Meshi Quest: Five-star Kitchen review - A frantic and entertaining cooking sim

I never knew that running a sushi restaurant could be so stressful. It's a juggling act of almost epic proportions, involving no less than five different things you need to keep an eye on.

It's a good job that Meshi Quest: Five-star Kitchen somehow manages to make the whole experience so damn entertaining.

This is the kind of frantic game of taps and swipes that mixes its theme and its mechanics brilliantly. Yeah, it's just another cooking game, but it's a really, really good one.

Order up

The game sees you combining ingredients and chucking them at your customers as quickly as you can. It's standard restaurant play.

The customer says what they want, and then a timer pops up next to them. It starts rainbow hued, before moving through green, yellow, and red.

Serve them quickly and you'll get a decent tip. Take too long and they'll get grumpy. People need their food and drink, and if your squodgy hands are standing in the way of that, they're not going to thank you for it.

As you play, new ingredients will be added to your repertoire. Where to begin with you're chucking out one type of sushi roll with a pot of soy sauce, soon you've got four types of roll, three different condiments, pots of tea, and special Japanese custard to deal with.

You've got to build up your empire as well, adding new shops and making as much money as possible. Then you've got to buy better gear, upgrade your rolling hand, and make your restaurant look nice so people will stick around longer.

There's always something to do, whether it's fretting your way through a service, or figuring out which bit of your store needs some work so you can grab all the stars and rewards on offer.

You'll eat it or you'll get out

Meshi Quest isn't going to change your mind about cooking sims, but it is one of the best examples of the genre I've seen in a good long while.

The free to play system isn't egregious, and the sheer panic that piles up as your restaurant starts filling up is pretty darn brilliant. When you don't get the best score, you'll want to jump back in and try again.

And that's sort of the best thing I can say about Meshi Quest. It makes you keep playing, even when things are going wrong. And that's a pretty special quality for a game to have.

Meshi Quest: Five-star Kitchen review - A frantic and entertaining cooking sim

A panic-inducing, brilliantly well put together cooking simulator
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.