Late Dining
GiN Weekly Time-Waster Review
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Hello Time Wasters!
There isn't anything wrong with copying a good idea and making it your own. At least in the business world there isn't. The game industry is just as susceptible to this trend as any other. This is why games like Angry Birds get huge. They find a model that was great, copy it, and make it more well known and instant success is at their doorstep. There is a bit of a limit as to how long you can wait to try and copy something, though. Let's look at Burger Jack for instance.
Burger Jack is one of those games that fits into the Diner Dash style of gameplay. There are customers, you get their food and then you deliver it to them. A simple formula that led to huge success...almost ten years ago! That's right, it's been close to ten years since Diner Dash was released and, while the years have been long, it hasn't been long enough for us to be interested in the genre again. Sure, "Retro Gaming" is huge right now. I'm one of its biggest supporters. But I'm talking about gameplay styles that are getting real close to 30 years old, not ten. The Diner game genre really only started to die about four years ago. So the poor timing of release doesn't really help Burger Jack's case much.
If one thing holds true about Diner gameplay it would be just how addicting it is at times. Burger Jack is simple at heart but the franticness it provides is entertaining. Rushing to complete seven different customers' orders can leave your head spinning and making more mistakes than you'd ever want to. Burger Jack does an decent job as distracting us from its ten year old gameplay. Frankly though, it doesn't last long enough and very soon the feeling of boredom sets in.
If we really have to talk about the Prettiness factor of Burger Jack...there wouldn't be much to it. While the graphics are overly simplistic and potentially cute that's about all they are. Almost all the customers look the same and what differences there are pull heavily from stereotypes (At least the African Americans didn't have afros).
One defining factor of Burger Jack is that it has some fairly catchy music. Getting lost in the beat is easy and the level complete sound actually manages to fill you with a sense of accomplishment the first few times you hear it.
"Strike while the iron's hot" is said for a reason and Burger Jack is just too late to the party to cash in on this cow. It isn't that there's anything wrong with Burger Jack but there isn't anything great about it either. If you are on your way to being the Diner Genre Master and have to catch them all then you'll want to add Burger Jack to your collection but everyone else has seen this game 50 different times at least and lost interest after the first 5. Maybe next time, Playberries.
Burger Jack delivers 2.5 GiN Gems out of 5.
Billy loves nothing more than leveling and grinding through a good RPG. And he knows that Time Waster is not a negative term when it comes to games. : billum256@yahoo.com.
Billy White, Playberries, Xbox 360