Sushi Tycoon

If you thought Gordon Ramsay was the toughest-talking kitchen task-master, you clearly haven't experienced work in a sushi restaurant. If Sushi Tycoon is anything to go by, sushi making is a complex art made more stressful by a one-mess-up-and-you're-out employee's contract and customers who make a loud puking sound when you don't give them enough rice.

That said, Sushi Tycoon makes being up to the elbows in raw fish far more fun than it sounds. Using a simple, easy to navigate interface, you approach a customer, take their order and then make it – by selecting the right type of sushi from ten different varieties, then adding the correct amount of rice and wasabi. The right sushi made well earns you a regular customer and a hefty tip. It also puts you closer to your ultimate goal to become a sushi master.

The game offers you two characters to choose from – Ken and Yumi. Which one you pick doesn't affect the game itself, but each follows a different little plot. They do have two things in common, though: aside from sharing a desire to perfect their sushi making, they also both fancy the pants off each other.

Having been promoted from floor mopper, you begin the game in rather gentle fashion with just five different types of sushi on the menu. "Don't put wasabi on the tomago," the chef warns ominously, although aside from remembering this things are quite straightforward.

Level 2, then, is where the challenge begins, with customers regularly ordering more than one dish at once. Once you reach the third level, you have a queue of customers each ordering three or four dishes at a time. And they tend to be impatient little blighters. Not to mention demanding – as well as barking orders at you, they also occasionally request a cup of green tea which has to be handed over quickly, by pressing down.

The different types of sushi are either selected by moving left, right, up and down, or by simply pressing the corresponding number on the keypad. To begin with, it's helpful to be able to move the cursor as those not blessed with photographic memory will doubtlessly struggle to remember the number of each dish.

Once you learn your takos from your tomagos, you can select sushi lightning fast, although it's actually possible to complete the game without learning where all the ingredients are found. That's because good memory isn't the skill needed to win, it's being able to stop a meter in exactly the right place, about 40 times per level.

You see, dishing out the right amounts of rice, then wasabi, is done on a meter. You select the right dish, then the meter appears with rice marked somewhere on the bar and wasabi at the end. You need to stop it correctly for both in order to serve up 100-rated, perfect sushi. And serving up one perfect dish after another is actually very satisfying.

Of course, for the later, more difficult dishes, the hand on the meter moves more rapidly – so quick, in fact, that you eventually need to stop it practically before it's started. With practice, this becomes second nature.

The serving up of sushi is accompanied by some effective sounds – a sort of vague kitchen-related din when you scroll through the menu and the happy (or sick) sound of your customers when you serve them their food.

Visually, the game is spot on, too. There are only a handful of customer faces, but in the heat of the food preparing, you're more concerned with what they want than their resemblance to someone who stormed out, red-faced, some 20 seconds ago.

Five levels in total have you climbing the corporate ladder from floor scrubber to head chef. Which, alas, is when the game events take a nosedive. In order to become the coveted sushi master, you're informed you must learn to make sushi with your eyes closed.

Exactly how you justify this crazy logic, or even when it would ever come in useful, we're not entirely sure. Particularly as fish oil is supposed to be good for your eyesight, so presumably there aren't many sushi masters who go blind.

Regardless, making sushi with your eyes closed effectively means the amount of rice needed for each dish isn't marked up on the meter and you need to take an educated guess as to the correct quantity. This is actually very difficult to judge – even after you've been making sushi for so long. And, as one mess up spells the end of the game and a return to the start, it's not a skill you're likely to master quickly.

Up until this point, Sushi Tycoon is quite endearing and very addictive. Constantly dishing up bigger orders makes you weary – and actually feels a bit like real work – but it's an entertaining time-passer and infinitely preferable to a spell working for Gordon Ramsay.