Fast Food Tycoon

You start off each "mission" with a set amount of resources from which you are to develop all aspects of your franchises. Not only are you responsible for building the restaurants in good locations, but you must match the décor to the people who will frequent the place. In addition, you must also worry about the staff (namely the hiring and the subsequent training of them), the construction of warehouses to store your materials and supplies, the hiring of support services (companies which will supply you with quality or cheap supplies. It gets better, you are also in charge of making all of your pizza recipes (and then pricing them) with all sorts of exotic ingredients, my personal favorite was the vegetarian special with one whole tomato and my idiot special with a rattlesnake. Whooah! That's enough fun for you now, you're in charge of making the schedule for the four new stores that you opened, and for some reason no one is willing to work other than the hours of 12-12:15. The list goes on and on. It is relatively easy to become bogged down into the nuances of this game - it's kind of game for people who wonder if the infantry guys are happy and receiving proper medical care while playing Command and Conquer. As soon as you have stabilized your restaurant then you can begin to deal with the macro-managing aspects like advertisement (which is seriously underrated in this game - how do account for the popularity of Little Caesar's without advertising?). You can also begin the underhanded techniques like buying off the police force, hiring enforcers, and messing with the competition.

The game has a distinct Sims feel to it. All of the characters are the sort of realistic-cartoony hybrid with each person having specific characteristics. Some of the most important details come in hiring the right people for the positions that need filled or in matching your stores to the general populace - no need for 5 star dining when your restaurant is next to a tattoo parlor right?

Strengths - this is a thinking man's game. If you enjoy micromanaging 

people's lives and dealing with every possible nuance or you have been classified by your therapist as overbearing and manipulative, this game is for you. This game holds a frightening level of detail at times and everyone will reach a point where you're going to yell at the "managers" that you’ve hired who don't seem to be doing anything. "Hey Bill - what are you freaking doing? Stop hitting on the 15 year old servers and start working on that new pizza idea, ok?"

Weaknesses - where to start? No documentation - at all. The training level was more like an experiment where the teacher believes that it would be a good "experience" if the lecture was taught by one of the students. You can pretty much say the same for the help function - not helpful at all. The controls are confusing and there are no pop-up tabs so you end up pressing every button until something appreciable happens. The most annoying thing is the text. Some of it can't be read in the little status bar on the right side of the screen - it might be important to know where the big grease fire is going on.

All in all, this game was not bad for its price but it could have been a whole lot better than what was presented.

- Tazman

-Mom. Dad. I'm going to do something that you're not going to like, but I feel as though I have to do it.

-Marge! She's going to narc on our stash!

-Homer, we don't have a stash.