A few gamers (and reviewers) are going to knock titles like Restaurant Empire and The Partners for their adherence to the Sims interface and characterizations (right down to the non-language babbling). I disagree. Tycoon games are, by necessity these days, niche games. I don’t know how to run a law firm or a restaurant, but by God, I can work a Sims interface, and that makes things easier.

Anyway, Restaurant Empire is a fun game. The player is a budding young chef whose uncle was recently forced into retirement by some generic yet insidious restaurant consortium. Ol’ Unc never got around to selling the building that housed his restaurant or its name, so the player gets to step in (and thanks to a cash advance, decorate). The tutorial unfolds against this storyline, though it often steps back and lets the player explore.

A quick word about the tutorial: It doesn’t address some complaints the customers have, like low morale among employees or the fact that tables can be decorated with lights or flowers. That latter I found by accident, and good thing, because complaints about light were killing my reputation. I hope the former is touched on in some sort of manual, or the tutorial is changed to address it.

There’s also an Events notifier. Most often, this means a patron is offering the player ingredients on the cheap, though some levels involve, for instance, making a mob boss happy. I love in-game scripted events, and these made me happy.

Later levels allow the player to enter cooking competitions, set up like Iron Chef. I love Iron Chef. Chairman Kaga is my hero. Anyway, the player selects a chef and a dish, and during the actual competition can play minigames. These are timed sequence-the-numbers or hit-the-bull’s-eye type tasks; success gives the player’s chef a temporary bonus in skills like precision or concentration.

Restaurant Empire also features a Sandbox mode, allowing the player to run the restaurant without worrying about scenario objectives.

Graphics are nice and colorful, and very derivative of The Sims. So what? That doesn’t bother me in the least, and I doubt it’ll bother players. I especially liked the two-layer mouseovers, where a hovering cursor first prompts a generic description of the item or button, and after a second a more detailed description appears. Sound was incomplete in the beta, with the music a mere whisper even at its highest level. Customers’ voices and some other restaurant sounds were in place, though also quiet.

In short, I look forward to the final version of Restaurant Empire. Again, it’s a niche game, so it requires lots of patience from players outside the interest group (in this case, chefing and restaurant management). Don’t let that deter you – this is a solid game with plenty of enjoyable gameplay.