Diner Dash is one of those games that seem incredibly simple on the surface but gets more and more complex as you dive in deeper. The concept of Diner Dash is about as simple (and real) as you can get. You open your own restaurant and try to run it as best you can by waiting tables and providing quick customer service. Sounds fun right? Well it is a blast and incredibly addicting, for the most part.
Features
The main mode that you’ll spend most of your time in during this iteration of Diner Dash will be the career mode, simply titled “Flo’s Career”. The career starts you out in a crappy old diner where you only have a few tables. That quickly changes as you meet your goals for each day. Slowly you clean up your beat-up old diner and make it nice looking and even more functional as you add more things to make your guests happy.
Eventually you’ll tire of career mode and want to try something different out. Unfortunately there aren’t too many options, but the one option that will have you coming back for more (and the one that hooked me in the first place) is the “Endless Shift”. This mode, which is basically the game’s equivalent of a survival mode, throws you right in the middle of a shift that slowly sees more and more guests coming in. Your main goal is to seat and serve as many customers as you can before you lose all your stars for letting too many guests down. The mode is incredibly fun and will have you coming back again and again to try to beat your last hi-score.
Presentation
The graphics of this version of Diner Dash are very crisp and clear. It’s also the first time the series has seen a 3D perspective, which is really worth mentioning. Everything about the game looks nice and well-put together. The only problem with the 3D perspective is that it sometimes causes some depth-perception problems when going to certain spots throughout the restaurant. Other than that, there are really no problems with the overall presentation of this title.
Gameplay
This game is strange because it’s one of the few games that I wish would’ve remained simple. At first you start out just waiting on customers and trying to make them as happy as possible by providing fast service. Then the game throws in a few different types of customers once you get the hang of that, which is great from a pacing perspective. The seniors take their time and don’t tip as well and the restaurant reviewers usually do an effective job of stealing your attention away so you can look good in the next day’s paper. Where that falls short is that there should’ve been more varieties of customers. Young, old and press are not quite the full spectrum of patrons that a restaurant sees during the course of a shift.
When the game starts to lose it’s casual appeal and starts to feel more like a chore is when they introduce to you the color-based bonuses, which are more than bonuses since it’s a requirement to abide by these “bonus” rules in order to pass most levels after they are introduced. I almost wish there was a way to turn off the color matching requirements altogether, as they feel as though they should be reserved for the elites that are going for hi-scores, not the casual gamer trying to make his/her way through the career mode.
The Verdict
Diner Dash is a great game for someone to just pick up and play. While the career mode can be a little frustrating to progress, the Endless Shift is always great fun. The game shines in it’s simpler moments, but when it attempts to complicate the process of achieving hi-scores, it feels flat and overcomplicated.
The best thing I can tell you if you’re on the fence about this game is to go ahead and download the trial, which features the Endless Shift mode. Just remember that if you’re looking for a simple title to just to hook you in for an hour or so, the Endless Shift that is featured in the trial might be all you need. If you are looking for a simple title with a sharp difficulty curve as it quickly adds complexity in it’s formula, than you’ll definitely want to consider dropping the MS Points for Diner Dash.
——————————————————————————————–
Second Opinion by thewilleffect
——————————————————————————————–
5 achievement points just for starting the game up. Let’s hope you value every point you get as you won’t be seeing anymore until you become a wax on wax off master.
Losing herself to office work, Flo decides to open her own restaurant. The basic premise of the game is to serve your customers as best as you can. When they walk into the restaurant you are to maneuver Flo over to them until they are highlighted a light shade of purple, then usher them to an open table. Once they are there you’re to wait table for them as they look over the menu. After the menu is browsed you are to retrieve a ticket from that table then hand it off to the cook in the kitchen. The meal is prepared, you pickup the order then return it to the corresponding table to serve. When they’re done eating you are to give them their check. Next comes cleaning up the table depositing the dirty dishes to a container sitting outside of the kitchen. Rinse and repeat the steps above for each customer(s).
Further on though, you’ll begin to learn to chain together orders, dropping of checks, cleaning of tables, and so on. Unfortunately, as you progress throughout you’ll start to find that it’s really difficult to tell whether or not you’ve moved Flo close enough to an object for selection because of the light purple color used tends to blend in to well. Changing this color is not an option. Later on you’ll have more varied costumers which helps a little bit, but you’ll no doubt become frustrated as you loose customers due to an interface blunder time after time.
Through out Diner Dash you’ll get visited by restaurant critics. Satisfy these critics and your restaurant will get a star rating. Leave them unsatisfied and you’ll loose pivotal points that’ll go into making your restaurant better with more tables and amenities. Different types of customers will begin to appear in your restaurant as well, like Seniors. Then again, you’ll have to be wary of the color of each customer as there are bonuses to seating each in a manner that’s conducive to said bonus. That being said, the game does a terrible job of conveying what a good seating arrangement is for each color. Luck is what you’ll need to figure it out. At no point does the game hint at the different colored seating as later on if you don’t know or take advantage of that you’ll likely not make it to the specified goal and you’ll be dead in the water with untold amount of frustration.
All in all, Diner Dash comes off misconceiving the player immensely. You think your in for a fun little ride down the casual game lane, but instead you’ll get a game that’s as frantic and complex as just about anything out there. And while sure the gameplay is uber simple, be aware of what you’re getting into as its facade will have anyone fooled once you get pasted the first few challenges.
loading...
