Sitting by the pool on holiday with my trusty Nintendo Switch and I notice the pool bar now does food.
On a stone slab comes a little net of fries, and a most glorious looking burger. Everyone is ordering them. I need one. I order one. It arrived. It looks amazing. I sink into it and… the beef is a bit, well I don’t know if it’s beef. But the texture is off. Is that what Europeans call a beef burger? I’m sort of a bit disappointed, a bit confused, a bit unsure. It looked so good. This is also how I feel about BurgerTime Party.
BurgerTime is actually a 1982 arcade game, this being a sequel of sorts. The concept is very simple; you control a chef who has to build burgers. You do this by walking over the top of the ingredients and they fall down to the next floor. Knock them all down to form a burger on a plate.
It sounds simple. The puzzle comes from finding the most efficient route in order to stamp down the components of a burger (or multiple burgers) whilst navigating various ladders. Complicating this are rogue hot dogs. You heard. Rogue hot dogs.
These mean sausages chase you about, but you have a weapon. A salt shaker has three shakes, and you can throw it in their faces to temporarily stun them so you can get by. Failing that, to probably throw them into the proverbial bun you can squish them by your stamped falling ingredients. Problem solved.
Hygiene concerns aside, it’s pretty fun. For a short burst. It looks fun, all cartoony and the burgers look pretty delicious. Think Cuphead style but without the nostalgia – cutesy characters, food with eyes. But I never really found myself grabbed – the main set of levels are generally very short in solo mode although do get rather large in scope (which can be a challenge to see in handheld mode). Points are what you need so making sure you can squash the baddies becomes more important.
Multiplayer options exist with a co-op mode (many chefs on screen at once) and a battle mode where your mates can take control of the bad foods.
It’s a bit mental. But hey, that’s what makes it fun. It’s just a shame there isn’t much more to it, especially to warrant the £18 price tag.
Reviewed on Switch
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