In this modern era of 80-hour RPGs or complex shooters, we tend to overlook the fun of the simpler games, like Space Invaders or Pac-Man, which let you sit down and put your skills to the test to try to get a high score. While there are certainly a fair number of titles that fall into this category that are extremely popular nowadays, they almost always tend to be puzzle games. I don't know a single person with a computer who hasn't lost at least a few hours of their lives to Peggle or Bejeweled, but it isn't quite the same thing.

Released in 2004 for the PC, Diner Dash was a popular modern take on the simple idea of a game where your goal is to have fun and earn a high score. Since its release, Diner Dash has been ported to mobile phones and handheld consoles, and it's even gotten a few sequels to boot. However, console gamers never got a chance to try the game, with Diner Dash's simple gameplay tending to make it a better fit for handhelds or PC downloads. Fortunately, with the advent of downloadable games on all three current-generation consoles, Diner Dash has finally found a way to make it into a console gamer's home.

Diner Dash is a basic game on the surface. Players are placed in control of Flo, a stockbroker-turned-waitress, and can guide her around the small diner where she works. Everything in the game is controlled using only the analog stick and a single button. The analog stick moves Flo around, and the action button activates whatever she's facing if it can be activated. Your primary goal in Diner Dash is to turn Flo's Diner into the most successful place in town. To do this, you have to serve customers quickly and efficiently. Do well enough and you'll earn tips; do poorly and your customers may only leave the minimum amount or even storm out in disgust. Every successful serving gives you points, and the overall goal is to earn as many points as possible.

However, it isn't quite as simple as it sounds. Serving customers is made up of five components: seating them, taking their order, serving their order, giving them a check and cleaning up their table. Your customers will come into your diner, and you must seat them at an available table. You can't just seat anyone anywhere, though, since people arrive in groups and nobody wants to be separated from his friends during a day out. You can only seat people at tables that have at least as many chairs as they have people in party, but the fun doesn't stop there. Each customer has a specific color assigned to him, and after a customer has eaten at your diner, the chair in which he was sitting changes to match the color of the customer. If a customer sits in a chair of the same color, you get a nice bonus. In order to get the highest possible score, players will have to rotate their customers before they seat them, trying to get as many color matches as possible. The more you get, the better a bonus. It's also important to note that customers don't like waiting to be seated. Wait too long, and a customer might just walk out.

Once your customers are seated, they'll begin looking over the menu. Different customers take different amounts of time with the menu; some pick quickly, while others may pore over the menu for ages. Once they've decided, the customer will raise his hand, at which point you have to dash Flo to the table to take the order. You must then deliver the order to the chef to get the food cooking, but there is another chance for multiple points here. Every time Flo repeats the same action multiple times in a row, she gets a bonus. Thus, taking two orders to the chef at once gives you twice the bonus, while taking three orders before you do anything else will give you three times the bonus. Flo only has two hands, though, and anything she can do, aside from seat a customer, takes up a hand. In order to start racking up bonuses, you have to complete the same task multiple times in a row in trips of two. The longer you take, the more likely it is that your customers will start to get annoyed, so it's a matter of balancing time and points.

The rest of Flo's experience plays out in a very similar way. When the customers' food is ready, you deliver it to them. When they're done eating, they'll ask for the check, and you'll take their dirty dishes to the sink. With the exception of the dishes, each of these activities is timed. The longer you take, the less happy the customer will be. Like taking orders, you'll get a bonus for completing the same task multiple times in a row, so it can sometimes be worthwhile to let a customer wait a little longer. Dishes have no real time limit, so you can let them sit on the tables for as long as you want, but as long as dishes are sitting on the table, you can't seat any new customers there.

As Diner Dash progresses, things will get more difficult for players. More tables will be added, and customers will arrive faster and faster and in greater numbers. Perhaps the most important change is that new kinds of customers will appear. You begin by serving young ladies, but as the game progresses, more customers are attracted to your diner, and each type of customer has specific quirks. Seniors, for example, are the easiest to take care of. They don't get angry easily and are willing to wait for quite a while, but they also take extremely long to eat and don't tip well. A businesswoman is the exact opposite, deciding quickly and paying big bucks, but lacking the time and patience to deal with a slow waitress. The one to really keep an eye out for is the restaurant critic, who is either your biggest ally or your biggest foe, depending on her dining experience. A happy critic will add an extra star to your restaurant at the end of her dining experience, which is quite important because a star serves as the game's life bar. Every time you have a customer leave angry, you lose a star. Lose them all, and you go out of business. If your critic is unimpressed, however, you'll lose a tremendous amount of points.

There are also a few additional twists to think about. You'll find that there are various upgrades that can be made to the diner, ranging from the simple, such as an improved oven that cooks food faster, to the more complex. For example, once you get a drink machine, you can start passing out drinks to waiting customers, and this improves their disposition when you're running behind. However, drinks take a while to respawn, and they must be hand-delivered like everything else in the game. Other upgrades have a more passive effect. Hiring an entertainer to stand near the entrance to your diner, for example, will cause customers to be more patient when waiting to be seated. A boombox can make those waiting for their food more willing to keep their cool. There are even new shoes you can get that make Flo faster and better at her job.

The game is divided into two modes. The first, Flo's Career, functions as the story mode and tutorial. You join Flo as she quits her stockbroker job and slowly turns a series of diners into successful franchises using nothing but her quick feet and expert waitressing skills. In story mode, each level introduces new gimmicks or situations for you to deal with and functions primarily as a tutorial for the other big mode, Endless Shift, which is a never-ending game of Diner Dash. Players have to try to keep the restaurant afloat as long as they can, with the game growing faster and more difficult with every passing shift. Every time Flo meets a milestone, she can upgrade part of her diner to make things easier for her by adding extra tables, improved ovens, drink machines or entertainment. The real meat of the game is in Endless Shift mode, where players will be encouraged to play again and again to obtain a high score. The game also supports multiplayer modes, where two players can work together to try to clear Endless Shift or compete against one another to try to reach a set number of points first.

Diner Dash isn't the most complex game in the world, but it's shockingly addictive. It sounds easy, but when you're rushing from table to table, trying to keep up with the ever-increasing tide of customers and orders, it can be overwhelming. The gameplay is easy to learn, and even the most casual gamers should have no trouble picking up the mechanics within a few minutes of playtime. Running through the "story mode" probably won't take most gamers very long, but the real fun comes once you start mastering the various mechanics and taking on Endless Shift to earn a high score. If you're a gamer who've never tried Diner Dash before or are a former addict looking for another chance to play, you'll most certainly want to give it a shot when it hits Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Wiiware later this year.

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