Restaurant Empire has pretty low hardware requirements for this gaming age: 500 MHz PIII, 128 MB of RAM and a 3D graphics card. To put this in perspective, I have a PIII 550 that was bought as a refurb in 2001. Basically, if you bought your computer in the last four years, you should be able to play this game.

When I first logged in, I had to choose my screen resolution and refresh rate. I've never seen a game actually ask for the refresh rate before, so I thought that was a bit odd. I later discovered that you have to choose it each time you play. The game should allow you to set that once from an options menu and never bother you again. I also found I was unable to alt-tab out of the game or run it in a windowed mode, which makes no sense for a game with such low hardware requirements.

Onto the game. Restaurant Empire has two modes you can play: the Scenario mode in which you work through a series of challenges, and the Sandbox mode in which you can experiment with creating your own restaurant. The scenario mode tells the story of a new chef, Armand, who is reopening his uncle's restaurant and attempting to make it a success. Each section of the scenario is interspersed with a dialogue mode with your uncle, which is a nice touch because it creates a real storyline to follow.

During the first segment of the scenario, you go through the tutorial. Normally I'm a fan of a detailed tutorial. However, there's no way to skip the whole thing at once. You do each segment of the tutorial separately, so if you use the Skip Tutorial option, it only skips the current segment. The controls are only activated once you've completed the corresponding tutorial, so you have to initiate and complete or skip each section in order to begin the game. It also seems like you can't skip the dialogue portions of each tutorial, so you have to click through the dialogue. This is a good setup for someone who has never played a sim game before, but it's painful for experienced players.

As I worked through the tutorial, I started to see some of the problems with the game. The controls are very frustrating. The camera movement is very sensitive and it was hard to get the right angle sometimes. The zoom function was very limited. You can't zoom out far enough to get a clear picture of the entire restaurant at once. Placing items accurately took some patience as well.

The interface was laid out similar to other sim games I've played. The item interface window, in particular, bears a striking resemblance to the same window in the Sims. I found the button icons to be nonintuitive — a bunch of balloons to indicate "Open Restaurant," a guy in a chef's hat to indicate the staff list. As a result I was frequently forced to hover over each button.

The graphics are adequate for the game but not spectacular. The plates aren't really round, for example, and the food is blocky. At this point in time, I would expect higher quality graphics, even for a family game, but I don't think the graphics really detract from the experience.

Back to the storyline. In general, the scenario mode moved too slow for my taste. You start with an existing restaurant, so it's some time before you get to build your own. Also, the goals seem too easy. I hired some staff and threw some recipes on the menu, and I cleared my first goal in the first month without even trying.

As I discovered that first month, another idiosyncrasy of Restaurant Empire is the time scale. Instead of playing the game through each day of the month, you only play one day a month, and the results from that one day are multiplied to give you the monthly result. On the whole that's a nice feature because you aren't stuck waiting for the month to end, and there isn't much you can fiddle with anyway. It's still a little jarring to get the month-end results when you think you've only played one day.

Next, I tried Sandbox mode. You start by selecting a chef and a type of restaurant. For some reason, there's only one female chef out of 32 options, which is annoying when you consider that most of the waitstaff and receptionists are female. You then get to design your restaurant with furniture, room placement, menu and staff. This part of the game was much more fun than the scenario mode. You get access to all options right away, you get a much bigger budget to make changes and your chef can actually cook! If you make enough money, you can open more restaurants and even branch out to other cities. You can adjust your starting budget at the first screen (that's a first!) so you could even do this from the very beginning.

Unfortunately, the fun ends once you open the restaurant. You can occasionally offer a customer their favorite food, which improves their experience. You also can pay attention to customer complaints. Most of those have to do with rude staff, and there isn't much you can do about that other than fire them or boost their salary to improve morale. You can seemingly gain a customer satisfaction rating, which will allow you to add on restaurant upgrades, which mostly have to do with the outside of the building. Aside from these things, the day-to-day operation is pretty dull.

Ultimately, I don't think that Enlight really brought anything new to the table with Restaurant Empire. The tutorial, clunky interface and difficult controls really spoiled the fun. The scenario was not interesting to me, and it moved way too slowly. On the other hand, Sandbox mode was pretty fun. I will probably play it a few more times to try the other Sandbox options. New sim players may appreciate the comprehensive tutorial, and it has a lower hardware requirement than many games out there. The subject matter is probably too advanced for younger players, and I doubt it would be interesting for them, so I think this game is best for the casual adult gamer who is new to sim games and likes the idea of building their own restaurant.

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