The iPad verdict

Up until April I had always played Restaurant Story on a third generation iPod Touch, which I've owned for a very long time in Apple's world! But then I bought myself a second generation iPad Mini and have played the game via this shiny new device for the last few months.

So what's the verdict? How superior is the iPad compared to the iPod? Well, the obvious difference between the two is the screen size. With the iPad I can see much more of my place at once than on the iPod, and without having to zoom out substantially. This is great because it means less scrolling around is needed to search for tips around my diner.

However there are teething issues. The default level of zoom on the iPad is far too much. So much so in fact that a lot of content is grainy due to being too enlarged.

It has become automatic for me to give the screen a pinch to zoom out a little to what is a much more playable level of zoom, although it would be nice to be able to not do this at all (how lazy can you be?!)

Even before my routine zooming out, there's a noticeable difference between the devices. And that comes from the loading time. Indeed the period of waiting for anything to load is much less on the iPad than the iPod, although it is most noticeable with the initial loading of the app. This has been a godsend to me - sometimes there's only time to check-in quickly, and the iPad allows that much more smoothly. The faster engine on the iPad has really opened my eyes to how slow my iPod is, and not just with regards to Restaurant Story. It is now a real pain to run anything on the iPod, but I guess that's what you get when you refuse to upgrade from the third generation!

So what about once we get beyond the initial load and the regimental zooming out? I wouldn't say there's a whole lot that's different between the two, barring the already discussed increased speed on the iPad. One feature that really took me by surprise at first was the ability to play on the iPad with the tablet held vertically. This is something which isn't possible on the iPod.

Vertical gameplay on iPad

It's not the angle the game was designed for of course, but it is handy to still be able to play when you've been holding the iPad vertically for something prior to launching Restaurant Story (yet more laziness then!)

There are a few points to be made regarding the menus. The first couple are actually a negative for the iPad - I find it strange that the menus (the main menu, goal windows, recipe lists etc.) are all exactly the same size on both devices despite the differing screen sizes. The menus on the iPad should really be scaled up as they look diminutive with the large amount of the background still showing.

The second gripe falls with the market. Why does the iPad not make use of the full width?

Market as shown on iPad

Once again the market is lifted straight from the iPod version, meaning we get the ugly gaps on either side. It would be much tidier and efficient to have the market stretching across the full width of the screen, thus allowing more content to be displayed on each page.

Despite the flaws of the iPad in the menu department, it does have a card up its sleeve. When setting off a number of the same dish on appliances, the iPad always holds the position in the recipe list between preparing each recipe. The same cannot be said of the iPod, where more often than not you get thrown back to the start of the recipe list every time, sometimes resulting in a lot of scrolling. I have read suggestions that this reverting to the start is caused by the direction the appliances are facing in, but I'm not so sure. Regardless, it's not an issue which appears on the iPad.

And finally, the higher resolution of screenshots on the iPad is very pleasing when it comes to blogging! At times in the past my posted screenshots have been somewhat distorted, particularly with images of recipes. But there's no such problem now, and that suits the perfectionist in me!

So all in all the iPad does provide the better experience of the game, although it should be stated that many of the points I've made above are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. I definitely wouldn't recommend upgrading to an iPad from an iPod Touch purely for optimising your enjoyment of Restaurant Story (honestly, I didn't!) but it is certainly a variable to consider in any such decision.