SpongeBob Diner Dash 2 Times the Trouble Review by Meryl

Meryl

Thanks to the success of the Diner Dash series, the marketing folks decided to take advantage of the popular game and replace Flo with SpongeBob Squarepants to create another hit. SpongeBob’s version closely resembles Flo’s with one difference: You can change characters. In one level you can be the loveable sponge and in another play his best friend, Patrick.

In the first SpongeBob Diner Dash, his goal was to expand the chain of Krabby Patty restaurants. In Diner Dash 2, SpongeBob tries to save the restaurants from the greedy Sharkey Two-Times. Like other Diner games, the game comes with restaurant upgrades, power ups to make customers happier and two game modes: story and endless.

First, I loaded the game on a Vista-based laptop (let’s not start counting the ways we don’t like Vista — this is a game review not a Vista review), and I had to install it in an XP Pro laptop after playing the game for two seconds on the Vista laptop. A purple box appears with the mouse pointer, which drove me batty. I checked the forums for a fix, but nothing so far.

I finished Wedding Dash, but never finished Flo on the Go. However, Flo on the Go was the first Dash game I had played and reviewed. Maybe I could win now after all this practice. Despite having played many Diner games, it didn’t take long for me to get trapped in SpongeBob where I had to repeatedly play a level. I finally made it through and got stuck again on the next level. The level of difficulty was almost identical to Flo on the Go.

One of the power ups was a podium so SpongeBob or Patrick can chat with waiting customers to prevent their happiness from taking a dive. But I was so busy serving and cleaning up after the seated customers that I could hardly reach the podium. When I did stop by, it hardly made a difference and I failed in my mission. I tried to more time than I normally would to reach the goal, but gave up after a warning from my cramping hand and arm. I made it to a second restaurant and served five different types of customers.

Customers include the Groupers, a family in which the baby needs a high chair and the family requests a mop for cleaning spills. The baby can get noisy and that bothers the Goldeyes big time. Goldeyes are quiet, patient and bookish types. Quillbacks and Whippersnappers don’t like noise, but not to the same degree as Goldeyes. The Rubberlip Seaperches are the best tippers of the group, but they’re also mucho noisy as they rudely talk on their phones. Assigning these picky customers and trying to keep them away from each other keeps players swimming in rough waters.

Anyone who loves Diner Dash or SpongeBob will jump into this one. SpongeBob Diner Dash 2 gives Diner Dash fans their fix as they wait for another release. If you can only play one or the other — just pick the one with the character you like better since the experience is the same except for the changing characters feature in SpongeBob. Families can enjoy SpongeBob together except that the younger ones might get mad when they can’t get past a level — but then again, we older folks do, too!

We give SpongeBob Diner Dash 2 a 4/5 diamond rating

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows 2000/XP/Vista
• Pentium III, 700MHz or faster processor
• 128MB RAM
• 800×600 minimum screen resolution
• DirectX 7.0 or later
• 17 MB available hard disk space

System Requirements: Mac

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer
• G4 800 MHz or faster
• 50 MB available hard disk space
• 800×600 minimum screen resolution