If you're of a certain age, you may remember the first Nintendo gaming products to hit Australian shores — the LCD-equipped Game & Watch series. Many hours of our youth was spent stealing gold from Octopi, putting out stupidly placed oil fires and keeping spiders and bees away from flowers, all in the name of a points counter that would invariably reset itself once you got good enough.
Why are we reminiscing about nearly 30-year-old primitive electronic games? Well, it's largely because there's not that much between those games and PlayFirst's range of Diner Dash games. They're all points-scoring games that use a basic puzzle mechanism surrounding rates of flow — in the case of Diner Dash, it's the patrons of a series of eateries.
All three games feature the same basic premise; you're an aspiring restaurateur (although this is a restaurant in the same sense that McDonald's is allegedly a restaurant) called Flo, who has to manage orders, waitress duties, table clearing and a touch of pattern matching. Get the sequences right — and deal with an ever-increasing flow of customers, all of whom are also coloured and will score extra points if matched to the right seat — and you'll score big bucks, which lead to higher levels, more chairs for seating extra patrons, and extra fripperies such as paint, pot plants and additional food preparation options such as a coffee machine. The later games see Flo helping out friends at themed restaurants, and then forced into waitress duties while on a holiday cruise. We knew there was a reason that we never took holiday cruises, but honestly didn't expect that it would be forced servitude.
While the visuals across the original, Diner Dash 2 and Flo On The Go vary, the basic gameplay mechanic remains quite constant. First you drag and drop customers to tables, and then click in sequence for Flo to take orders, queue orders, deliver food and clean up tables. Different customer types have different preferences — so families will need high chairs for babies, while the elderly will take forever to finish so you can clear away much needed tables — and the later games do complicate things with additional customer types and a few twists to the core gameplay that force you to think on your feet. Still, all three games do fit neatly into that category of "casual game" that hardcore gamers seem to particularly hate — which is probably why this review is at CNET.com.au, and not our more hard-core sister site GameSpot.com.au. We'd suggest no matter what you do, you run Diner Dash with the music permanently switched off, as it's truly horrible across all three versions. It's possible to run them in a small window mode (as long as the boss isn't watching), and the supplied versions will install and run on PC and Mac. Those whose work machines are locked down may enjoy the online, ad-supported version , although clearly we aren't encouraging you to waste precious work time, or anything of the sort.
It is worth mentioning that many of the upgrades in the sequels (there's also a fourth game, "Diner Dash: HomeTown Hero", although it's not part of this particular Mindscape AU$19.99 range) are relatively minor, and unless you're particularly gripped by the original, there's not much of a reason to pick up all three titles.
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