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Hotel Dash: Suite Success
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Graphics & Sound:
Hotel Dash: Suite Success continues the bright and colorful look of the Dash series, taking it to new locations in the form of dilapidated hotels that need sprucing up. Flo and Quinn, that tag team of female accomplishment, are at it again and this time, they'll travel from a basic hotel, to a ski lodge in the snow, to an upscale high-rise hotel, to a tiki-themed island paradise getaway and finally, to a haunted mansion-turned-hotel. Each location has neat little details and you'll be tasked with not only upgrading the appearance of the interior of the hotel, but, more specifically, the VIP room which will be decked out by the time you are through with it, if you've done your job right. We aren't just talking simple carpet and curtain changes here, although you'll be doing that too. How about waterfall fountains and tiki statues in the tiki room and grand Gothic beds and skeleton candle holders in the haunted hotel. Everything is nicely themed and looks good. Upgrades you make to the interior of the hotel itself change the look as you go, such as nicer wallpaper or a stylized carpet. It all looks right.
Those familiar with the Dash series of games will see a lot of familiar faces such as the tourists, the cell phone teens, and the lumberjack guys. But there are some new faces as well like clowns, ghosts in the haunted hotel (complete with colored bow ties so you can distinguish which rooms to put them in for maximum color-matching points) and the fashionistas, who are precious in their sundresses, sunglasses and matching brim hats - and lots and lots of luggage.
The sound effects and music work well for Hotel Dash, whether it be classy music tinkering in the upscale hotel or Hawaiian music playing in the lobby of the Tiki Palace. The one sound that drove me crazy, possibly because it happened all too frequently, was the sound of a knocked over vase of water and the corresponding breakage that required Flo to go mop things up. The clowns seemed to be the regular culprits here. Other sound effects that are new are a ringing alarm clock that goes off when you need to wake a patron up with a wake-up call and dogs barking when they need to be fed.
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Gameplay:
The basic premise is that Quinn, wedding planner extraordinaire and Flo's best buddy, has started booking not only honeymoons, but also vacations in general. She's not too up on what hotels are nice and is going from her childhood memories. Well, what used to be nice isn't and it's up to Flo to fix things up before the trips begin. How Flo and Quinn can step in and take over a hotel is beyond me, but you don't play these games for the story, but for the fun, so just roll with it.
You'll begin in the DinerTown Suites, then progress to Alpine Ski Lodge, Stark Suites, Tiki Palace Hotel and finally Dunwich House, with 10 levels in each hotel. You'll begin with Quinn at the front desk (doing absolutely nothing, I might add) and Flo serving as bellhop, room service and maid and everything in between. First, there will only be a few rooms spread out on three floors, but as you make your way through the 10 levels per hotel, more rooms will be added. There are upgrades that you can purchase between levels to either give Flo a bigger cart or make her move quicker, a faster mop for cleanup, nicer wallpaper or carpet to soothe guests' tempers as they wait in the lobby or at their room for their luggage or room service, or even a musician to play music in the lobby to calm guests. There are quite a few things to spend your money on, so choose wisely. You can also purchase star upgrades, with up to 3 stars on the front door of each room being possible. The more stars on a room, the more star credits are earned which can be spent towards the upgrading of the VIP room. It can be something as inexpensive as a lamp for 1 star credit or a grand bed or chandelier for 40 star credits. Your ultimate goal is to be able to purchase all of the options in a given room and it's not too hard to do over the course of 10 levels. Plus, its fun to watch the room transform before your eyes with each successive upgrade.
You can play the game either in Story Mode, where you progressively work your way through each hotel and its corresponding levels, or you can play in Endless Shift Mode where you select which hotel of the 5 you want to work in and just serve a barrage of hotel guests. |
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Difficulty:
In the Story Mode of Hotel Dash: Suite Success, there is no difficulty selection. You just start up the game and play and each level ramps up in difficulty. Once you move on to a new hotel, the cycle begins again and you can initially breathe until you get to the really tough ones again. The game has some frustrating moments, but overall, I really enjoyed it and thought the difficulty level was just about perfect. Challenging for sure, but not enough to make me turn the game off. Actually, just enough to make me come back again and again until I beat it.
There's also the Endless Mode where you can select Easy, Medium or Hard and serve an endless line of guests and all of their needs. You'll have 5 hearts in the top right corner and you will lose one heart for every customer who leaves in a huff. Lose all 5 and it's game over for you. If you start on Easy, it will go relatively slow, so much so that you will be anxious for your upgrades to be available so you can snag a faster Flo or a bigger cart. Having to watch while Flo goes back and forth up and down the elevators can get tedious on the Easy setting. If you switch to Medium, you won't notice a dramatic difference immediately, but it's there. Patience is more lacking in these folks and you'll fail out much quicker. Hard is pretty tough, even for a seasoned veteran, but if you like a serious challenge, then check it out. Sadly, the upgrades are something you have to watch for and the button appears when you have made enough money to have earned them. While they are great and really help, when you are frantically running about, you may fail to notice you have an upgrade available which could really help you. |
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Game Mechanics:
Now for the nitty-gritty - when a guest arrives in the lobby, a bell dings. You'll click on them and drag them to a room, hopefully color matching their apparel to the room door color, for a bonus. Single rooms are good for up to 2 people and there are double rooms for up to 4 guests. Once you have indicated where they will be staying, the guests will jump on the elevator and scurry to their room, waiting patiently (and not so patiently) for their luggage. You must click on their luggage and deliver it to the correct room. At first, Flo can only carry two things at once, but I suggest upgrading to the largest cart you can as soon as possible to make things more manageable. Once those fashionistas start checking in with their 3 and 4 bags each, you'll be happy you did. Once the patrons are in their rooms, they'll start needing extra things like room service, clean towels, fluffy pillows or a cleanup. They may need a wake-up call and, if so, Flo will have a few seconds warning as a green timer bar starts counting down to give her time to get to the door or to the phone at the lobby counter. Then the red counter begins, the cuckoo clock alarm sounds and you have to immediately click on the door to shut it off or other guests will get mad. If you are on the first floor, you can click on the phone and Flo can call from there. Again, why can't Quinn make the call since she is standing there doing nothing? This was an annoying aspect of the game to me. The player could have clicked on the phone and had Quinn make the call just as easily and it would have made more sense. After all, as you progress and discover that someone is sabotaging each of the hotels, Quinn will have to run and fix whatever the problem may be, whether it's an intentional power outage or an alarm that sounds. So, why not the wake-up calls too? Ok, I am done ranting.
You can queue up different tasks for Flo, but it is much more effective to wait an extra second or two and to grab several things at once, even pre-empting what guests will want and stocking up a little early. After all, once your rooms are filled with folks and their dogs and those dogs start barking to be fed, you'll want to have dog food handy or the other guests will get mad quickly.
Once a guest is ready to check out, Flo needs to collect their money and their dirty linens by clicking twice on the door, then drop off the dirty laundry so the room will be ready for the new guest. There will even be gift baskets that you can place in rooms before someone has checked in and that will increase your tips and money earned. Of course, it's never that easy. Whether it's the fashionistas with all of their luggage, or the celebs and their bodyguards who won't let other guests pass until their needs are met, or even the ghosts that insist on scaring other guests, problems will come up and they'll occur often, so be ready for them.
I did find that, sometimes, the controls were frustrating, in that I'd click on a number of things and Flo would get confused and simply stop and shake her head. When you are really in the midst of a tough level, this can cause you to yell many ugly words at your monitor. It happened. More than a few times.
Overall, aside from a few tiny control issues, Hotel Dash: Suite Success is sure to please those who like time management games, and specifically those fans of the Dash series. Highly recommended. |
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-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows Vista, XP SP1 & 2, Pentium IV 1.2 GHz processor or faster, 256 MB RAM, 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution, 30 MB available hard drive space |
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Test System:
Windows Vista, 2 GHz AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core Processor, 8GB RAM, Realtek High Definition Audio On-Board Sound, NVIDIA GeForce 8300 |
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