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Cake Mania 2
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Graphics & Sound:
Everybody's favorite cake-making extravaganza is back and all new with Cake Mania 2. This go round, Jill Evans will have choices to make that will determine where she goes to set up shop. The locales she visits are quite varied and pleasant to look at and include a trendy rooftop bakery, an underwater aquarium, the Moon, the future, Antarctica and even a movie studio in Tokyo, Japan!
Each area has its own look and feel, with background music and effects in kind. When Jill is baking up a storm in Antarctica, she'll hear icy winds as the customers enter, with crystalline-sounding music in the background. The underwater area lends quieter, subtler tones as you hear the gurgling and bubbling of water in the background. In the future, everything looks and sounds ultra-modern, complete with weird gadgetry on the tables in the background and a skyscraper that looks as though Lando Calrissian might pony up to the counter at any moment.
Once again, customers are wacky and varied, only this time, it appears that far more time and effort went into fleshing these guys out. You might have screaming kids wearing odd floatation devices, penguins, aliens, government agents, Indian dignitaries, doctors, socialites, elderly women with cats or babies, scientists, explorers, movie stars, rock stars, roadies and groupies or agents and any combination thereof. I really liked how they wrapped the storyline around the different characters, changing it up depending on your location, but more on that later. |
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Gameplay:
Jill is a screaming success with Evans' Bakery, but she is bored. Two friends contact her, both needing her help. Risha is opening a posh, rooftop bakery called Tarts and wants Jill to help her turn it into an amazing success. Jack has opened an underwater aquarium amusement park and is in over his head and needs Jill to bail him out. Cake Mania 2 is all about choices, each choice allowing you to see a different part of the storyline. Do you choose to hang out with the rich and famous or help out a pal in distress? Save the world or go for the gold? If you opt for the rooftop bakery, you'll see customers like doctors and, of course, social-climbing women. Head to the aquarium and you'll see kids and penguins. At the Tokyo movie studio, you might see sumo wrestlers, annoying kids, movie stars and agents, and even sometimes Penguins and Aliens, who are actually just extras from the movie set dressed up in costumes. The list goes on and on depending on where you visit and the neat thing is that they change the story up, while utilizing the same customers over and over. In Antarctica, you might have scientists and explorers investigating the Penguin Flu, and these guys will also show up in the underwater aquarium area exposing some government plot. It's all pretty crazy, but there's plenty enough variety to keep you playing. I've beaten the game twice already, making different choices and I'm currently on my third run-through. It just doesn't get old, especially since you earn trophies with each successful completion of the game. Then you get to check our your trophies in Jill's chill-out room that pops up with the menu. There are six trophies to collect in all.
Cake Mania 2 has several new features that keep things fresh. With each new location that you visit, they mix it up by changing the location of your equipment in your kitchen, so it keeps you on your toes, at least until you get in the groove of everything's new spot. It may seem like a little thing, but once you have gone through an entire "year" at that locale, you have a rhythm going that gets completely blown to hell when your ovens are now where your frosters used to be. I mean this in a good way, though, because it ups the challenge.
Another new feature that will throw a kink in your works are the sumo wrestlers with their super appetites. They pop up in your line, order a cake, eat the cake upon receiving it and then want another menu. While this may not seem like a big deal, what happens is instead of that sumo wrestler leaving the shop and the line moving forward as it did in past games, he'll stay right there so you can get customers out of order if you aren't careful. It's hard to keep your head, but I find pausing the game for a few seconds allows me to get my bearings once again. |
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Difficulty:
Cake Mania 2 is at just the right level of difficulty. Previous iterations have been considerably harder, but personally, I like to beat a game. There's that feeling of accomplishment when you complete a game and Cake Mania 2 allows you to do that. Consequently, it makes you want to go back and play through again, changing up your choices, so it adds much more gameplay. I applaud the developers for deciding to go this way as it really injected much more fun into the whole experience.
Don't take those statements to mean that you will breeze right through. The game has it's tough times for sure, but they are ramped up in such a way that the player has time to get accustomed to the new features and situations being thrown at them.
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Game Mechanics:
As in past versions of Cake Mania, Cake Mania 2 is all about pleasing customers and baking cakes. Each location is based upon a year's time, with one level being one month. There's a Baker Goal that Jill must meet to progress to the next level and month. You'll meet your goal by not screwing up too many orders and serving customers quickly enough so that they don't leave in disgust. Even when things got really hectic, I rarely found I had many customers leaving. In fact, on almost every level, I found myself reaching Superstar Goal, which is a few hundred dollars higher than the standard Baker Goal. Again, that sense of success is nice, plus the extra money is always helpful in hooking up your kitchen with the latest in baking gadgetry.
You can outfit your kitchen with up to three ovens, each with three levels of superfastness, up to three frosters, again with three speed levels, then you can select up to eight different cake toppers on two decorating stations, each one adding a tidy sum to the cost of a cake. Once you have purchased all four toppers on a station, you can purchase speed upgrades, and eventually, a decorating station that frosts, then tops. You can buy a TV to keep your customers happy while they wait and a cookie baking machine to have free cookies to pass out when people start getting mad.
As in past games, certain customer types like certain TV stations, of which there are four: A news station, a nature station, a chick station and a sci-fi station. Business types like the news, aliens and scientists like the sci-fi, explorers and penguins like the nature channel and women, in general, like the silly, high-energy dancing shows on the women's channel. However, the female Indian dignitaries get angry when you turn the women's channel on, so I gathered they were too smart to enjoy this. I really thought this was cool, an added level of depth.
All in all, Cake Mania 2 is the perfect action game. Sandlot Games has expanded this title with each and every time new version, but Cake Mania 2 is more evolved than anything else. Based on the trophies I've earned so far, I'm hoping Jill will do further time-traveling soon! Hey developers - how about Cake Mania 3: Bake to the Future! :) |
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-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP, 500 MHz Pentium 2 or better, 128 MB of RAM, DirectX 7 or above, 3D Video Card with 16MB Video RAM
Vista Minimum Requirements:
800 Mhz modern processor, 512 MB RAM, Graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable |
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Test System:
Sony VAIO laptop, 2GHz, 1GB Ram, integrated sound and video |
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