Playvue.com Editor Rating: 8.0
Plot
Diner Dash brings us the story of Flo, an office worker fed up with the monotonous and unchanging pressures of everyday life and work in the big city. She therefore throws everything out the window and runs off in search of something better to do with her life. Turns out that’s starting a chain of restaurants in suburban America.
We are taken right into her quest as a restaurant owner like Flo herself; an energetic and enthusiastic owner who fills all the roles, from hostess to server to bartender to busboy (luckily an overworked shadowy figure takes over cooking behind the counter).
Starting with your first dinner and ending with an exclusive surf and turf venue, we take care of all of Flo’s activities; seating your guests, handing out menus, handing out breadsticks, taking and delivering orders (not to mention cocktails), clearing tables, and seating the next guests. All this in search of money with which to improve their existing restaurants or even open a new one!
Navigation
Navigation is easy enough to learn on the first try; it’s point and click (click on a dirty table, she runs and cleans it, click on the table waiting for her food, she delivers it from the counter). This becomes quite challenging in later levels where you need to click on other activities while Flo executes the current one (the game creates a queue of activities that Flo will execute one by one until they are complete).
Easy to use
In terms of ease of use, this game is fantastic. I wasn’t surprised when I was able to pick it up fairly quickly, however, I was surprised when my grandmother was flying at a faster rate than I could muster. While it’s easy to get going, it requires a master’s touch to reach the highest scores at the end of levels where constant movement is a must. But this only adds to the gameplay and is a welcome change from contemporary games that are easy to complete without additional challenges.
gameplay
I found myself wanting to complete this game from the first time I played it; which would make me worry if the game would hold my interest a week or even a month later. However, these concerns are eased with the Endless Shift feature: an endless level of score building that “keeps them moving” and provides extras like super ovens, super fast tennis shoes, and a super 3000 podium to help you along the way. .
Full Version Features
The free trial includes unrestricted access and allows you 60 minutes of play; that just started me. The full version includes more than 40 game levels, 4 different chains, 5 different types of clients, two game modes (Career and Endless Shift) and high score tracking. At just 10 MB, it’s not a hard drive wrecker, nor will it clog up your dial-up line for long. And at $19.99 it’s not a wallet buster either: cheap enough to guarantee casual play all year long.
pros cons
Advantages:
- Attracts the rest of us (non-hardcore teen gamers)
- High replay gameplay
- Easy to use, navigate
Cons:
- No multiplayer support
- Small high-score competition (score post available on publisher’s website)
Bottom line
A Busy Restaurateur provides a nice change of pace to card and puzzle games for those of us who aren’t interested in shooting aliens, goblins, or terrorists for 12 hours straight. Definitely high repeat playability, even after getting past the racing part of the game. The low price and download size are a real bonus. It lacks competition and multiplayer support, however this only matters if you are interested in those things. One of my top 10 games of the year.
Publisher rating:
Storyline: 8
Ease of Use: 9
Playability: 7Overall: 8
Game specifications:
- Publisher: PlayFirst
- Full Version Price: $19.99
- Download: 10MB
- Windows 98/2000/Me/XP
- Processor: PIII 600MHz
- 128MB RAM
- Free hard disk space: 12MB
- graphics card
- sound card
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.