Pizza Connection 2

The focus on pizzas in Software 2000's follow-up to a game no one has ever heard of is somewhat misleading. You start by opening a humble pizza parlour, hiring your staff and stocking up on ingredients, and quickly have to work your way towards a burgeoning pizza empire. Whether you go the cheap and cheerful Pizza Hut route or tread the higher class Ask Pizza road is up to you. What's less in doubt is that as you grow, you'll need to start taking a pro-active approach to eliminating your competition.

The food management business sim is actually just a means to an end, a way of getting from a low-rent version of SimCity to a low-rent version of Gangsters. Unfortunately, while the earlier stages of the game hint at a much larger underworld of crime, corruption and Soprano- style mob activity, by the time you've taken your first steps into the dark underbelly of society you quickly realise there's not that much to it.

Which is annoying, as with a touch more variety and a larger sense of scope Pizza Connection 2 would have been a tasty little number indeed. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with any of it, other than the fact that it's not going to retain your interest for too long. The pizza editor is quite fun (especially with some of the more unorthodox ingredients on offer -- snake topping, anyone?), and technically the whole game is very solid (despite a few odd translatory offerings here and there). But there's no sense of ambition. It's a stop-gap. Too limited in the long run. When placed next to the games industry's gourmet meals such as Black & White, Republic: The Revolution or any of the Sim series of titles, Pizza Connection 2 is little more than the disposable fast food it bases itself around.