Yawn... Another day, another Diner Dash knock-off. Sometimes, these type of games can work, as previously noted in earlier reviews of mine, but this one... I'm pretty much on the fence on.Once again, you'll be playing the part of a generic main character whose job is to run a generic food processing plant--I mean, you'll be running a candy factory. (I know. You're sooooo surprised by this, right?) You'll level up, buy bigger and better equipment for your factory, yadda yadda yadda...
What makes this game any different from all the rest? Well, for a start, it's a candy factory instead of the usual restaurant, which appeals to the inner child in most of us. (Even the diabetics.) You'll be working along a conveyor belt to fill customers' orders, sort them by color and type, and wrap them in decorative gift bags for extra money. It's all really self-explanatory if you've ever so much as played a single game from this genre before. The only difference is you have to arrange the candies in the right order while on the conveyor belts, which gives this game a nearly Bejeweled-esque feel to it. Not necessarily bad, just a little different. The only problem with this approach is that with how small the DS's screen is, having to work with such small pieces is tricky, even with a stylus and a perfectly calibrated screen. It is not impossible, however. (I still managed to complete the game within several hours' time.)
The music is enough to drive anybody nuts. It's absolutely saccharine... but then, what else would you expect from a game based around candy? (Oooh, yes, I know. Painfully bad pun. I apologize. Almost as painfully cheesy as every single name in the game, as well as the different factories, being candy-related!) The graphics are decent enough... They're nothing fabulous or anything, but they're not bad. Given the genre, they're pretty standard, really. However, one thing I hate that brought this down from being a typical game of the genre to a mildly subpar one: the loading screens. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER that this game should be taking so long to load every level! For how simplistic the graphics, the sounds, and the controls are, it should be an absolutely quick loader... and yet, you're sitting there waiting a minimum of often 10 to 20 seconds PER LEVEL for the screens to load. What gives?? I was NOT so wild about this. I kept putting the DS down and trying to multitask since it would take so long (oh yes, A.D.D. city, right here!) and I kept forgetting about it since the loading screens were taking so horribly long, which meant it'd be half-way into a level at times (my bad for turning the sound off I guess) before I'd notice this, and I'd end up having to restart the level...meaning I'd have to sit through the loading screens again. You can no doubt see how this quickly became a vicious cycle, no? So, that's a major drawback in the game as far as I'm concerned.
Another thing that I don't understand about this game, even after having completed it, is how your competition repeatedly sabotages your candy factory, and yet, you never get to sabotage them back! Why is this, exactly? I can understand the whole turn the other cheek mentality, but if this were a real factory, and I were getting sabotaged repeatedly like that? You can bet I'd be taking some action to either get even, or get the cops involved! But I guess the designers felt that there would be less of a game to do without this, so...whatever. I just don't even know.
The method for stacking your candies (which isn't necessary, it just garners you extra points) is also a little awkward, not to mention, wastes your time. I'd advise you to just not bother with it...I finished the game with barely ever even so much as remembering that I could do this. Instead, invest in your machines to make them run faster, and you'll be amazed just how much it helps.
One final noteworthy point: not to give out any spoilers here (and I'm being careful not to spoil the plot), BUT, the game ends on a very cliche "To Be Continued" note. However, I checked Nintendo's website, and despite it having been released over a year ago at this point, there's absolutely no mention of there ever being a sequel in the future. So why end the game on such a note? Just to leave the possibility open to there maybe being a second game someday? I'm not entirely sure just how much more you could do with such a limiting storyline, so I don't see how there ever could be a sequel...which adds to my argument that the game shouldn't be ended like this. Far as I'm concerned, unless you have a sequel in the works, don't end a game this way. It's just frustrating.
Overall, I think I'm going to rate this game a 6 out of 10 candy wrappers.
No comments:
Post a Comment