Cooking Mama: Cook Off

"Like WarioWare, but NOT fun."

Let me first start off by saying that I am not here to bash the game. I am just sharing my experience & opinion. This was one of my most anticipated titles for the Wii. I have been curious about it since I first saw video for it & thought that it was going to be a clever, innovative game.

Gameplay: All of the motions preformed in Cooking Mama are what you would come to expect for a cooking game. However, I found them to be overly simple, yet poorly executed. Think WarioWare with very poor controls. There's also battle modes as you proceed to the big cook off, but I did not bother to ever get into that.

Story: Mama teaches you to Cook various recipes from around the world as you prepare for the big cook off... or something.

Graphics & Sound: I'm not a graphics whore by any means, but I will raise a red flag if I feel the graphics hurt the game [or my eyes]. Aside from the anime style character models, everything looks like poorly rendered 3D clip art. The background music is ok. You can't expect much else for a cooking game. Mama on the other hand would probably benefit from a few lessons of English Training on the DS. I thought she was speaking Japanese half the time.

Replay Value: I was done with the game after the first recipe. I honestly have MORE fun cooking real food. Battle mode might be fun, but everyone I've shown the game too is equally disappointed and disinterested after the first recipe, so I never tried that out.

Final Verdict: I haven't played the DS version, but I'm sure its infinitely more enjoyable than the Wii version. The game came off as a slapped together port with tacked on controls. This game needed more development time. It couldn't have killed them to have gotten a better voice over actress for Mama either. I felt cheated for having played it & I didn't even have to pay to rent it.

Skip this game on the Wii. You'll be happy you did.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 05/03/07