Have you ever been playing a game and thought to yourself that the developer just tried to do too many things at once? No one will think that about Taco Master because it doesn’t seem to go the extra mile in any regard. At its core, Taco Master is a time management / chaos management title in the vein of titles like Cooking Mama and Diner Dash except without all the extras or even basic elements. What the game does do, it does well. There’s just not a lot there. Your goal is to work your way up from being a small time nobody taco cook to become the next Rick Bayless. But even Rick Bayless will tell you that you need to do more than slap together tacos quickly to make it in the Mexican restaurant business.
Chillingo has implemented the most basic gameplay possible here. You tap and drag over the toritilla to start and then one by one add to your taco starting with meat and then condiments and then finally sliding the completed taco to the ticket for the completed order. That is literally the gameplay in its entirety. Things never evolve or really progress outside of orders coming in gradually faster and the ingredients changing. It’s a nice time killer, but without any mini-games or change in play, the boredom will come on fast.
The graphics and interface are about as basic as you can get on the iOS platform. This includes the very basic tutorial that rushes you through how to make the tacos and send out orders. The game doesn’t look bad, but you won’t like remember anything about it 5 minutes after you stop playing.
By now you can probably tell that this game was at best unimpressive. The mechanics in place are solid and nothing is broken, but Taco Master is just so barebones in design that it can’t be recommended. Maybe with the addition of a few mini-games or even something as simple as taco recipes thrown in as unlockables would have added something memorable, but considering the gameplay never actually evolves beyond – “tap tortilla, tap meat, tap condiments, tap ticket”, I can only say don’t tap purchase for Taco Master.
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Graphics |
6.0 |
Simple graphics get the job done. |
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Audio |
5.5 |
Bare-bones sound really shows that Chillingo wasn't focused on audio. |
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Single Player |
4.5 |
Moving to the right at a snail's pace and doing 1 of 2 attacks. That's it. |
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Multiplayer |
N/A |
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Replay |
4.0 |
The gameplay never evolves, so there's no reason to play again. |
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Overall |
4.5 |
It would have been nice to get some extras, but overall TM is lacking. |
