When I first got my hands on a copy of Hell’s Kitchen for the Wii, I was pretty convinced that there was no way this could be entertaining. I mean, for crying out loud, you ever see that show? It’s just some British guy screaming profanity for an hour while other people cook. And yet, somehow, despite all reason and good common sense, this game is unaccountably fun. There’s no two ways about it; Hell’s Kitchen is fun, but it probably shouldn’t be.
Basically, in Hell’s Kitchen, much like the show you take on the role of an aspiring chef in the none too tender mercies of Gordon Ramsay. You’ll manage a kitchen and a dining room, seating patrons, taking orders, preparing and detailing food to be served. Actually, you’ll just tell a waiter what to do by pointing and clicking with your Wiimote. Everything you’ll do, from mixing ingredients to clearing dishes, is done by pointing and clicking the Wiimote.
You may be wondering how such a game could be on the Wii in the first place, let alone merely rated T, because as anyone who’s actually seen the show knows watching it on network TV ends up with it sounding like a Morse code tutorial as designed by someone on a whole lot of meth. But they actually managed to pull it off by A. continuing the grand tradition of bleeping out any and all of Ramsay’s profane dialogue and B. making the game itself little more than a casual computer game knockoff with licensing bonuses. Playing Hell’s Kitchen felt like nothing so much as a particularly deep episode of Diner Dash.
On the one hand, a casual game like Diner Dash is pretty well suited to the Wii’s admittedly inferior graphics capabiliities and control scheme that focuses on the point and click. Adding on a license like Hell’s Kitchen actually boosts the credibility of things a bit, and gives it a connection to something people are already familiar with. There’s also a really interesting strategy element here that bears mentioning–dishes are all made differently, and you may have three or four dishes to process per table. Thus, you’ll have to figure out which ingredients you need, and in which order you need them. You may need, for example, two eggs, three fruits and two grains. If you’re smart you’ll already have one of each pre-made before you even start. But then you’ll have to start preparing ingredients on the fly, seeing which dishes will take longest to prepare and taking advantage of the time lag to prepare the other ingredients. Plus you’ll have to do the whole thing on the fly under a time limit.
See what I mean? Despite the fact that this game is fairly simple there’s a lot of different permutations involved here, and getting your head around all of them can be downright difficult. That dichotomy is actually kind of weird, and adds to the fun factor. This game shouldn’t be this complex. Or this entertaining. And yet, it is. There’s an odd sort of compulsion to this game that makes you long to jam your success in Ramsay’s smirking little maw and make it all the way to master chef.
And you’ll get the chance to do exactly that here. Even better, you’ll get actual recipes that you can try if you’re desperate to make an incredibly complex dish (seriously, there’s a recipe for a salad that requires BLANCHING vegetables. I took one look at it and said, no, I think I’ll just cut some lettuce.). But the key thing is, Hell’s Kitchen is a hell of a game.
I continue to be amazed at the sheer number of World War II based shooters that can be put onto the market and still perform well. There have been countless digital reenactments of almost every important battle in the entire conflict yet it seems that gamers aren’t sick of them yet. Despite being jaded about the genre, I admit to being somewhat interested in Call of Duty: World of War.
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