, and over 30 playable chefs and a host of locations to travel to, Restaurant Empire is an epicurean delight of gastronomic proportions!

Product Description

Turn your small restaurant into a massive chain that rakes in the money! / Rated E: Everyone

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

181 of 185 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good sim -- but not perfect., June 25, 2003

By 

Jennifer Piersol (Porterville, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Restaurant Empire (CD-ROM)

Maybe not perfect, but I'd still buy it again.

Here are the pros:

* Campaign mode is not impossible to complete. With some other games like almost all the versions of SimCity, I find it almost impossible to successfully complete their demands, but with Restaurant Empire, it's much easier. In fact, it may be a little too easy. See "cons" below.

* Graphics are great. Not stunning, but great.

* Graphics *control* is fabulous. Best in any game I've ever played. You can rotate the game in a smooth, continuous motion. You can tilt your view from about 15 degrees above horizontal to straight overhead. You can zoom in and out effortlessly. I've never had so much control over my view in a game. Wonderful!

* Plot is cute. You're going to be the wonderboy of the culinary world, out to save the world from the evil OmniFood corporation, known for cheating in the food contests and genetically modifying their food.

Cons:

* Campaign may be a little too easy. In the beginning of the game, it sets goals that are very challenging. Having your fledgling restaurant make $40,000 in a month, for example, is incredibly difficult with the resources you have at that point. However, once you get past step 5 or 6 (in an 18-scenario campaign), it gets much easier. In fact, I started losing on purpose to build up cash for the next step - and on one or two occasions, I won anyway, without even meaning to. A little frustrating.

* There are a few annoying stereotypes to deal with. The mobster from Italy... well, he speaks-a in-a very annoying-a way-a, if you get my drift. But that's nothing compared to the black chef who is supposed to be from Louisiana, but speaks likes he's from South Central, "homey". And there's only one woman in the game, and she's demure and waffle-y, letting your character tell her to do whatever you want. She's only too happy to do what you tell her, but only if you promise you think she's capable. Not a huge con, but annoying enough to get me to save my game and quit every once in a while.

* There's not as much control as some people would like. I, for one, would have liked a recipe interface where I could add ingredients to certain recipes (or even create my own), or similarly tinker. As it stands, you can only change the quality of ingredients or decide whether or not to use optional ingredients. I understand there would be a lot more programming involved if one were able to create recipes, but I'm one who likes micromanagement. I also missed the ability to tailor my training program - the only thing you can do at this point is put a specific amount of money towards training in general. You can't target specific staff members (i.e., newly hired personnel).

* Lastly, there's only one campaign! Sure, it's long. Sure, you can change the way you play and either draw it out (and make loads of cash) or see how fast you can complete it. But in the long run, it's still the same things you have to acheive to finish, and that could get boring really fast.

All in all, this is a very good game. Much better than my previous restaurant sim, Fast Food Tycoon 2. And here are two gameplay hints for those of you who decide to purchase it:

1. There's a website for the game...Go there and download a patch for the game - it'll fix some of the minor problems and improve some aspects that needed tweaking. However, you have to follow this order: Install game from cd. Input cd code from back of jewel case. *Then* install the patch. Otherwise, your cd code won't work, and you'll have to start over.

2. Close any programs you may have running in the background, such as AIM or another messenger program. I had a few problems with the game freezing up on me, and only if I had all my background programs stopped was I guaranteed a problem-free game.

Enjoy!

80 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT restaurant Sim!, December 2, 2003

By 

Kala (Ft Lauderdale, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Restaurant Empire (CD-ROM)

I LOVE all the tycoon and Sim games, I play every single one that comes out! This one is one of the most fun out there!! The graphics are not so great, but that doesn't bother me so much.

I played quite a bit in both the sandbox mode and in the campaign mode - both are great fun. Sandbox mode is basically building up your restaurant, then buying more restaurants and building them up (and so on). During the campaign mode, you are following a storyline of an up and coming chef who wants to take over a relative's restaurant. It's a cheesy storyline, but it's fun.

Management of the actual restaurant is fun as well. There are tons of items to choose from to decorate restaurant - my favorite is the rock n'roll themed items. One feature I liked in another tycoon game, which I wish this one had, is to have an "auto-decorate" option. What I mean is, you click on a certain theme (rock n'roll) and it will automatically decorate the restaurant for a set price. While I like decorating them, sometimes I just don't feel like it and want to get down to playing. It's a minor thing, something I just wish they had!

The cooks and the menu options are one of the highlights of the game! There are SO many recipes to choose from! The last restaurant sim I played only had pizzas! Also, the more your cook makes a certain recipe, the better he gets at it!

My one complaint is the way the game gives you new recipes and ingredients. I think it's really silly that the only way to get new recipes is to pay customers for them! Basically how it works is a customer comes in and offers to sell you his recipe (usually quite expensive too!). That part to me was completely unrealistic and I would have preferred a different way of getting recipes. That is also a minor complaint though, because overall I had a blast playing this game. It's well worth the price and I highly recommend it to Sim/Tycoon fans!

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A better-than-average management simulation, July 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Restaurant Empire (CD-ROM)

While some software companies seem to be generating cheap, poorly designed management simulations with little lasting appeal, Enlight Interactive has done a good job creating Restaurant Empire. The game has two modes: a sandbox mode for freeform play, and a campaign mode that consists of a set of scenarios with predefined goals. In both modes, the goal is to design and run a profitable restaurant or series of restaurants while satisfying the customers. Users can lay out rooms and furniture, hire staff, and design menus. While the game's graphics are not aestheitically appealing, the gameplay is fairly good. The user interface is straightforward for the most part, although it can be troublesome when moving furniture and rooms. New options become available as progress is made through the campaign, so the user is presented with stimulating new challenges and creative opportunities in every scenario. The goals for the campaign mode may be a little too easy, but only a little. The storyline for the campaign mode, however, is very entertaining; this was the first computer game I had played that featured a character with a prostate condition. The major drawbacks, aside from the blander-than-average graphics, are that the menu requires too much micromanagement and the staff cannot be managed well to imrpove efficiency, even with a patch that introduces some new options. Nonetheless, the game's positive values outweigh the game's drawbacks, making this a good game for people interested in nonviolent games and management simulations.