Reviews for McDonald's videogame

[neogeo0823]

interesting...

pretty good game overall. i liked the subtle hints of greed and corruption hidden within it. but i have a few suggestions and questions.

first, the suggestions: please make it easier to see the warnings. instead of those little lights at the bottom, how about a beep and a small message or something? alot of the time, i wouldnt notice the dim blinking lights until a diseased cow had been slaughtered, or all my pasture went to dirt. also, those little "yell"s that the guys do when they have something to tell you are kinda annoying.

now my questions: first, is there any way to actually win this game?

it seemed that no matter what i did, whether i grew slowly, working at my own sweet pace up in output and production, or went and expanded as quick as i possibly could, there way no way to make everyone happy.

alot of the time, it would seem as though the game would just create problems for me. for example, i was doing fairly decently(about 20K cash) and i fired a worker(the first one i had to fire, ever) who was <i>still</i> spitting in the food after i both disiplined and rewarded him and suddenly i have the workers coalition or whatever jumping down my throat for tons of cash.

then in another attempt, i was doing well until i added a third cow pasture and suddenly people just wouldnt stop getting food poisoning. i tried everything, i corrupted the appropriate guy, ran the appropriate add and made sure that i wasnt using anything "unnatural" with my fodder or cows and i even checked the cows constantly for diseases while checking for other workers spitting in the food(somthing they seem to LOVE doing) and i got hit not once, but twice for food poisoning sanctions!

then, of course, theres the times when people would just stop coming into the restaurant. i dont know why they wouldnt come in. i had plenty of employment, i had two and even three adds running at once, i had plenty of food, and none of the standard "i hate mcdonalds" cheerleading squads were trying to get my VERY hard earned cash, but i still couldnt get enough customers to make a profit. of course, if i fire any of the help, i get sued by a band of workers. if i get rid of any of the cow pastures, or soy fields, i have no raw materials for production. if i stop running an add, then the two or three customers i get per month would go away to. if i stopped bribing the various people, then i would get sued by everyone around me.

i dont know, maybe thats the point of the game? that there is no winning it? is it possible that this whole thing is just some cruel fasade to show that your true feelings for mcdonalds are that it should inevitably go under? if not, then how the hell do they stay afloat in all this mess??

[Alfredus1]

Strategy Guide Pt 1 (Proven Success 100yr + 1 mil)

A lot of people are complaining that the game is impossible, so here is a brief guide, you obviously don't need an IQ of 190 to do well in the game. If you play it as a game without observing the profit and loss, you are most likely gonna bankrupt in a decade or two, the key is to run according to a set strategy and stick to it, and intervene only as required. You would have to monitor the business constantly and expect to fix things as they fail.

The production pipeline should be secured at all costs, the butchery and the fast food joints require much fewer interventions than the origin of the pipeline, however they all serve as good indicators of how to adjust your pipeline accordingly. To ensure stable supply, you should avoid having your products stocking up at any one place excessively. Try to manage your supplies so they come in small packages, in a constant and flowing manner.

1. Agriculture
-You don't really need to bribe the San Jose government or cut down rain forests, just don't slack off and exhaust the pasture fields. Remember, you only have 8 squares, if you exhaust one unit, you probably have to cut down forests or bribe the government.

-Soy Fields, use 3 soy fields at the start, use GMO, fill up the cistern, after that you don't really need 3 soy fields if you do the cattle rotation correctly, disable 1 field's GMO, sell it (if u don't disable it deducts 50 bucks off u monthly)

-Pasture, as I have mentioned earlier, rotation is the key, make two rows of 3 squares, and do them sequentially. Each field costs you 200 per month regardless of the cattle you raise in each field, so max it out to 3, it won't hurt. Remember each time you make a pasture immediately max out to 3, wait until the cattle grows 2-3 times, then make the next one, so you have 3 pastures of 3 cattle each, or 3 batches of 3 cattle of different sizes. Once you are close to exhausting a pasture, move it down to the next row. If you are aggressive, wait till fertility drops to 2x%, then sell it off, buy another pasture in the adjacent row. (sell +$2500, buy $5000)
The downside of having fertility too low, even you managed to salvage it from exhausting is that you get those environmental activists on your ass.

[Alfredus2]

Strategy Guide Pt2 (Proven Success 100yr + 1mil)

2. Butchery:
-At any one time, it is best to have 3 cows at the butchery, this way you don't get too crowded and have epidemic, just let the 3 batches of different sizes come in at different times, that way you have a constant supply in quantums, sometimes the butchery would be empty, don't worry, as long as you have sufficient supply of burgers in the fast food joints (about 200 burgers or so)

-Do not use animal flour, there will be madcow disease, do not use industrial waste, it makes cows sick, use hormones to shorten the delivery time of cows, so that cows don't stock up at the butchery and exhaust your cistern. As mentioned in the agricultural section, do not have the cattle all coming in one lot, remember the cistern has a limited size, if you use it excessively it drains out, if you consume at a rate lower than the soy inputs, it stays perpetual.

-Ignore the prompts of cistern full and no cows, they always happen. Just kill the sick cows (I didn't get madcows coz I didn't use animal flour).

3. Fast Food Joint:
-Minimal intervention required. Just go with the badge and discipline on the staff without the stupid grin, if all fails, fire and replace with new staff, just don't do it too often and only as required. Make sure that no unhappy staff is serving the customers, or they will be pissed off, and don't make them queue for too long (if u run outta burgers, there is probably something wrong with your production pipeline, consider restructuring the agricultural section as above).

4. Management:
-While I am not sure what is the max profit you could earn each month, the max monthly revenue I got is probably around 7-8k, thus you are always gonna bankrupt if you over expand and spend your money on useless propaganda and bribes monthly.

-Bribes: Bribe no one, you are not fooling anybody but yourself. The bribes won't help, the people are still gonna sue you anyway, sooner or later, if you run your business in a sensible way hopefully you won't need them and people won't get mad too often. Propaganda is the way to go instead of bribing, it brings in additional customers too.

-Marketing:
There are two pairs of marketing tools, advertisements (McDisney, Children) and propaganda (pyramid, 3rd World), have one in each pair turned on at any one time unless absolutely necessary (deserted fast food joint).

Advertisements:
Turn on McDisney, it brings excess profits and maximizes revenue. You can sometimes change it to Children want Maccas to cut costs and earn excess return when your business is already running well with 2k+ profits per month. Use both only when your fast food joint is deserted, otherwise it is too costly.

Propaganda:
You can choose not to use the food pyramid, but people will get fat, this way you get complaints from both the obesity association and the customers, so it's best to use it to avoid litigations. The beauty of turning it on is that you don't get sandwiches stocking up for nothing. If you have lots of excess sandwiches and insufficient burgers due to poorly secured production pipeline, activate the food pyramid and boost sandwich sales, then fix up your burger supplies. Switch off food pyramid and turn on 3rd world when anti-globalization hippies are really pissed off, then convert back afterwards.

X. Profits:
I usually have about 2-3k profits monthly and about 7-8k of revenue, (4-5k spendings) in that way, you make about 240k - 360k every decade, allowing a whopping 100k for litigations in the time frame (should be more than enough even if you do no bribing, unless you did absolutely poorly for some reason), and 3 times of cattle rotations [3 times x 3 fields x ($5000 - $2500)] = $22500,
thus your profit every decade should be still at least more than $100k and around $120k to $240k. More conservative estimate is about $150k to $160k per decade since sometimes the fast food joint is deserted and you lose some profits and takes a few months to fix it up. $150k x 50 yrs = $750k, and after a century hopefully you would end up somewhere around $1.5 mil.

[Kailja]

Wow...

Well... I like it a lot! Sadly I ran out of land to put cows and soy fields on... So now I'm stuck in the limbo that is pause until I figure out what on earth to do... I made it to 318750$ too... cry! Still nice game, I look forward to more works by you!

[Lizzie616]

Addictive

I love this game. It's so addictive, I love the sound, some how it never got annoying.. oh man it was just.. so much fun XD