By Ned Jordan
Diner Dash has been around for a while on casual game sites on the internet,
but it has only now made its way onto Xbox Live Arcade. Diner Dash is a
time management game, and in this case the time that you're managing is that of
small restaurant owner and waitress, Flo. Each of the game's levels are
timed and represent the hours that your restaurant is open during the day.
Your goal is to serve all of your customers and to keep them happy with the
service. Happy customers tip well, but thoroughly disgruntled ones will
leave without paying. Each level has a goal to meet in terms of money
earned, and if you reach that goal you complete the level and unlock the next.
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A happy customer is one that you can move through your restaurant from line
to check without ignoring them for too long at each stage along the way.
To seat a party of customers, you move Flo to the line, highlight a group, press
a button, and then select an open table at which to seat them. When a
group is ready to order they will raise their hands and you'll need to take the
order to the kitchen. When an order is ready for pick up, you'll need to
take it from the kitchen to the table. Finally, when a group is ready for
their check you need to visit their table to collect the tab and tip, and then
clear the dishes so that the table is ready for the next group.
At first things are relatively easy, but as more tables are added, some
seating two, some seating four, and lines begin to form at the entrance, things
begin to get a little hectic. Flo only has two hands, and can only carry
any combination of two orders, plates, or dirty dishes, but the customers won't
give her any sympathy. Things become more complicated by different types
of customers that eat at different speeds, have different levels of patience,
and different philosophies on tipping. Customers are color-coded as well
and if you manage to seat a customer in a chair of the same color you'll receive
a bonus (I'm not sure why a customer would care that a seat matches his/her
clothes, but I'll take the bonus), You'll also unlock new items as you
play, such as a coffee maker that will let you serve coffee to customers to make
them happy. Things can get very hectic very quickly, and it takes more
than fast fingers to keep up.
Diner Dash won't be enjoyable for everyone - in fact, I can see some people
getting stressed out while playing. Personally, I found it enjoyable
enough because I like the way the game forces you to make quick decisions and
think on your feet. However, there are some frustrating aspects to the
game that prevented it from being as enjoyable as it could be. The biggest
issue by far is that the controls are not as tight as they need to be in a
time-focused game - perhaps things just didn't translate too well in moving a
PC-based Flash game to a console. Selecting a table can be an iffy
proposition on the fly, and its pretty frustrating when Flo runs past a tabled
without dropping off an order. Don't even try to seat a group by moving to
the line - it's very difficult to select a group out of the line and you'll
waste precious time fiddling with Flo's facing and position in an attempt to
select a group. You can use a trigger to seat the next party in line
automatically, but that doesn't help you if you have a table for two open and
the first group in line is a party of four. The other issues that I had
didn't impact the gameplay itself, but they were still a little annoying.
The levels are grouped together and there's no way to exit out of the game or
return to the menu between levels in a group short of using the Guide button to
exit to the dashboard.
Aside from the game's main mode there's an 'endless' mode in which the goal
is to survive as long as possible. More and more customers arrive and do
so faster and faster, and you just keep playing until enough groups get fed-up
and leave. Go for your high score and then compare it to those on the
leaderboards. There are multiplayer co-op and competitive modes available
online, but judging by the dearth of gamers looking for a game it seems that the
majority of people playing the game are doing so solo.
You can probably find Diner Dash in plenty of places online, and that's
probably where you should play it. The basic visuals and control issues
put it a cut below most other XBLA titles, so save your Microsoft points for
something else.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
65%. The game is fun enough at its core to have
made it very popular with the PC casual gamer crowd, but as an Xbox Live Arcade
title it just falls short.
