Archive for October 2008

While I’ve admired the Diner Dash series, I never could get through them as they’re hard. Plus, I always thought the customers look out of place with Flo’s cool cartoon style. The developers behind Flo take a different approach with Cooking Dash and I enjoy it more than the Diner Dash series.

The customers finally receive an upgrade and match the rest of the game and Flo’s style. The characters also get a face lift with subtle animation. No more taking orders and putting the tickets on the diner order spinner thingy (blanking on name).

Flo helps out at five restaurants while Cookie goes off to be a start in yet another chef slash cooking reality show. Grandma makes two dishes while Flo seats folks, runs around to pick up food, throw food that needs cooking on the grill, serve the food, and pick up the dishes.

Each restaurant has a different theme and food to keep things interesting. The grills, ice cream machines, desserts, and Grandma’s station appear in the same place each time. But it becomes tricky when you have to figure out what the customer wants from the grill as the grilled food doesn’t look the same as the uncooked food.

Grandma makes sandwiches, sushi, salads, and pizza. American (three different types of diners), Italian, and Japanese food are covered. The last restaurant takes place on a TV stage complete with an audience that cheers when Flo makes great moves. I love this — it’s exciting and different. Who doesn’t love an applause?

You get a feel for the customers — those who order slow vs. fast, eat slow vs. fast, lose patience slow vs. fast. Other than that, they don’t have much personality. Some diner-style game customers have great personality while others are bland. This falls in between.

No mini-games in Cooking Dash. Although, the game comes with a Story Mode and Endless Mode. They are as you would expect. Story mode tells what’s going on with Cookie’s show and why Flo moves from restaurant to restaurant. Endless mode just repeats everything for as long as you can. Five stars appear on top of the screen. As long as you have one star, you keep on going. Once the last star disappears, end of game.

Customers sit at the counter instead of tables, another nice change of pace from the Diner series’ tables. Two grills sit on both sides of the kitchen. Often times, customers would order one item from each side. Occasionally, they’ll order just one item. In one restaurant, the left grill contains French fries, onion wings, and wings. The other side contains fish, shrimp, and lobster.

I’m so grateful the game takes care of matching dishes for me. For example, I have one customer requesting rice and kebabs while another wants soy beans and octopus. Sometimes, I mix up the two items, but no matter — Flo gets it right. The only time it goes wrong if you put together something no one orders. That’s when it turns crazy — when you have lots of grill requests.

A customer ordering fish and chips sends Flo off to the left side to throw the fries in the fryer and the right side to toss the fish on the grill. A green indicator lets you know it’s cooking and when it comes full circle and blinks, the dish is ready. Wait too long and the food overcooks, but you can still serve it — just no bonus points for perfectly cooked food. Sometimes you’ll have to add condiments to the dish.

Upgrades appear between levels with them falling into two groups: looks and function. The looks change the counter, floor, windows, and so on. While function speeds Flo and Grandma, adds a coffeemaker and jukebox, and faster stoves. I have no problem buying all of the upgrades at least two levels before reaching the end of the round.

Chaining remains important as in the other Dash games. They can make or break the goal level. Also, customers have different colored clothes. When you match the clothes to the chairs, you gain bonus points. You can even get 3x, 4x, etc. if you keep putting the same colored customer on the like chair.

It doesn’t take me long to get through 50 levels. I have to replay a few several times before I can pass it. Those who can conquer Diner games will find this too easy. Those who are tired of the difficulty level (me) in the Diner games will appreciate this one. Cooking Dash takes a different approach from the Diner Dash series and it works well.

Download Cooking Dash from Big Fish Games.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

The annual Fall Carnival makes up one of my favorite memories from elementary school. I remember enjoying going from booth to booth to win prizes and never winning the cake walk. It was also neat seeing my teachers outside of the school day. Now that I have two kids in elementary school (one is now in high school!), I look forward to the school carnival.

The Hidden Object Show 2 doesn’t quite compare to the elementary school carnival, but it’s colorful and contains many games within the game. The game takes a unique approach in not having players find X objects in every scene with special activities in between. Instead, players see the fortune teller who decides what kind of game they’ll play.

The 11 hidden object games range from the basic find 10 of the same category of objects (sweets and things you throw) and silhouettes of objects to Hangman-style (find the letters to build the list of objects to find) and compare two scenes to spot the difference.

The game’s biggest strength is length with 300 rounds! You could play it for two or three days and barely make a dent in the game. However, it also makes the The Hidden Object Show 2 feel like it has no direction. After playing four rounds in a level, you win a prize. The prize list scrolls through and names your prize. Ho hum. Just not exciting.

In addition to finding objects, players can look for tickets to grow your ticket total, question marks for one or two more hints to add on to the three in every round, and skip chips for skipping games you don’t want to play while on the fortune teller scene.

Sometimes the scenes overwhelm with so many objects blending with the busy background. It gets old. When asking for a hint, the showman comes out with his cane to point to the item. He can be swift that you miss where he points or you can’t see the object even after he points it out.

Scenes contain bright colors and the showman has a little character. Sounds get carried away at times. Season hidden object players will love this one because the objects prove challenging to find with so many things in each scene. Others might tire of the game’s business and lack of direction.

The Hidden Object Show 2 earns its money the hard way with variety and lasting a long time. But its long length may bore some who like to play for something. Life’s a carnival — give The Hidden Object Show 2 a try.

The following games will be discounted next week on Flyonoid

Tue. October 14th: 50% off on Snowy: Fish Frenzy

Wed. October 15th: 50% off on Sprill

Thu. October 16th: 50% off on Tank-o-Box

Fri. October 17th: 50% off on Snowy: The Bear’s Adventures

Sat. October 18th: 50% off on Time Breaker

Sun. October 19th: 50% off on Sky Bubbles Deluxe

Doing this earlier this week since I missed last week and too much happening.

Sorry the time is right for this inspirational quote, but we can all use it. Thanks, Darren Hardy. This was in reference to the 1991 recession: “I was asked what I thought about the recession. I thought about it and decided not to participate.” – Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart

• Advocates push for simpler spelling: Good luck trying to change hundreds of years of spelling.
• Spelling Reform Files
• 10 Tips to Survive a Cash Flow Crisis
• 5 Reasons Why You Don’t Want to Write a Book: Lots of truth to it.
• Story of a sign: An excellent marketing lesson.
• 28 Great WordPress Plugins
• Texting: The Downfall of Precise Grammar [Link: Grammar Girl]

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Texas State Fair happenin’ now. Know what that means? Fried creations!
• Mark Hurst is right … This place looks like something from a Dr. Seuss book.
• You probably heard about Ford’s MyKey plans. AAA provides a resource for us parents who will have a kid driving before the first MyKey car comes out.
• Fun with bar codes.

Jakob Nielsen reports seeing a 9 percent improvement on company About pages. I rely on About pages when looking at companies either for research or for buying from them. I still run into the following problems:

• Struggle to find the About pages when they have one: they shouldn’t be buried or hard to find. “About” deserves top level navigation because it’s about earning trust and credibility. I shouldn’t have to use the search box to find them.
• Receive little valuable information: many companies provide only an overview that tells nothing about the company and what it does: sometimes it sounds like the company posts its useless vision or mission statement, which rarely makes sense to most of us (and sometimes employees, too!).
• Find no information about employees or executives. It helps to have some bios on the site along with photos. This puts a human face behind the company.

When looking at About pages, I expect to find the following (at a minimum):

• Instant understanding of what the company does. I shouldn’t have to read the whole page to figure out the company’s business. Unfortunately, this is common. The home page should also make it obvious what the company does.
• Contact information: Some companies put this on a Contact page, but it should also appear on the About page. Depending on the business, it also helps to have contact information on every page — it could be a toll free number for businesses selling products or an address for stores.
• Bios and photos: Again, people make the company and it adds credibility. I’ve seen too many sites selling products without bios — which doesn’t give me much comfort in shopping with them. Whose bio should appear depends on the company. Small companies might list all employees while large companies list the CEO and vice presidents.

Other useful About content (not all of these would appear on the About landing page), but not a requirement of all companies:

• Fact sheet: Basic information about the company including when founded, milestones, key bios. Sometimes referred as company backgrounder.
• Press page: This contains press contact’s information, media kit, list of press releases (linking to the full release), list articles appearing in (with links to full article or a file containing the article), photos, and logos.
• Company history: Where the company came from and where it is heading.
• Investor information: Provides the information investors want to see such as financial reports.

What other things do you look for when researching a company or considering doing business with them?

The movie business has changed a lot since I was a wee one. Movie theaters showed two or four movies at a time, not 16 to 24 that you see today. In Cinema Tycoon 2: Movie Mania, Mr. Pickwick hires you to turn his run down movie theaters into mega-plexes. Of course, rivals nip at your heels by upgrading whenever they can.

Every stage contains several goals to meet before saving the next theater. Most goals require earning so much money and implementing one thing such as two ticket windows or installing 16 screens. Players start a new theater with $5000, a couple of screens, and not much else.

Whether you’ve played tycoon-style business management games or not, the tutorial will familiarize you with everything you need to know. The reports contain more information than you need, so don’t let them overwhelm you.

You’ll need to stock up on food and drinks, select movies to show, price tickets and food, select upgrades in hopes to attract more theater goers, and run promotions. You can’t do it all as you only have so much money available. Plus, you’ll need to prioritize. Do you need to upgrade the sound system or do you need to change movies?

After you set up everything for the day, run your day. You can watch the ticket booth, concession stand, and movie theater all at once or view them one at a time. It’s not required to watch the day go by as the excellent reports will give you all the details you need. Cinema Tycoon 2 has a 2x Speed option where you can watch the action two times faster or simply push a button to end the day.

You might want to watch it a couple of times as it’s fun seeing what the game puts on the movie screen. It also has movie posters in the ticket booth window reflecting the current selection. The concession stand also contains the latest items you have in stock as well as the video arcade (once you make enough money to buy and grow the arcade).

“Hot” and “Cold” appear in the list of movie genres to help you decide what to play and not play. Sometimes, you won’t get a hint and will have to decide for yourself based on what you know about the current locale. Movie titles will make you smile with a lampoon of real movie titles such as “Hair Gel,” an obvious copy of “Hairspray.”

Reports come complete with arrows showing up, down, or no change from the previous day’s showing. You can also view line graphs or look at the data in table format. The dashboard gives you a quick overview of the day’s news and the previous day’s sales. Sometimes, a window pops up with commentary from a resident or colleague giving hints on what you might want to do.

Kids can learn a lot about running a business from Cinema Tycoon 2. It contains profit and loss reports, balance sheets, and loan options. Short on cash? Borrow up to $3000 from the bank or $5000 from a loan shark with much higher interest rates. Sometimes, you need to resort to both.

I think the game moves along too easy until I reach Level 8 where I keep filing Chapter 11. But I eventually conquer the level and go on to finish the game. Hence, it would make a great game for a family to play together or let the kids try it on their own.

Cinema Tycoon 2 deserves to have “Blockbuster” slapped on its game posters as it captivates, entertains, and educates all in one.

Download the game from your favorite site:

• Big Fish Games
• Reflexive Arcade

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. October 6th: 60% off on Warkanoid 3: Story-book

Tue. October 7th: 60% off on Asianata

Wed. October 8th: 60% off on Astrobatics

Thu. October 9th: 60% off on Aquacade

Fri. October 10th: 50% off on The Golden Path of Plumeboom

Sat. October 11th: 50% off on A-B-O-O: Plumeboom’s Friends

Sun. October 12th: 40% off on Cake Mania 3