It makes sense that games involving lots of touch-screen motion are great fun. After all, they’re the clearest example of a gaming experience you simply can’t replicate on a console. Still, I would’ve thought that Fruit Ninja would be the height of food-slicing games. I’m glad I never made a bet on that, because Food Processing is every bit as addicting as any app game I’ve played.
Like Fruit Ninja, Food Processing throws a series of foods — like corn on the cob, green beans and egg plants — at you, and it’s your job to slice them up as fast as possible. Except, instead of throwing all of the food into the air a la Fruit Ninja, Food Processing brings the food down a conveyer belt that speeds up as the game goes on. Later in a game, it’s not uncommon to barely see what it is you’re slicing, thanks to a mixture of juice spraying the screen overlapping bonus-point notifications.
Food Processing also does away with the idea of bombs (after all, it’d be fairly easy to spot a bomb among a row of vegetables), and, instead, throws in some rotten veggies amidst your fresh ones. If you slice up the rotten vegetables, it’s game over. That’s pretty clever, and some of the rotten versions are much easier to spot than others. Rotten corn is obvious because the cob appears littered with spots. The rotten green beans have a much more subtle shade of brown that makes it tricky to differentiate from healthy beans.
Even the way you slice in Food Processing is fun. Each of the vegetables that comes down the conveyer belt requires a different slice, and you’re scored on how well you execute the slice. If you perform the slice perfectly, the game lets you know. The same goes for slices where you don’t quite hit the mark. If you flub a slice completely, like only slicing a pumpkin in half when it has to be quartered, you’ll receive a bad grade. Multiple low scores lead to the same fate as if you were to chop a rotten vegetable.
The added gameplay depth from the stylized slicing adds a new element to food-chopping games, as absurd as that might sound, but It’s a good thing the gameplay in Food Processing is as deep and enjoyable as it is, because this app is rather short on extras.
While there is an additional “Hell’s Kitchen” mode that puts more food on the conveyer belt and throws in a few game-changing power-ups, there’s not a whole lot in the way of customization to be found. Unlike Fruit Ninja, which boasts an entire screen of unlockable goodies, the only thing you can unlock or change in Food Processing is the style of conveyer belt.
Perhaps over time that will change. When Fruit Ninja first came out, it was relatively bare-bones as well. With time, and a lot of critical fanfare, the game expanded tremendously. It wouldn’t be a stretch to see the same thing happen with Food Processing. Both games share the same quality for providing strangely addicting forays into the food-chopping world. If you enjoyed Fruit Ninja even a little bit, Food Processing is an easy choice to download.
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