Title: Diner Dash

Release Date: 18th November 2009

Genre: Casual

Platform: Xbox Live Arcade

Developer/Publisher: Backbone Entertainment/Hudson Entertainment INC

Storyline

Guide Flo while she masters her restaurant career. In “Story Mode” you aid Flo through four stages to complete her restaurant empire. Help her gain stars throughout the game by impressing critics and serving up food and drinks to varied customers. You are responsible for seating customers, taking their orders, serving them their food and and clearing away after them; whilst ensuring they are happy before they leave. Each new group of customers come along with their different demands and their varied likes and dislikes. Progress through the game and earn more money to see your restaurant improve and grow.

Gameplay

This game has been available on PC for many years and is available in quite a few episodes. I have personally spent way too many hours playing this game and so was rather excited when my favourite game was suddenly available on my favourite console! I had no idea how well it would work and I have to say I have been very impressed.

There are different modes to try out. In singleplayer mode you can play story or endless shift. Story mode guides you through lots of levels which increase in difficulty as you progess. You have two money based goals to meet the first is the initial goal to be able to continue to the next level and the second is expert which is fairly easy to achieve in the early stages but increasingly more difficult as you get to the higher levels.

The game is fairly basic and, although the difficulty does increase the general gameplay, stays the same throughout, however there are some ways in which you have to change the way you play to be able to achieve your set goals. In endless shift mode you play the game at a higher pace and you progress by meeting monetary goals and gaining upgrades. The upgrades you choose will depict on how long you survive in this mode so pic them carefully.

In multiplayer mode there are various games to play. You can choose between tip wars where you and another player fight it out to seat, serve and clear up after each customer to gain the tips. You can play head to head which is fairly self-explanatory and (my personal favourite) which is team battles which a friend and I managed to master by ignoring our personal scores in favor of getting a higher team score which we did by concentrating on having specific jobs, for example I was in charge of taking orders and serving while she concentrated on seating people and clearing away.

By adding multiplayer and co-op play it completely rejuvenates a classic casual game and makes it more addictive than ever before. Generally the game is easy to navigate and is easier than using a mouse and keyboard. It is very responsive and everything seems to flow easier than on the PC.

Graphics

The graphics for this game are good. I was pleasantly surprised and personally think it is much better than the graphics on the PC. Everything is clearer and more defined and makes it easier to play. I have played this using both HD and without and of course HD is better but to be honest it works just as well without. All in all it is a bright cheerful game that is of course basic but clear.

Audio

The audio it is repetitive and can be annoying, especially for anyone else in the room who is not actually playing the game. In fact, I lost count of how many times I was asked to turn the volume off. This is not to say that it is bad but more that it is similar to any other casual arcade game and so the audio does not stand out as anything special. After playing with the audio on I soon turned it off and put some music on instead as playing without the game audio does not take anything away from the game’s playability.