When a game costs £30 on the PSP, you can’t just invest in anything. It’s a high price to pay for a portable game, and if you buy something that doesn’t even resemble a game worth that amount of money you’re going to be angry. You’ll feel ‘had’ if you pay £30 for Diner Dash; this is because it looks as pretty as a chimp after an Agent Orange attack.

It’s a nice puzzler, luckily. The objective is to maintain a diner and make it to the top (a sushi bar, apparently), while making good with food delivery, pleasing critics and other rubbish activities. It’s just another puzzler for the PSP, but it is fairly robust. It never gets too overwhelming thanks to good use of the shoulder buttons, and wellformatted use of the D-pad.

The cancer of the game lies in its repetition. While the graphics don’t help matters, the gameplay itself has only minor variation, with background changes and clientele adjustment being the highlight of a visually ugly game.

If Diner Dash were £10, or even £15 it would find a real user base on the PSP. It may be visually distressing but the puzzles are alright for a while and the laughable production values become part of the fun. Still, since the asking price is rather high, you’ll be doing nothing criminal if you ignore Diner Dash. Which won’t be difficult.

Samuel Roberts