DS Review: Burger Island

A few years back, I remember the sudden slew of Diner Dash knock-off titles that came out for PCs. Some of them were good, and others sucked royally. But they were coming out in spades seemingly every other week (hmm...inspiration for Imagine? ;) Sorry, sorry...). Some of these better titles that continued to sell well began to be made for consoles and handhelds, and one of these titles was Burger Island.

Released by Destineer Games, I didn't think that I'd heard of this company before until I looked at their list of releases on ther website. They've actually put out a good number of games that I'm familiar with! The Full Metal Alchemist games, Candy Factory, Cate West: The Vanishing Files, Emergency! Disaster Rescue Squad, Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine, Dino Pets, just to name a few. As I've liked almost every one of these games when I've played them, I was expecting a good game, and this one didn't disappoint! (What a nice change from what the usual has been lately...)

The premise is this: You're a tourist visiting a tropical island somewhere or other (it's never disclosed where exactly, but I pretended it was some tiny island off of Hawaii), and you somehow end up washed up on the shores of this island in the middle of nowhere with no hope of recovery. Instead, you make friends with the locals and try to make the best of your current situation. So what better to do while stranded on a strange island than to open your own burger joint, am I right? (Yeah, okay. I don't understand the logic on that move either, but that's neither here nor there.)

You train to learn to cook burgers, fries, and milkshakes. Never together; they always have their own levels. As you level up through the game, you'll pick up newer, more complicated recipes for each of these. The trick is to keep up with the speed of the customers without making a single mistake. Mess one detail up, and they'll get mad and leave. (Harsh critics!) It's not too hard until you hit the final bend on the map - that's when they REALLY speed up to an insane level! (And of course, they never want any of the simpler recipes by that point.) It's challenging and a little bit maddening at times, but in a good way.

The one comment I have to make that confused me is the way they divided up the difficulty system on this game. They aren't labeled as such; they're labeled by the different sizes of fast food meals. Who would have ever figured that "kiddie sized" would mean the hardest difficulty level? It's just a little confusing. With how hard it was on that difficulty, I was almost leery of how hard the others would be....only to sail right through them and go "that's it?".

Overall, I'd highly recommend this game to just about anybody! I'm going to give it a big 8 out of 10 burgers.