‘Order Up!’

‘Order Up!’

(Zoo Games) for Wii

Genre: Action; Rating: E

Grade: C+

Cooking games have swarmed the Nintendo universe over the last couple of years. “Cooking Mama,” “Cake Mania,” “Diner Dash” and several more are eagerly trying to capture whatever market there is for culinary gaming. “Order Up!” is next in this line, and it has certainly done a good job of mining the highs and lows of its competition.

This game focuses more on the work of a short-order cook. You’ll work your way up from fast-food hell to the high-end restaurant du jour, and while the food won’t always look appetizing, you will enjoy the journey.

Starting at the bottom, at a low-end burger joint, is a solid introduction to the gameplay mechanics. You’ll learn the timing of slicing, carving, grating, mashing and frying all in quick succession, and you are judged on how you fared with each ingredient.

What makes the game feel fresh is the mixture of speed, accuracy and timing. It’s not just how well you prep the items but how quickly you can cook them and fill the nonstop orders that pile up.

Once you get the hang of it, you can start focusing more on getting the orders right for the customers. Success here means bigger tips, which allows you to upgrade your facilities, hire staff and buy more interesting ingredients. The visuals and audio are not outstanding, by any means, but they do a solid job of keeping you engaged.

The game itself doesn’t last very long, and while it does have some replay value, it would have benefited from more length and more interesting multiplayer modes. You may get enough enjoyment out of this game in a weekend rental — and hope for a more drawn-out sequel down the road.

‘Wonder World Amusement Park’

(Majesco) for Wii

Genre: Party; Rating: E

Grade: F

“Wonder World” is less an amusement park and more like the decrepit county fair, where everything is a rip-off and the vendors don’t even bother hiding the fact that they have rigged all the games.

A real amusement park scatters various games and gives you different activities on which you can throw away your money; here, in “Wonder World,” it’s just a waste of money from the start.

There are five areas in the park, and playing the games earns you tickets to unlock that area’s ride and also unlock other areas of the park.

A decent concept at first, until you reach the second and third areas and discover that the games are nearly all the same, just with different window dressing. Whack-a-Mole can be fun for a few minutes, but playing six or seven versions of it doesn’t make it more enjoyable just because the moles have been replaced with something else.

To add further insult to injury, the game has the visual appeal of the Yak Lady. Every object seems to have rounded, soft edges and soon you’ll think you are playing in the padded room of a mental institution. The audio is equally disastrous.

— Chris Campbell, Scripps Howard