PlayFirst Grapevine

A hundred ways to play!

By Nemone
04/10/2008 08:00AM Okay, maybe not 100, yet…but close! I’m talking about Diner Dash: Hometown Hero, which is such a huge step forward in the Dash games that I feel the need to make sure all of you understand just how cool it really is.

So first, let’s review a few vocabulary words used a lot in gaming. Once we all know what they mean, we can explore how they apply to the astonishingly flexible Hometown Hero.

• Avatar: Though its original meaning comes from the Hindu to describe an earthly representation of a deity, in gaming the term has come to mean a computerized representation of yourself, or any character you’d like to create, that lives within the world of a game. Avatars are almost always created in the same visual style as the game in which you place them, and the best avatars are customizable, meaning that you, as the player, get to make decisions about how that little pixilated representation of you will look.
• Metamap: You know how when you’re playing a game you can pause or stop, exit to the main menu, and then come back in to a map of the game showing where you’ve been and where you have yet to go? That’s a metamap, sometimes referred to as a “level map.” At its simplest, a metamap just shows you what level you’re on and gives you a little bread crumb trail showing how many more levels you have left to go to finish the game. A more complex metamap might jump you around to explore different areas (or neighborhoods) of the game. The best metamaps are expandable, meaning that you can see the whole game the way it’s laid out when you purchase it, but you can also add new areas as the game expands, either by uncovering them during game play or by buying them separately and having them integrated into the game you already have once they’re downloaded. You can think of it like a Legos kit (or K’nex, or what have you) – you can do all kinds of things with the basic set, but you can also always add more to keep yourself engaged and entertained. This same expandability can be applied to a computer game through use of the metamap.
• Multiplayer: Think of “single player” as solitaire and “multiplayer” as poker. In gaming, multiplayer refers to any game you can play with other people, in real time, even while sitting all alone at your computer. Maybe you’ve heard of MMORPGs, or “Mass Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games,” like World of Warcraft or Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies. In these games, people all over the world have their own avatar and literally thousands of people can meet in a virtual environment to play together. But those are all pretty hardcore, time-intensive, sub-culture games. Multiplayer can also be much simpler and less overwhelming, like a group of people gathering in a chat room and choosing one other person to play with or against in a smaller virtual environment which they control.

So, now that we understand some of the funny terminology of gaming, let’s see how it all applies to our beloved Diner Dash: Hometown Hero. What do we know about DD:HH, anyway?

It’s a single player game. As with the other Diner Dash games, the game gives you access to 55 single-player levels in five new restaurants: the Safari Café, the Diner at Homerun Park, the Museum Grill, the Beach Shack at the Boardwalk, and Florence’s Groovy Disco. There’s story mode and endless mode and all the frantic-seating-serving-matching-mood-managing fun you expect from a Diner Dash game.

But say you’ve finished helping Flo get through all the levels, and you wish you could make the game more…I don’t know, personal. Diner Dash: Hometown Hero (DD:HH) Gourmet lets you create your very own waiter or waitress (called “MY WAITER”) and diner (“MY DINER”) that you can customize and play with right in the game! So yep, you guessed it:

It’s a game that lets you create your own avatar! With DD:HH, you can explore and express yourself in Flo’s world! The game comes with both a character and a diner generator that allows you to create your very own avatar and also your very own diner to place in the game. You get to choose from dozens of options (hairstyle, complexion, expression, clothing and more for your waiter, location, theme, counters, seating, food, and décor for your diner) automatically available within the game, and then have your very own diner appear on your game’s metamap right by Flo’s Diner! But what if you want even more options than the game has available? A different hair style or pair of shoes for your waitress, say, or maybe a lovely chandelier or giant marlin to hang off the ceiling of your diner? Well, you’re in luck, because:

The game is endlessly expandable! There’s an entire boutique available at DinerDash.com, brimming with over 100 clothing items and accessories for your waiter, as well as décor items and stylish, new looks for your diner. You can buy these separately or sometimes in bundles and use them to make your waiter and/or diner even more unique! Whether you want to make a funny, original character for Diner Dash or prefer to set a little version of yourself loose in the Hometown Hero restaurants, the Diner Dash boutique allows you to customize to your heart’s content. Some of the clothes can also be worn by Flo—you’ll see them show up in her closet once you’ve purchased and downloaded them. But hey, DD:HH has a pretty big metamap…what are you supposed to do with all the rest of that space? Upgrade!

PlayFirst is constantly releasing brand new restaurants! Some of the restaurants are seasonal, like the bone-chilling October release, The Crypt Café, or December’s charming Winter Wonderland. Others are part of ongoing storylines, like the hilarious Caveman Café or the just-released Pharaoh’s Feast. All of them come with tons of fun, original items for your waiter and diner, and all of them place a brand new restaurant on your game’s metamap, giving you permanent access to it anytime you want to play. You can buy all of them, a few, or even just one—whatever you want in your game.

So now you have all these great restaurants, not to mention your very own, meticulously customized waiter and diner and your mad Dashing skills…there’s got to be a way to show this all off, right? Yes, of course! In addition to allowing you to use your MY WAITER avatar as your profile picture on PlayFirst.com:

DD:HH is a fully-functioning multiplayer game, including real-time chat rooms and the ability to have another DD:HH player assist or compete against you in your very own diner! Or in theirs, or any of the restaurants associated with the game. With both cooperative and competitive play modes available, you can choose between playing nicely with others and destroying their Dash-savvy egos at whim. You can also just hang around in one of the multiplayer lobbies and chat with other Flo fans. How you use the game is truly up to you.

What all of this means is that whether you’re playing in single player or multiplayer mode, DD:HH is never the same game twice. There’s always something new to add: additional restaurants, fresh décor for your very own diner, new clothes and accessories for your waiter—all of these and more are always available in the Diner Dash boutique.

Maybe you already knew all of this, in which case, thanks for listening to my enthusiastic ramblings. But for those of you to whom some of these concepts are kind of new, please feel free to play and explore. Maybe I’ll even see you in multiplayer!

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