Bravo Connects to Facebook with Top Chef Basic Training

Top Chef Basic Training is the latest social game designed to help promote a television show. Hosted on Bravo Network's Top Chef site, it uses Facebook Connect to get people making food and sharing the action back to Facebook friends. The last major Facebook Connect title of merit was the Science Channel’s quiz-app, Head Games late last year. Top Chef Basic Training, developed by Animax Entertainment, is also centered around the theme of its show. The game-play is rather dull, but the title a better job than most have so far with promotional social titles. Learning the game is simple enough, as the process of making a dish is broken up into three major sections which consist of gathering ingredients, preparation, and presentation. Each one can be accessed as a practice drill, but only when the player plays all three sequentially can they earn any real score or reward. Recipe Recall is the first of the three, and is basically a stylized game of memory. Here, users are given a dish containing random ingredients (cabbage, onion, cheese, etc.) and must remember the ones that appeared after they’ve been covered by clicking on a set of images below. As users get them correct, more and more ingredients will be added to the dish to be memorized with the objective being to score as many points as possible in 60 seconds. Once finished, it’s time for the second 60 second mini-game, Knife Skills. This segment requires a bit more twitch skill as the objective is to chop up as many of the ingredients as possible. Moving a knife back and forth, players try to time when to chop as the food slides back and forth on the screen at varying speeds. Eventually, more than one food product will appear at a time, and cutting both will earn bonus points (note, that there is only one try before the next food item appears). It’s moderately amusing, but rather tough to get used to. The knife is at an angle, so there is no real focal point for chopping, thus making accuracy difficult. The last game is the final preparation for the dish aptly called Presentation. It’s probably best described as a problem solving game, as users are presented a burger or sandwich of some sort and must pick the correct foods that comprise its layers. This includes the bun, meat, cheese, toppings, and so on, with extra layers added as the player moves along. Like the previous two, this game, as well, is timed at one minute. Once players finish an entire game, the points they earn in each drill will accumulate to produce a final score that will be posted within three leaderboards - All-Time, Weekly, and Monthly. These are, as one might expect, made up of all Facebook connected players, but the user can adjust it to only show friends. Beyond this, though, the only other social element is earnable medals and badges that can be posted to one’s feed. In truth, Top Chef Basic Training is not really all that much fun of a game. The different segments it is comprised of are just too simplistic and merely food variations of very dated game concepts. That said, it’s not really a title intended to garner millions of monthly users, but more a promotional piece for the Bravo show itself. To that end, the title does better than most as the game does, at least, look good -- good enough to make you hungry -- and is technically sound. Overall, it’s not a game that players are likely to come back to, although if it gets people paying more attention to the show, it will accomplish its purpose.

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Bravo Connects to Facebook with Top Chef Basic Training

Christopher Mack

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Christopher Mack