#4 GAME REVIEW - Restaurant City

Ever ponder what you are going to have for your lunch or dinner? Pizza or Steak? Fruits or Ice Cream for dessert? Why not start your own restaurant at Restaurant City instead?

Restaurant City (RC) which is developed by Play Fish, is a game application in Face Book. The objective is to get to level 32(used to be 27) , achieves all awards and learn all the recipes in the menu. You can decorate your restaurant with the money you earn from selling 4 categories of food type - Starter, Main, Dessert and Drink.

















http://apps.facebook.com/restaurantcity/



















Welcome to Restaurant City


















Today's Free Ingredient


Ingredients are very precious in Restaurant City. You need ingredients to upgrade your recipe so that you can gain more Gourmet Points to level up. As long you log in once a day, you will receive 1 free ingredient and 1 food quiz which can be found in your mail box. You do not have to do the quiz immediately as it can be accumulated. I tend to gather about 7 quizzes and do it at one go.


RUBBISH EVERYWHERE























When you log into your restaurant daily, you can see some rubbish such as meat, banana and pizza lying around. In real life it tend to be a bad thing as it can cause your restaurant to be closed down. However in RC, you can gain 1 coin and 1 gourmet point for every rubbish you pick up. The bad thing is when you open your restaurant, some customers might turn away if they see rubbish lying around. To solve this, either you pick the rubbish yourself or hire a cleaner.



USER INTERFACE

















Your total coins are indicated on the top left side of the screen (See above). Coins are used to purchase ingredients or items to decorate your restaurant.

The middle portion shows your gourmet points and current level. Click on it and it tells you how much points are needed for advancement.

The top right side shows your restaurant popularity. The higher it is, the more frequent customers are going to patronize your restaurant. The maximum popularity is 50.

Normally if i am offline, i will use item such as a fish tank to block the door. The main reason is your workers get tired as time passes and it will result in decrease of your popularity as they cannot fulfill every customer's needs.

**TIP**
Before i log out, i will block my door and have an active cook and waitress so that i can receive money later when i log back in. In such way, i will receive money and my restaurant popularity does not drop.


















Making money even if i am away.


BE A BOSS, HIRE SOME EMPLOYEE


















Click Hire friends for more employee

A restaurant cannot be run by 1 person. You will need help from your friends to run this business. From the start of the game, you can only have 2 employees. As you gain more gourmet points and level up, you can expand your restaurant and increase the number of your employees.

















A boss need to dedicate tasks

Once you have a few employees, you can dedicate tasks to run your restaurant. You will need at least a chef and waiter to earn coins. If you dont like this employee, you may "sack" him. Give him a rest if he gets tired and he can replenish his energy or you may buy some food to increase his energy immediately (Apple gives 50 energy). You do not need cleaner until a later stage. Breakdown of the employee tasks is shown below:

2 employees: 1 Chef, 1 Waiter
3 employees: 2 Chef, 1 Waiter
4 employees: 3 Chef, 1 Waiter
5 employees: 3 Chef, 2 Waiter
6 employees: 4 Chef, 2 Waiter
7 employees: 4 Chef, 2 Waiter
8 employees: 4 Chef, 2 Waiter, 1 Cleaner


FOOD QUIZ

Let us attempt some quizzes. We must answer correctly in order to receive new ingredient. We can use the following website to help us. Let me show you an example.

http://restaurantcity-tips.blogspot.com/2009/04/restaurant-city-food-quiz-answers.html



















Step 1: Open 2 browsers and align them to fill up half the screen each. (See example above)
Step 2: Go to the Restaurant City Food Quiz Answer browser and press Control F (standby the search option for later use)


















Step 3: Go back to your Restaurant and Click Mail Box to access to the food quiz.



































Step 4: Get yourself ready to remember the key word of the quiz. Click on 1 of the quiz. You will see a countdown timer - 3,2,1 before the quiz is shown.



















Step 5: "Traditional Soy Sauce is?" The keyword here is Soy Sauce. Go to your Food Quiz Answer browser and key in Soy Sauce in the search box, then click next. You will see the answer appear. Immediately click back to your Restaurant browser and select the answer "Salty"


















Step 6: You have just receive your first prize ingredient through the food quiz. Continue to do the same thing for the rest of the quiz to receive the prize ingredient.



RECIPE

A restaurant without a good recipe cannot attract customers. The higher the level of your recipe, the more Gourmet Points you will receive per food sold. The maximum Gourmet Points per food sold is 2.8, which is at level 10.

















Click on Change Menu to select recipe to upgrade



















4 categorie - Starter, Main, Dessert and Drink.

Check out the ingredients you have and aim at 1 type of food per category. Pump that food to level 10 as soon as you can. You may trade your unwanted ingredient with your friends or spam for help using the loudspeaker.


















Use loudspeaker to let your friends know what you need



















2.8 Gourmet points per food sold.



TURN TO STREET FOR FRIENDS

Visiting friend for the first time gives you free ingredient. You can also see how they set up their restaurant and use the ideas on yours.


















Click on Street to find a friend you have not visited



















One of my course mate


















First time bonus for visiting a friend



ADDITIONAL BONUS COINS


















Shake trees to receive coins if you are lucky.



START BUSINESS

Once you are ready, just open your door and do business. You will earn gourmet points and 2 coins for every food. Dont get dishearted if your restaurant is not running smoothly as you expected. Give yourself some time and soon you will have a famous restaurant. Below is an overview movie of Restaurant City








FARM YOUR OWN INGREDIENT (New Feature)

Instead of trading or buying your own ingredient, why not grow your own? You may now plant your seed for 2000 coins and water them daily and you will receive it in 48 hours later of care. The steps to farm your own ingredient is shown below.


















Plant your seed at 2000 coin (Very cheap for ingredient)


















Water them with care and watch them grow



















You have your own farm and ready for harvest.



















Harvest your ingredient and use it to upgrade your receipe



COMMON ERRORS

When you try to log in or visiting your friends restaurant, error messages might pop up. This is due to the network where a lot of people try to access to RC. Try relog again later and it will be fine.
















































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Some tips
--------------

1.) Shake tree for more coins
2.) Visit new friends from the street to receive free ingredient
3.) Log in once a day to receive free ingredient and free food quiz
4.) Have a Chef and Waiter working before you log out
5.) Farm your own ingredient. It is cheaper this way
6.) Focus on gaining gourmet points from the start. Dont spend too much money on decorates.
7.) Get coins and gourmet points by clicking on the rubbish found in your restaurant
8.) Get coins and gourmet points by clicking on the rubbish found in your friends' restaurant


Good:
---------
.

• Be your own boss
• Easy to play and great satisfaction
  
• Sense of achievement - Obtaining recipe and levels
  
• You can farm your own ingredients instead of buying and trading
  
• Playing with people around the world
• Hire your friends as your employees
• Decorating your own restaurant
• Sending gifts to friends
  

Bad:
---------
.

• There is no indication which friend you have not yet visited from the street
  
• No much animation
  
• No story line
• No quests
  
• Hard to connect during night time
  
• Can cheat if players have 2 accounts
  

*****************************************************

In Summary
(None, Bad, poor, average, good, excellent)

Graphic: Good
Sound: Good (Music and munching of food)
Storyline: None
Animation: Poor
User Control: Good
Entertainment level: Good

#3 GAME REVIEW- BAT

.
If you love making money, having a team to vote for trophies, achievement with your name splashing across the server, this might just be the game for you.

Be A Tycoon or BAT is growing in number of players. Other than the Mafia War game found in Face book, BAT is one of the more popular games where people get together to make money and gain achievements.

To play this game, you need a create a Face book account. Then key in this address http://apps.facebook.com/beatycoon/ and enter the game and you reach the start up screen.


















Start Up Screen

You may click on Welcome! Quick Start and FAQ at the start up screen to learn this game. Occasionally i receive free surprise item from the creator of BAT. As shown above, i just have to click "Open Gift Box Now" to receive this mysterious gift. It will be stored in the "priceless" tab and would not counted as a slot used.

The main objective of this game is to get rich. You will be competing with many players all around the world and many of them started earlier than you. If you click on "my empire", you can see tycoon since (date) and you will know how long he has played BAT. Click on the link below to see a quick start of BAT.




We start BAT as a Millionaire with 1 million dollar to spend. Sound like a lot of money but the fact is everyone start this game with 1 million dollar. Now what do we do with 1 million dollar? We invest in items and make profit! I will show you how to make quick money.

















Click "buy" tab to invest your money


TIMER

Every 20 minutes, prices of items will be updated. You can see the timer on the top right side of the page (Price Update In). Under the Consumer tab, you will see gourmet restaurant and chopper shop. The price fluctuate between 1 million and 2 million. For example, gourmet restaurant is at 1 million now. Click "Buy" and click 1 as you can only buy 1 gourmet restaurant. with 1 million dollar. After you are done, wait for next update.

Notice that your net worth increases from 1 million to 2 million? This is because the value of your gourmet restaurant increases from 1 million to 2 million. Click on My Empire tab and sell your gourmet restaurant. Now click "Buy" to buy Chopper shop. This time you can buy 2 Chopper shop at 1 million each. Therefore by next update you should have 4 million net worth! Sound easy?

At this rate, you will earn millions or billions soon i.e 1 become 2 -> 4 -> 8 -> 16 -> 32 -> 64 -> 128 -> 256 -> 512 and so on. Wishful thinking. BAT only allows us to buy 5 items of the same kind and we have a maximum of 60 slots to fill our items. Plan your purchase carefully. Do not overflow your slots with rares (we cover that later) and in the end you have not many slots to buy items to make real decent profit!

Sooner or later, you have to explore other items to make profit. You will get hungrier to earn more money every update. Your rank (we cover that below later) will increase as you earn more money. 2 items that are similar with gourmet restaurant and chopper shop are found in Exotic tab - bugatti veyron and race horse.
















Tycoon Tracker

Tycoon Tracker is a very powerful and useful tool which BAT players use to assist them make the correct decision in buying or shorting - http://apps.facebook.com/tycoontracker . This application found in face book tells you what to buy or what to short. Short is just the opposite of buy - you will earn money when the item fall in price. Short option is only be available when you reach Oligarchs ranking.

Remember the top example? Now you can buy the item at 1 million while you short the other item at 2 million. At the next update, you will earn money from both side! However, Tycoon Tracker still has some bugs, thus it is better to seek mentors which i will cover below and learn from them.


TYCOON RANK

Tycoon ranking are updated every 4 hour. The ranking net worth are indicated below.
1. Millionaire ( 1,000,000 - 99,000,000)
2. Centurians ( 100,000,000 - 999,000,000)
3. Billionaires ( 1,000,000,000 - 49,999,000,000)
4. Oligarchs ( 50,000,000,000 - 999,999,000,000)
5. Trillionaires (1,000,000,000,000 - 49,999,999,000,000)
6. Titans ( 50,000,000,000,000 - 499,999,999,000,000)
7. Colossus (500,000,000,000,000 - 999,999,999,000,000)

-> About 40 Collossus at the moment

8. Quadrillionaire

-> 5 Quadrillionaire in the game only

9. Magnate

-> None at the moment

MENTOR / CARTEL

To play this game successfully and learn a lot quicker, i would recommend you to search for experience players and seek their advises. You may do so by joining a cartel.

A cartel is a group of parties, factions, or nations united in a common cause, mainly for communication and cornering markets to win cartel trophies (i will cover cornering markets later) .


















Currently, the top cartel is **Inspiration**. Their total networth is 16,756,000,595,000,000 with 91 members thus making them an average of 181,131,874,000,000 (Titan rank).
Remember when i mention there are 5 Quadrillionaire?
2 of them are in **Inspiration**!


















Currently there are 2 baby **Inspiration** Cartel, namely **Inspiration #2 **and ** Inspiration #3 **.

The objectives for these 2 baby cartel is to guide players who are clueless about this game and share with them tips and strategy to gain money fast. Once they reach to a certain networth, they can apply to join **Inspiration**.


















You are a celebrity for joining a cartel


















Tips from guru. You will never walk alone.


















Someone commented in the cartel forum

Each cartel has its own forum. Player can use this forum to communicate and share their tips and thoughts. Alternatively, you may wish to visit the lounge to communicate with everyone in the game. If a player post a comment after you have posted, you will receive a notification on the bottom right hand side. The owner of the cartel has the greatest access and he/she can give admin access to active players who will help him/her to manage the cartel. Members can post their questions in the forum and experience players can help them out. I have receive many tips such as the one above and i just follow them to make more money.

Notice a forum post call CTM? It stands for Cornering The Market. This event is one of the main attraction for BAT as it allows members to work together and achieve trophies and make more money.


TT / HRT /ST

















One day your name might flash above for everyone to see

Another attraction for this game is player has the opportunity to have their name flash across the globe and everyone playing can see it. This can be done when you hit either Top Tycoon, or
High Risk Tycoon or Super Tycoon.

To do this successfully, you need CEO points. BAT has just upgraded its application to a newer version. You can either earn 5 CEO points every few hours by visiting your empire, or you can receive gifts from players earn CEO points.


Gifts

















Gifts available to send to friends

You can click "Send Gifts" to give your friends surprise present. There are 3 main categories of gifts to choose from - tycoon money, shareholders or ceo points. If you do not know what your friends want, just send them the best CEO gift.


















Some of the gifts i receive from friends

There is a limit of 5 gifts that you can open each day. Choose the gifts which you need and open them. After opening 5 gifts, you need to wait for 24 hour before you can open another 5 more.


Rare / VIP items

















Are the rares really rare?

Personally, i do not collect rare as i find it waste of slots (only 60 slots max). However there are many collectors out there who would purchase rare at high price. Click "Rare Auctions" to purchase some rares if you like.


















So many VIP items to choose from

VIP items are one of my favorite. It gives you the flexibility to earn money (interests) while you are away for a holiday or when you are unable to play BAT often. To buy a VIP item, you need to obtain the required number of shareholders. Shareholders can be earn through gifts and you can receive gifts from other players.


Cornering The Market (CTM)

One of the important reason why i join a cartel is to vote and corner items and win more money. Every 40 hours, this team effort event will reset and everyone start with 20 votes. Every 4 hours, you need to log in to receive 10 votes. The maximum amount of votes 1 player can collect is 110. Grab as much votes as you can to corner the item successfully.



















Your CTM leader will assign you where to place your vote. Other cartel may vote on the same item as you. If your cartel total votes is more than what the other cartel voted, you will corner the item and win its bounty and trophy (if your cartel met the requirement below).

Bronze - Corner the item 1 time successfully.
Silver - Corner the item 10 times successfully.
Gold - Corner the item 50 times successfully.


Example of recent CTM result:

You earned $75,348,000,000 for Cornering XXX
You earned $85,461,000,000 for Cornering XXX
You earned $101,384,000,000 for Cornering XXX
You earned $96,037,000,000 for Cornering XXX
You earned $43,602,000,000 for Cornering XXX
You earned $115,283,000,000 for Cornering XXX
You earned $81,739,000,000 for Cornering XXX
You earned $76,155,000,000 for Cornering XXX
You earned $91,198,000,000 for Cornering XXX

That is $766,207,000,000 profit in 40 hours!

*****************************************************





*****************************************************

Some tips
--------------

1.) Use http://apps.facebook.com/tycoontracker/
2.) Join a cartel
3.) Find mentors
4.) Buy / Short items you are sure
5.) Send and receive gifts daily
6.) Use profit doubler when your items earn you decent reward
7.) You do not have to buy Loss Leveler if you buy the right items from the start
8.) Do not buy empire slots and tycoon vaults as they are a waste of money


Good:
---------
.

• Easy to play and great satisfaction
  
• Sense of achievement - Obtaining TT,HRT,ST and cornering the market
  
• Lounge and cartel forum for communication
  
• Playing with people around the world
  
• Have a feeling of what is stocks and shares
• You can play this as long you can get online and have a internet browser (Personally i saw people using IPhone to play too)
  
• Most players are helpful to help a newbie
  

Bad:
---------
.

• No sound effect
  
• No animation
  
• No story line
  
• Creators giving rares out too often
  
• Tycoon Tracker not 100% certain
  

*****************************************************

In Summary
(None, Bad, poor, average, good, excellent)

Graphic: Average (only pictures)
Sound: None
Storyline: None
Animation: None
User Control: Good
Entertainment level: Good

#2 Game Review

What is DOTA?

For those gamers out there, you would not find this 4 letters word - "DOTA" unfamiliar. In fact, i believe you have seen others play or even tried playing this game. What does DOTA mean?

















DOTA stands for "Defence Of The Ancients". You will need Warcraft 3 (Frozen Throne) installed first before you can play it.

The objective of DOTA is to destroy your opponent Ancient first. Ancients are located at both Sentinel (bottom left corner) and Scourge (top right corner). However, before you can do so, you need to level up and buy items and thus make your hero stronger. If you like interactive, RPG, short time span game, this is the game for you. An example of startup screen is shown above.


































There are 3 types of heroes to choose from - Strength, Agility and Intelligence. Personally i prefer agility hero, followed by Strength. Once you select your hero, you will appear at your base. Alternately, you may type - random if you want the computer to select a hero randomly for you.
You may wish to type -ma to see what hero your opponent chooses.

Sentinel Town and Ancient

Scourge Town and Ancient

To move your hero, simply click on the spot where you want to move. Usually, i press Control 1 so that my hero is blinded to key 1. I just need to press 1 and the screen will bring me back to my hero. Do take note of the short cut skill key so that you can use your skill quicker.

Now to spend some gold. During this grinding stage, it is better to have higher health point (HP) or items which can regenerate your HP faster. If your HP becomes 0, you will die and a resurrection timer will start. The higher your level is, the longer the resurrection timer is.

You may choose to buy some health ring or strength items to survive. If your hero has a skill which can absorb enemy's life, you may wish to buy some mana ring. You will lose gold and time if you die and this will hinder your leveling progress. Note that you have 1 skill point to spend. I will spend on either damaging skill or survival skill. Damaging skill is required so that you can last hit the enemy and claim the bounty. Your nickname will be splashed across the screen whenever you kill an opponent. Survival is the opposite. It allows you not to be killed by your opponent that easily and thus you will get experience and reach your first Ulti level 6 faster.

The sound of the horn indicates the start of the game. There are mainly 3 lanes to go - Top, Middle, Bottom. Players tend to use short form like Mid and Bot to represent Middle and Bottom respectively. It does not matter much which lane to choose from as long you do not charge in and die unnecessarily.

















You spot your first tower. To grind successfully requires you to last hit the creep so that you can get a random gold reward between 20-59 gold. More gold = more items. I will buy some speed movement boost item so that i can either escape or chase after a target. You may wish to type -ms to see your current speed movement.

Congratulations! You advance to level 2. For every level you increase, you will have an extra skill point to spend. The maximum level which you can attain is level 25. Do spend each skill point wisely and go for the kill if you can. When any player dies first, the person that last hit it will receive extra bonus and "First Blood" will be announced.

















You are on killing Spree and just destroyed your first tower!

Once you are at level 6, you have an option to choose the level 6 ultimate skill (we call it Ulti for short). You may choose to learn the Ulti at level 6, 11 and 16. In general, level 11 Ulti is stronger than level 6 while level 16 is the strongest among them. However, not all Ulti is useful from the start. If you find the Ulti useful, learn it and get to level 16 as fast as you can.

Occasionally, you may go into the forest to hunt for low-level neutral creeps or even stroll along the river and look for rune boost like regeneration, haste, double damage. When you are strong enough, you may even attempt to kill higher level neutral creeps at the mountain or even solo Roshan.


















Once you are strong enough, you can attempt to destroy your enemy's last tower.



















You over run your enemy and try to destroy their Ancient




















Ancient Destroy and you win




















Final score updates.



Click on the video below to see how pro plays.







*****************************************************
Some tips
----------

1.) Learn the art of backstabbing. Take them out by surprise
2.) Grab river rune bonus at all time.
3.) Do not solo a group of players - do not be a Rambo
4.) Carry a scroll of teleport. It may save your life or transport back to buy items faster.
5.) Always know where your enemies are- beware of their backstab.

Good:

• Only need keyboard (skills short cut key) and mouse (movement and direction) to play this game.
• Sense of achievement (Kill the enemy first, highest kills amount and win the game)
  
• Communication by typing instructions to your team mates.
  
• You can choose to play online using Garena program or battlenet.
• Allows you to play with your friends or players around the world online.
• You can play with AI to improve your skill.
  
• Many Heroes to choose from which allows you to try different ways of playing.
• Good sound effect
  

Bad:

• For beginner, other human players tend to call you noob.
  
• Simple animation
  
• Character unbalanced. Some character are way too strong.
  
• You need a good computer and graphics card to run this game smoothly
  
• Might get addicted and hook for hours.
  

What is NOOB? NOOB is "New, inexperienced person".

*****************************************************

In Summary
(Bad, poor, average, good, excellent)

Graphic: Good
Sound: Excellent
Storyline: Bad (None)
Animation: Good
User Control: Good
Entertainment level: Excellent (You can get addicted !!!)