If you’re at all interested in the food scene and chefs, you’ve probably heard of Iron Chef. Battle Chef Brigade is an action RPG and puzzle game with Iron Chef-style battles. And I loved what I played at PAX West.
While I was able to discern the cooking part of the game from the title, I was pleasantly surprised by the similarity to Iron Chef. If you’re not familiar with Iron Chef, here’s the scoop. This competition, which got its start in Japan, featured a “chairman” who would select a “secret ingredient” and two chefs would need to create multiple courses that all included the ingredient. The food would be judged by a panel of three or four people, and then a winner would be chosen.
The battle I played in Battle Chef Brigade included a judge and a “chairman”-like character. The big difference was that I need to go and gather the ingredients myself. This brings in the brawler type gameplay. You have to attack various plants and animals to collect ingredients to stock your pantry. Then you can combine those ingredients into a pot and cook them. The cooking part is a Tetris-style puzzle game where you’re trying to match up three of the same type of orbs by dropping and rotating them in groups of four. Each ingredient has a drop pattern that you can see before you add it. Careful attention to these can give you the best shot at getting a good dish.
The combination of gameplay elements and the similarity to Iron Chef have me very impressed. I’m very much looking forward to its release, which is scheduled later this year on PC.
