Act: Betty's Beer Bar [by Mystery Studio]

Game Review: Betty's Beer Bar
Release Date: October 2003
Developer: Mystery Studio
Genre: Action
System Requirements: 300 MHZ, Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, DirectX 5.0+, 32 mb ram (Mac version also available)
Players: 1
Price: $19.95
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Have you ever wanted to own a sheep, a dog, and a quaint little horse farm on Fiji? Well, alright, neither have I, but it seemed like a really good idea to Dave Lister of ‘Red Dwarf’ fame. Similar to Lister, the protagonist of this game, a curvy country girl named Betty, dreams of having her own bar on a warm and cozy island somewhere deep in the Caribbean. Although it may seem like an impossible fantasy, Mystery Studio shows us that everything is possible when you have a good business sense and you're willing to work hard and sacrifice a bit by saving your weekly wages.

Betty's big adventure starts in a shady small-town bar where she must perfect the art of beer tapping and bartending. Of course, she'll need a little help from you. If you're wondering what exactly your role will be, well, it sure doesn't have anything to do with accounting, developing financial strategies or bookkeeping. Betty's Beer Bar is a pretty simple arcade game, so you'll be controlling Betty as she serves her customers, trying to earn bigger tips by being fast and reliable, save enough money to move, apply for a better job, and eventually advance in her career enough to fulfill her dream.

Luckily for you, the customer cast is not particularly demanding and includes a beer-loving nun, a bear, and a Santa Claus impersonator among others. All you have to do to keep them satisfied is fill their orders in a reasonable amount of time, make sure that the mugs are clean for a bigger tip, and check whether they have, perhaps, drunk a beer or two too many, in which case you'll have to sober them up with a fresh cup of coffee. As we all know, intoxicated customers have better things to do than worry about paying the tab. To aid Betty in her efforts, there are temporary power-ups you can collect during the game, such as the Soap Hands, which makes all the mugs she touches squeaky clean, the Coffee Pills, which eliminate the possibility of customers getting drunk, and the Time Stop, which creates a temporal disturbance that enables you to move much faster than the world around you.

Not counting the very short tutorial, the game features three play modes to choose from, a Story mode where you follow Betty's rise to success, the Free Play mode which, doesn’t seem to have much purpose other than as a practice mode since there are no goals to meet, and finally the Time challenge. If you manage to accomplish a very high score in the Time Challenge mode, you can to post it on a web-based scoreboard, and compare it with other Betty's Beer Bar players to see how good you really are.

Graphics: 7/10
Betty's graphic assets are quite pleasing to look at - the characters are done in a style reminiscent of point-and-click adventure games, resembling a cross between Transport Tycoon's silly characters and higher-resolution versions of the original Maniac Mansion designs, only with a more hand-drawn look. Despite a few minor glitches, inconsistencies and somewhat wooden animations, they are reasonably well done for this style, though the rather sterile background art would certainly benefit from a more "cartoonish" overhaul to blend better with the characters.

Sound: 6/10
Each level in Betty's Beer Bar has its own distinct musical theme - the ‘bar’ has a somewhat generic "game tune" with funky beats, the ‘disco’, as its name implies, features a techno tune full of thumping bass sounds, the ‘restaurant’ has a classical synthesizer piano theme and the ‘beach’ level is accompanied by easy-listening tropical sounds. Sadly, all of the themes except the first one are pretty dull and don't really follow the flow of the on-screen action, simply looping indefinitely until the level time limit expires. The 'restaurant' music, for example, sounds like an introduction to the actual theme, but it never gets the chance to develop into something more - it just keeps going on and on with people chattering in the background, similar the people you hear in Pizza Tycoon who are presumably asking themselves if the piano player has misplaced the rest of the sheet music pages.

The sound effects are nice because they acknowledge a specific action your character has done so you'll easily be able to recognize if Betty gave a beer mug to a customer when she is facing away from you or if you are perhaps momentarily looking away from the screen. A couple of times I even found myself trying to do Rez-style actions to try to synchronize the sound effects with the music beat.

Gameplay: 6/10
Fill mug. Bring mug to customer. Wait. Take mug. Rinse (literally) and repeat. Apart from an occasional "coffee break" which are few and far between and don't have much impact on your overall sales, this is what Betty's Beer Bar gameplay boils down to - a tedious click fest without much strategy or variety. The objects you interact with show a subtle highlight whenever you hover your mouse over them, so there's absolutely no confusion about where you should click and, as soon as you get the hang of it, you'll realize that the game basically plays like a nicer-looking version of whack-a-mole.

This type of gameplay might be what you're looking for, though, especially considering the casual nature of the game. It's extremely easy to get into and the controls are simple enough for pretty much everyone to understand if you use the mouse, the keyboard controls are rather clunky. Betty performs so much faster if you click on the objects and let her do her thing automatically instead of leading her with the arrow keys. It makes me wonder why the keyboard controls were even included as an option.

Value: 5/10
I managed to finish the whole game in less than an hour and a half and that there is very little replay value once you're done playing through. For the exact same $19.95 price tag, you could be getting Betty's recently released "sequel" - Wild West Wendy, or even game Lab's Diner Dash, both of which seem to offer quite a number of improvements to the gameplay depth (combo systems, variations in customer behavior, a more immersive storyline etc.), making this title feel a little obsolete in comparison.

Concept: 8/10
Unlike Midway's arcade classic - Tapper, Betty's Beer Bar doesn't have anything to do with beer manufacturers, licenses or advertising. The concept is pretty similar, although this game is much less reliant on ultra fast reflexes and has a bit more of a simulation feel to it. There are no real business simulation elements in it so the comic-book cut scenes feel somewhat slapped-on to the actual game. You do have to give the game credit for rekindling the interest in the forgotten ‘bartender arcade’ subgenre among indie game designers, offering hope that more of them will be coming along in the future.

Fun: 5/10
At first, the simplistic gameplay might be somewhat fun because it's very easy to get into, but after a few levels, it becomes boring as there are no new challenges or additional game elements introduced later on. Level variety doesn't exist at all - the difference between four main stages is purely cosmetic since you'll be repeating the exact same actions until the game is finished. Needless to say, after some time this inevitably starts to feel more like work than playing a game and, as opposed to actual work, it doesn't earn you a paycheck.

There is virtually no sense of accomplishment as you advance through the levels since it's so easy to guess how the story will unfold, and the game itself is almost impossible not to beat. Regardless of which difficulty setting you're playing on, you'll just click, click, click and click until you progress to the next stage. You simply can't lose. On medium difficulty, for example, I had to force myself to put down the mouse and just watch the screen for a while to see what happens when you don't meet your daily sales quota, as it would never have happened otherwise.

Overall: 5/10
Betty's Beer Bar is, as suggested by its design and distribution channels, a game made with the most casual of players in mind. This... well, shows. It doesn't mean that the game can't be fun for a while, but what it lacks is long-lasting appeal. If you are very easily amused and a cute blonde parading around on your screen in different waitress outfits as you click your way to success is enough to draw you to a game, you'll certainly love Betty's Beer Bar. Unfortunately, because of the severe lack of actual game content, even fans of the rapid-clicking gameplay this title offers should probably take a look at the sequel.

Added: June 14th 2005
Reviewer: Damjan Flegar
Score:
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