Flo is Cooking

The next entry in the Diner Dash series tries many new things with mixed results.

Cooking Dash starts when Flo’s chef, Cookie, leaves for “vacation”. He is actually accepting a job as a star of a cooking show. When you hire a new chef to replace him, he asks one of your friends, who is also in the restaurant business, to help him in the show. Flo is then called to take care of that restaurant for a while. In this way, the game transitions from one restaurant to the next. There are five in all. These restaurants all have different styles. Each restaurant also has different upgrades (and you need to earn those that are the same again at each new location).

How you upgrade your restaurant has varied from game to game in Diner Dash. In the first installment you were just given one, in the second you got to choose environment upgrades, and in the third you got new clothes and got to choose which type of environment upgrade you wanted. In Cooking Dash, you use the money you earn each shift to buy new upgrades, both game improving ones, like making Flo move faster or getting a coffee machine, and environment improvements, like getting a nicer floor or carpet. The only bad thing about this is that you use the same money for both types. You will often leave the environment upgrades off until the after you got all the game improvements because they are the ones that make the gameplay easier. This system is a lot like Cake Mania’s.

The gameplay is also more like Cake Mania’s. Your customers order a specific food and it is Flo’s job to tell her chef to make it, cook it herself, or turn on a machine that makes it. Why the game does not stick to the serving formula that it invented is questionable, but this new gameplay is still fun.

The same rules still apply. You still have to seat customers (they all return from past installments), and seating same colored ones in the same place still gives you bonuses. The podium has been replaced with a radio.

There are also new items that can be used to make serving your customers easier. I especially liked the chili, which can be added to dishes to make the customer eat it faster. This can be used when you want a customer to get done fasetr so you can seat another one where they are sitting.

The game has been given a major graphics overhaul. Except for the information between levels and the comics between chapters, everything has been made more realistic. The 3D characters do not look as good as the old ones (I especially do not like Flo’s new look). I liked the cartoonish style better.

Cooking Dash takes the series in a new direction with new gameplay and graphics, but still stays true to the Diner Dash formula, Flo, a variety of customers, and frenzied serving.

This game is like-other Diner Dash games, the Cake Mania series