Stand O' Food 3 HD
Score: 80% ESRB: 4+ Publisher: G5 Entertainment Developer: G5 Entertainment Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Puzzle (Time Management)/ Action
Graphics & Sound: I first reviewed Stand O' Food 3 on the PC and now that is has been ported to the iPad, I wanted to check it out again. Time management games seem to really lend themselves extremely well to the iPad and I hoped that some of the issues I had with Stand O' Food 3 on the PC would resolve here. While some resolved, others emerged. The graphics in Stand O' Food 3 HD are bright, cheery and colorful and many of the locations and customers should be immediately familiar to fans of the Supermarket Mania series. You play as Ronnie, manager of the various Stand O' Food restaurants, and your goal is to open them all over town. Your love interest from Supermarket Mania, Nikki, will pop up as a customer, as will most of the folks you dealt with in Supermarket Mania. Locations will also be familiar since Ronnie opens his eateries in the same area as Nikki opened her markets. It's a nice little in joke for fans of G5 games. You'll be prepping various types of sandwiches, lasagnas and desserts and the food items look like they should, however I found them to be a bit small for tapping on the iPad. It wasn't a constant problem, but I did find that some taps didn't "take" the first time. More on this in Game Mechanics. Background music is pleasant and works well for the various types of diners. My personal favorite is the music that plays while you are working in the Italian restaurant making the lasagnas. It's lilting and soothing, like something you'd hear on a lazy day floating down the streets of Venice. The other tunes are quite nice as well, all pleasant and fitting of the location.
Gameplay: In Stand O' Food 3 HD, Ronnie is responsible for doing pretty much everything. You'd think he'd simply hire additional employees instead of the various upgrades you can purchase (more on this later), but no. He is a rogue. Your restaurant is set up with a series of conveyor belts that present the food items to you and you must click on them to build the requested item in the proper order, then present it to the customer. If you do it correctly and quickly, you'll make more money than you would normally. There are a variety of spices and sauces you can use, depending on what types of food items you are serving in that facility. Some are pretty cheap, while others run about $30 a serving. However, if you have ever wanted to serve a $60 burger, slap some special sauce on and watch your money grow! A customer will approach the counter and a thought bubble will tell you what item they want to order. There will be 2 suggested sauces that go with this item and while you can use other sauces, you get more money by using the sauce the customer wants. It's your job to survey the foods available to you and try to build the food item, which can have 2 to 8 layers, in the correct order, without any waste. You can purchase up to 5 side plates for stacking food items that are blocking you from getting to the food items you need, as opposed to throwing it away and costing you precious dollars, and you can also buy to go boxes, where you can place food items in any order and the customer will accept it. As you progress, you can buy upgrades with your earnings that will allow Ronnie to serve add-ons like fries, coffee, soft drinks and ice cream cones. While these aren't mandatory, you'll earn extra cash if you serve them - but you don't have much time to get them to the customers. Sometimes you'll have different levels and those occur when Torg, the bad guy from Supermarket Mania comes by to tear up your restaurant. He breaks your conveyors, so the goal of the level changes. You may have customers lining up for food at various conveyors and you must send the food down to them and catch their dirty plates to keep them from falling. Some days, you only have 3 types of food items to make and you have to simply get through the rush of customers. I preferred the regular levels to these, personally.
Difficulty: Stand O' Food 3 HD starts out easily enough with only 2 layered food items, but before long, it has ramped up pretty quickly. As you open new restaurants, the difficulty backs down again, so it is a nice ebb and flow, although when it is at it's highest difficulty, you will be running around a lot... well, your fingers will. If you find yourself getting into some really difficult levels with 7 and 8 layered food items, you can always just stock up on to-go boxes and not worry about the order. This is always good for catching up if you find yourself falling behind. Any time management veteran will find the difficulty doable, although as I mentioned earlier, when you lose precious seconds tapping on a food item, only to miss the intended item and pick up something else by mistake. This isn't so much a reflection of difficulty as it is poor controls, but it causes frustration nonetheless.
Game Mechanics: Stand O' Food 3 HD is all about the finger tap. You'll tap to pick up an item, tap to add additional ingredients and tap give the food to the customer. During the mini-games, you'll be tapping to send items shooting down the conveyor belt to customers and tapping to snag plates before they hit the ground. That's really all there is to it. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes when you tap an item, you can accidentally hit the item next to it. Mind you, I have pretty small hands, so if I am having a problem with this, I can only imagine the issues someone who has larger hands and fingers would encounter. Throughout my time with the game, I grew accustomed to using the side of my finger to tap instead of the pad of my finger, because it was a thinner edge and seemed to be more accurate. However, it was something I was always conscious of and took some of the enjoyment out of the game for me. I mentioned upgrades earlier and, aside from the machines you can purchase to have the ability to sell additional snacks, there are also decorative items you can buy that increase customers' patience - like floral arrangements or a jukebox. You can buy an air conditioner for the wall that keeps the air fresh and increases patience, or you can by a pie toaster that makes your items taste better. All of these items also have several levels of upgrades as well. In general, I liked Stand O' Food 3 HD, but I think I preferred the PC version over the iPad, which is unusual for me and time management, as I typically prefer the games on the iPad over the PC. That being said, there is a lot of gameplay to be had as there are some 70 levels, so check iTunes for a light version and give it a whirl.
-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins
Related Links: Game Vortex's Review of Stand O' Food 3 on PC Stand O' Food 3 HD | iTunes Page
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