by Tim Peters

Created on: July 23, 2008   Last Updated: August 03, 2008

Ever wanted to cook food for an angry Scotsman? Now's your chance! Hell's Kitchen by Ludia attempts to recreate the Fox hit reality series by putting you in the role of assistant manager to Chef Gordon Ramsay, the most demanding taskmaster since Grand Inquisitor Torquemada. Unfortunately, the game doesn't match the show in creating a grueling pressure cooker and will only please the most die-hard Hell's Kitchen fans.

You double as head waiter and executive chef in the game, directing the waiter and an invisible team of chefs. Your goal is to please Chef Ramsay (who watches your every move in the game) by serving great food as quickly as possible. Clicking on a part of the restaurant will immediately whisk your sole waiter to that area, where he will automatically do whatever is needed from serving guests to cleaning tables. Kitchen management requires similar pointing and clicking. The faster you cook all the dishes without letting them sit anywhere for too long, the better you do.

The problem is, once you develop a good system (such as paying attention to the big digital timers on the screen) the game turns into a monotonous session of pointing and clicking with no reward other than Chef Ramsay being nice, which isn't all that interesting. Worse, the emphasis on the whole restaurant takes away from the best part of Hell's Kitchen: The kitchen itself. There are levels that focus solely on the kitchen, which are the best of the whole game, but these are few and far between.

The game also suffers from major flaws in the audio department. The existing sound effects are okay, but the restaurant is otherwise deathly quiet. Where's the murmur of the guests or the clamor of the kitchen? The music is also bad, with one decent track at the menus and one mediocre bass-driven instrumental track for the levels stretched over the whole game. Even Ramsay's virtual presence takes a hit from the weak production values. His insults are kind of fun to listen to at first, but they don't seem nearly as threatening after you've heard them for the hundredth time.

Hell's Kitchen does manage to get a few things right. Its menus looks great. Chef Ramsay is rendered well, and it's worth it to completely botch a level just to see him bark at you. At the beginning of each level, you get a look at a different recipe from the series, which you can even print out, though this gimmick gets old in a hurry. The flaming meter representing Chef Ramsay's wrath is kind of funny to watch. But any true Hell's Kitchen fan would tell you that despite its redeeming qualities, Gordon Ramsay would toss this game out, drive the developers out of the studio, and shut it down. With only the barest minimum keeping this game from being a total disaster, it gets a 2 out of 5.

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