From Papa's Pizzeria to Papa's Burgeria to the latest time management game Papa's Taco Mia, Flipline Studios consistently produces great-looking games that walk a delicate line between challenging and straight-up entertaining. The newest in the growing series of restaurant sims puts you in the managing shoes of a taco joint. Take customer's orders, grill up the right kind of meat, stuff the tacos, add the toppings one by one, and present each order to the customer for their evaluation. Make neater tacos, rake in bigger tips, and outfit your restaurant with the best equipment available as you work your way to a taco-making master!
Papa's Taco Mia takes place in three main areas: the ordering floor, the grill station, and the building counter. As customers file in, you must manage your time spent between these locations, always keeping an eye on cooking meats or impatient customers while trying to keep quality at the maximum. Click on a customer to take his or her order, then head to the grill to get started. Each order is placed on a ticket that can be organized on the line at the top of the screen. Drag the ticket to the right to get a large view so you can see exactly what the customer wants on their taco!
To make the meats, you'll need to drag and drop each type onto the burners below. Meat needs to be flipped and sometimes chopped, each according to a circular timer around the pan. It's safe to leave meat alone for a bit while you take orders or add toppings in the build station, but if you overcook or forget to chop it at the right time, you'll end up with a poor grill score when it's time to collect your tips.
After the meat has been placed in the correct taco shell, take it to the build station for the real fun. Toppings must be placed in the order the customer requested them. Because as everyone knows, a taco just isn't a taco if the beans are above the onions! Click and drag each topping and gently spread it across the taco by swiping the mouse back and forth. The neater your work, the higher your score will be, so don't be afraid to take a little time to make sure your food is top-notch.
After all has been prepared, it's time to take the meal to the customer. Each person has particular preferences and will judge your work based on how quickly you took their order, how accurate you were on the grill, and how neatly you stacked the toppings. The higher your percentage in each area, the more cash you'll get as a tip. Tip money can be used in the in-game store to buy useful items like doorbells that alert you when new customers enter or timers that keep your apprised of the meat situation on the grill, even when you're away!
Analysis: The entire series of Papa's games are well-known for their high-quality visuals, well-balanced gameplay, and smart blend of speed and precision. Papa's Taco Mia doesn't change that formula too much, switching the type of food being prepared but keeping just about everything the same.
Unlike many time management or simulation games, Papa's Taco Mia doesn't move at a very fast pace. In fact, very little changes from one level to the next. New customers request new taco builds, more people stream in at a faster rate, and different meats are unlocked after a certain amount of time, but the gameplay remains largely the same, despite the upgrades that can be purchased in the shop. Don't step into this one expecting a fast-paced click-a-thon. Instead, look for some deep time management gaming with a side of tummy-grumbling food preparation.
The only real down side to Papa's Taco Mia is the sense of sameness fans of the series won't be able to shake. The food is different, the method of preparation is different, but so many aspects of the game are the same as Papa's Burgeria and Papa's Pizzeria that Taco Mia feels stale much more quickly than it should. The gameplay is still as well-tuned as ever, but when it comes down to it, a taco isn't all that different from a burger. Not in the browser gaming world, anyway!
Despite a hint of sameness, Papa's Taco Mia is a fantastic follow-up to Flipline Studio's previous restaurant simulation offerings. It's got strategy, it's got time management, it's got crazy customers with crazy taco orders, and it's got everything you'd need to stay addicted for hours on in!
Walkthrough Guide
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Papa's Taco Mia Tips and Tricks
There is NO PENALTY for discarding food, which isn't very realistic, but whatever, take advantage of it like so:
Go ahead and start one of each meat before taking the first order. If the person orders ground beef, leave the other ones cooking as your second order might order one of the other ones. If they order anything else, dump the ground beef since it takes the shortest amount of time.
When dealing with the final customer (who is the most picky), put two of their meat choice on the grill. Discard if you make a mistake in building.
In general, throw meat on the grill as much as you like, because you can always discard extra, and it might save you some time!
You will unlock all the upgrades long before you finish the game; I did it around rank 25 IIRC. The most useful upgrades:
The building score signs (only buy them as you unlock the different shells of course)
The gold knife and spatula
Waiting score items, from cheapest to more expensive
The doorbell
The extra burners
The meat alarms (you probably will be checking so often anyway that they aren't that useful)
The wearable items (you need them for achievements, but they don't recoup their purchase price, so they're for the later game)
Once you get up to having 8 customers, with a difficult closer customer at the end, do the first 4 customers as normal, but don't start on the 5th, 6th and 7th customer. Let the 8th customer's order cut in front of them; that will make sure he or she gets a 100 percent waiting score.
All customers except Jojo the food critic order the same thing every day. The day's closer customer rotates in order, starting with Robby, then Akari, and so on. Check your customer file so you know what meat the closer is going to order that day and can have it ready as soon as they order.
If the closer is going to be Jojo, you can't predict what he will order, so do one of each kind of meat. You'll get the hang of when you need to throw them on the grill for them to be ready when he orders; around the time the 5th customer comes out.
It's difficult to give tips for spreading toppings because a lot depends on your computer's speed and your mouse skills. Evenness is the key, and remember that the game will put the cup or bottle back when the correct amount is out. Each topping is different. Some toppings need to be dragged across the taco several times, others will barely make it across once. Rice is probably the most difficult to get down. Practice makes perfect. Avoid getting toppings outside the shell.
Don't try to do an entire customer at once; that is, don't do everything for number one, then do everything for number two, etc. You need to have several orders open, several people on the grill, etc, to be able to be efficient.
Organize your tickets when you are taking orders or presenting orders to customers, because you can't do anything else during that time. Organizing tickets at other times is a waste of time.
Don't be afraid to leave customers at the counter for a little while before taking their order. I've found I can wait as long as until the the next customer is coming in behind them and still get a 100 percent waiting score.
Posted by: joye
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May 23, 2011 4:58 PM