Movie Rush! HD Review

There’s a genre of gaming for iOS that takes minimum wage jobs, often food service, and glorifies them with a cartoony, fun game. I feel like I need to give the genre a name, so we’ll start with service simulation and if I think of something better as we go along I’ll use that. [or, we could use the more typical term: time management -- Ed.] Movie Rush! HD is a service simulation game that gives the player a job working the concession stand at a big movie debut.

Service simulators tend to be fast-paced games with the occasional unique element thrown in. For example, I recently played a free game called SushiGoRound! and its unique element was memory. There was a recipe book with the recipes for the sushi. In Movie Rush! HD, the unique element is condiments. Hot dogs could need ketchup or mustard and pretzels could need mustard. The gameplay of Movie Rush! includes dragging different food items onto a tray based on the orders of the customers and then dragging the tray to the customer.

I had two big problems with Movie Rush! HD: the responsiveness of the controls and the expectation of speed with the tough controls. The game would actually be quite good if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s incredibly hard to grab an item to put on the tray. Items are small, even for the iPad, and have a small area that actually counts as “grabbing” the item when they’re touched. I found myself

repeatedly re-dragging an item to the tray. In addition to this, I would go through whole levels with great speed, making only one or two mistakes, and I would still fail the level. The expectations to finish a level are way too high considering how tough it is to actually grab items. These very expectations could be more legitimate if the controls were as smooth as other games in this genre.

Overall, I like the theme and idea of the game, but the controls are lacking the polish to make the game as enjoyable as it could be. I’ll be keeping an eye out and hoping for an update that fixes the issue. An iPhone version is also available.
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