Ainsley Harriot is nowhere to be seen... (Cooking Mama (DS))

Member Name: mchitty

Product:	Cooking Mama (DS)
Date:	29/10/08 (123 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pretty graphics, novelty value

Disadvantages: Very little reason to keep playing past a couple of hours

Cooking Mama... in some ways, this game should be legendary. The very notion of designing and producing a big-budget video game based on cooking was, before Cooking Mama, unheard of. And to top this off, this game was also reasonably successful and was critically well received!

If you've never played any incarnation of Cooking Mama (there is also a Wii version that I have yet to experience), the novelty value of this game is tremendous. For the first 20 minutes, I was captivated and genuinely amazed at how well the concept worked and how much fun I was having.

The game is split into 76 different dishes that you can make. Each of these dishes is further split into a linear series of actions - actions might be grating some garlic, or chopping a carrot, for example. Each of these actions is a short minigame (or 'microgame' if you like) that involves interacting with your stylus. Once each action/minigame/microgame has been completed successfully, the dish is complete.

Cooking Mama has a lot going for it. At first, it's a heap of fun to play. Each of the microgames is satisfying, and they will make you smile. The graphics are also really appealing, with a clean cartoony style that at points reminds me of really good pixel art. You are constantly supervised by the 'Mama' character, who provides amusement throughout - although she becomes bouncy and gleeful when you do a good job, when you burn something / run out of time, her eyes appear to catch fire and she looks as though she's been posessed by a demon!

Unfortunately the appeal of Cooking Mama doesn't really stick. Once you've mastered all of the microgames, most of which are repeated across several of the recipes, you've basically mastered the game - and it doesn't get much more sophisticated than that. There is an option to combine recipes to make new ones, although I found this feature a little bit pointless, to be honest, as it doesn't really add anything new to the gameplay. One of the things I love about collections of 'microgames' (I'm thinking WarioWare on the Wii and DS here...) is the frantic, breakneck pace. Cooking Mama is in comparison rather slow.

Despite the fact that the game seems to be aimed at a wide audience of gamers and non-gamers alike, there were some 'microgames' that I found a little bit tricky, and hit and miss as to whether I succeeded. I still struggle to successfully push food around a frying pan to stop it from burning and get it right every time...

Overall, Cooking Mama is a great novelty game - definitely worth having a go, because you WILL enjoy it! Unfortunately, it is an understatement to call the long-term appeal of this game limited... in my opinion, it's practically non existent.

Summary: As good a novelty game as any... definitely worth a try, don't know about a buy