An "A" for Effort, I suppose
We cycled this game through our inventory specifically to try it out and see if it was anything like the Diner Dash series.
This is one of those games that you buy, beat in three days, sell immediately afterwards and NEVER, EVER think about it again. Cake Mania: Baker's Challenge is a sad attempt at recreating the Diner Dash experience, however, there's a little to be said about the gameplay.
There are four modes of play; all of them similar to each other. There is Cake Mania, where the object of the game is to help your grandparents buy back the deed to their restaurant. Then there's Back to the Bakery which is sort of like a continuation to Cake Mania, where you have to work at remodeling your kitchen to win a contest where the prize is a cruise (for your grandparents). Custom Kitchen mode is where you can customize all elements of the kitchen and/or customers. Baker's Challenge is an onslaught of customers that you must serve in attempt to preserve all lives. When you run out of lives, you lose the game (boring... I went on for 30 minutes straight).
The first mode is "Cake Mania" which consists of 30-40 levels of the same, redundant processes. There are three elements in this mode: Time, Cash and Lives. You have to make sure that you serve all the customers in a timely fashion or you risk losing their business AND your money. Each customer is valued different (for example, Dracula is worth $125 if you lose him as a customer whereas the boy is only worth $75) so if you find yourself in a predicament, figure out which customer is worse to lose and serve the other instead. If you don't meet the "Baker's Challenge" of "Cake Mania" then you don't pass that specific level. The "Baker's Challenge" is a specific cash level that you must reach by selling however many cakes it takes to reach that level. Cash can then, in turn, be used to purchase upgrades or remodel your kitchen to better help you serve customers. And lives aren't all that important, but I'll go over them anyways. You receive 4 lives to start out. Each time you fail a level, you lose a life. This is a stupid element of the game, mainly because the game prompts you to save after EACH LEVEL so if you lose all you have to do is go back to your save and you'll have 4 lives again. Or, you can choose to lose a life and redo the level anyways. At any rate, "Cake Mania" involves serving all of your customers the right cake in a timely fashion. There are only three (possibly four) components of a cake: the cake, the icing, the decoration and any applicable second layer of cake. The actual gameplay is easy and rather boring. It's a simple process of: give the customer a menu, wait until he/she orders, make the cake in the oven, put the icing on it, put the decoration on it and that's it. There's nothing else involved in this mode of gameplay. You'll find yourself losing less than two lives in the entire 40 levels and yes, it is that easy.
The second mode of play is "Back to the Bakery" which is the same thing as the first mode, with a different objective and different types of customers.
The third mode of play is exactly the same as the first two with no objective and full customization.
The fourth mode is... well... just pass on it all together. It's not worth your time.
Cake Mania receives an "F" for effort, graphics (no cutscenes AT ALL), plot and gameplay. Do yourself a favor and don't buy this, ever.Read full review
