Review: BurgerTime: World Tour

Posted by Eric G on December 4th, 2011 | 0 Comments | Tags: BurgerTime World Tour

I’m not going to write too much about BurgerTime. Chances are I’m making an ass out of myself trying to describe the inner workings of a game that everyone and his mother knows. But in the case that someone stumbles upon this review 30 years from now, he’ll have some idea of what I’m writing about. It’s an old arcade game where the main mechanic is to run over ingredients in order to complete a hamburger. There are platforms and ladders you must climb up and down in order to get to the parts of the whole, and different foods who chase you around and try to kill you. It’s an oldschool highscore affair whose simple rules make for some simple, fun, challenging gameplay. BurgerTime: World Tour takes many cues from its source, but in a few ways it strays down the wrong roads.

The first thing to notice about BurgerTime: World Tour is its brand new art style. Peter Pepper and enemies are all 3D models running around a 2D world. I mean around in the most rotational (yes, real word) sense of the word. Brad explained it thus: “It’s as if the levels were wrapped around a beer can.” Exactly. The gameplay remains similar to the original BurgerTime. Run over lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and buns in order to complete full burgers. Each level has a goal number of burgers to complete, and there are enough levels to make the game last for a few hours. However, things start getting stale around the time you get to the third globe.

The main problem I have with the game is its lack of explanation. It’s sometimes fun to figure out how to play a game on your own, and BurgerTime isn’t an overly complex game. However, there are some things that are just completely ignored or left out. You can add enemies to burger ingredients in order to make “specialty burgers.” These burgers, like “The Italiano” and “Southwestern Burger” give you more points and are tallied up at the end of each round. Recipes for what combination of enemies make what kind of burgers would have been nice. The online multiplayer is fun, but while you’re playing, you can’t tell your opponents’ progress. You don’t know where you stand until either you win or the game ends by someone else winning. The race mode was my favorite, and let me tell you why.

BurgerTime: World Tour features some genuinely challenging yet fun platforming elements. While racing with Curtis and Chris, I was having a blast falling into surprise spikes and jetpacking about to achieve new heights and progress. There were times when I felt like I was playing Mega Man, especially during the stretches of swinging platforms. The bosses are okay. You have to dodge attacks while making a burger which messes up a machine or gives the boss indigestion or angers a gigantic metal godzilla. Level names are a stretch for humor in most cases. “Martin Burger King Jr. Street” and “Bury My Burger at Wounded Knee” are two of many unfunny names that stuck out to me. Now that I think of it, the whole aesthetic of the game is childish. That’s not a bad thing, really, but I didn’t find the speechless cinematics entertaining. Also, the graphical style looks a lot worse up close than it does while you’re playing the game.

BurgerTime: World Tour is a fun bite of retro gaming with a couple of tasty garnishes thrown in here and there. The music is great, if a bit repetitive, with some wailing saxophone riffs that made me forget about custom soundtrack support. The novel platforming ideas are sometimes marred by cheap deaths and unpolished movements, but the punishing nature of it is actually entertaining. I wish the game put a bigger emphasis on scoring points, but I can’t fault it for putting burger-making front and center. If you loved BurgerTime back in the day, you’ll acclimate comfortably to the changes made in World Tour. World Tour brings BurgerTime to the next generation in decent fashion. It’s not quite the tasty burger I had hoped for, but it’s certainly enough to hold you over if you’re hungry for an old-school arcade snack.

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here. This review is for the PlayStation 3 version of the game.