Be it as much I love cafe Sims, the Sims of TeamLava are short term low key easily cranked out cloner games with short term appeal, and no permanent place in my collection.
I reviewed a grand total of 3 TeamLava games. Two being Cafe World clones (Restaurant and Bakery Story) and a different clone where you run a nightclub (Nightclub Story). The games are ok but lack a severe amount of depth and content. All the games do their job, they fulfill that need to run a diner or nightclub, but only at the most basic level. Where games like Cafe World excels, in that your options and possibilities grow as you play, this game quickly stagnates and falls apart.
Besides the minimal graphics you find almost from go your grinding hard with little e reward for all your efforts. Working hard to keep counters filled, and diners happy, it takes a long time to level up, much less unlock New machineslike ovens, stoves, drink makers and do on so you can grind out more and more recipes at a time. Worst, certain devices suck in terms of quick recipes that only take a few minutes making it longer waits to keep your counters stacked, which is made worst by the inability to stack recipe items to keep certain foods stocked on your counters. The idea of one cook item per counter is counter productive, but TeamLava went there not just in early releases but seemingly in every release. Why they went there, especially when Glu got it right with Tavern Quest, boggles the mind.
But wait, that is not all. Besides hard level progression it's hard to keep your counters stocked. Not only because of the one cooked item per counter limit, but also because the diner ai (underwhelming forgettable ai) eat like animals, quickly depleting your recipes. Also? Restaurant Story has an unforgivable very early task (2nd or 3rd) which cannot be completed no matter how long you play, tasking you to cook an item none of the cooking devices prepare. What a quick and early fail!
And if that is not enough, and Lord knows it should be, but the game is heavily dependent on three broken facts.
- One. The games are heavily dependent on premium currency in order to progress as a few later missions can't be completed or skipped without it.
- Two. The games are heavily dependent on making friends on either Facebook or the game site TeamLava uses. And you know what a pain that is especially since a few of these company owned things (looking at you GameLoft) are impossible to work with.
- Three. The games have too many long term items that take too long to finish, and not in so called game time mind you as most of the games we will be looking at play in realtime, and having far too much time heavy recipes to wade through (especially to complete early tasks) is such a pain.
Combine all that with lackluster gameplay and graphics and TeamLava really need to go back to the drawing board, and instead of grinding out 100 sad inferior games work on making 10 games, and making them well. Otherwise these games barely meet your needs, but will ultimately disappoint. A 2 out of 5 times 3.
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