Capitalism has reached its peak. As corporations struggle to get that sweet sweet brand relatability, the results have gotten truly absurd. For example, here’s a review for KFC’s visual novel styled dating simulator.
Credit where credit is due. I must admire how the character artist managed to turn a wrinkly old man in a white suit into a fairly good-looking anime guy. Also, the soundtrack was surprisingly enjoyable, especially in the more sentimental scenes. Otherwise the game doesn’t have much to offer.
The plot isn’t that important but just to summarize your character is a bright culinary student who tries to seduce the class’ valedictorian, Colonel Sanders. Along with your stereotypical cast of tropes as your best friends and foes you compete in cooking challenges which are supervised by professor Sprinkles, who is a talking corgi. The choices you make in the game affect the endings, of which there are multiple. Choices are made by picking one of the presented dialogue options.
The worst part of the game was that the advertising was so blatant that it broke immersion. Yes, I am aware that the game was itself an advertisement but seen as I am reviewing it as a game it’s something that can’t be ignored. For example, every food that is complemented and praised in the game is an item from KFC’s menu. It wouldn’t even let you cook squid, and though it’s understandable, it could’ve at least let you fail at cooking it.
Furthermore, Colonel Sanders spends more time talking about his future restaurants than anything else. Though the game is marketed as a dating simulator there’s very minimal dating involved. It’s just a big tease baiting you to play until the end. Even in the “bad ending” Colonel Sanders says he’ll be your partner in life but not in business, which is supposed to be a bad thing. I doubt that anyone played this game wanting to start an enterprise of fast food restaurants. Of course, we all knew that it wouldn’t be very hot and steamy, but this was just needlessly tame and lazy.
The game had some lag, but nothing too major, considering I was playing on a few years old MacBook. It did bring some difficulty to the cooking challenges where if you didn’t choose the correct answer to a question before the timer ran out, it negatively affected your progress. I ended up getting the “bad ending” because of it.
As I am writing this review Wendy’s has just released their own game, a tabletop RPG called Feast of Legends. Boasting an impressive 97-page rulebook it has promise to rise well above this piece of mediocrity I’ve played. But if it’s similar in quality to this one we must all pray that these sort of advergames won’t become a trend. Again.
Would I recommend this as a game? No, if you have literally anything else to do. The game is available for free on Steam, so you could just check it out for the meme. As an advertisement though, I’d say it was highly effective as I live in a country where there isn’t even a KFC restaurant around and I can name at least five items from their menu. They got us good.
Release date: 24.9.2019
Developer: Psyop
Publisher: KFC
Genres: casual, indie, simulation
Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X
PEGI: –
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