Cake Mania 2

Even more than a monobrow or webbed feet, there's no clearer sign of moral turpitude than not liking cake. Regarded by everyone from Aristotle to Einstein (probably) as the pinnacle of human achievement, the noble Victoria sponge and chocolate brownie represents the triumph of the human spirit over the tyranny of dull tea breaks.

The original Cake Mania helped to celebrate this ultimate victory of good over evil by putting you in charge of your very own bakery and allowing you to bring sweet joy to hundreds of virtual customers. This sequel… does exactly the same. In fact it differs so minutely from the original game it seems almost certain the developer was off scoffing some of Mr Kipling's finest rather than coming up with any new ideas.

To recap though, Cake Mania 2 has you taking the role of cake-maker extraordinaire Jill as she manages a series of unlikely positioned shops and serves their increasingly oddball clientele. The fact that some of the shops are on the moon or underwater is one of the major new features of the sequel and yet it makes no practical difference to the gameplay and adds barely any visual variation either.

Instead, this plays out just as before and in a similar manner to Diner Dash, Curry in a Hurry, and all the other obvious copies and variants. Customers pile in down the left of the screen and will indicate what shape and type of cake they want. You then bake the cake in an oven and add frosting in a separate machine (changing frosting to icing so that anyone outside of the US can understand what the game is on about was obviously too much effort).

Once the cake is ready you hand it over to the customer and collect their money. And that, with only some minor variations to create layered cakes and buy new equipment, is pretty much that. The difficultly is obviously in properly managing your time, prioritising the right customers and keeping several cakes on the go simultaneously, but there's no actual depth or strategy that goes into any of your decisions.

You've basically seen 90 per cent of what Cake Mania 2 has to offer in the first few minutes and the attempts to add longevity by taking control of bakeries in ever more ludicrous locations is almost pitiable in its ineffectiveness. There is an effort at a story of sorts but although not being plausible is one thing it's also not particularly funny, even though it clearly thinks it is.

It's not even as if the developer's really improved the graphics, just swapped the customers for different costumes and changed the windows on each level.

And yet, because the basic concept and original game is still hugely addictive, it's impossible to mark Cake Mania 2 down too harshly or pretend it's not fun if you haven't played it before. If you're new to the genre, this is a good place to start. If you've already got the first game, however, you might want to think twice before ordering this portion of seconds.