Cooking Mama: Cook Off

"Let the Battle Begin!"

Being a cook, and loving to cook, when I heard about the new cooking game for the Wii I litterly could not wait for it to the the shelves. I was very happy when I received it for my birthday, and couldn't wait to get it in my Wii and try it out. so how does it stack up? Was it worth the hype to me? Certainly! Is it a flawless game? Well...no. So let's go into more detail.

Graphics(7-10): The graphics definately work for this type of game. When your playing a cooking simulator, so to speak, you don't expect to see fully rendered 3-D animations. You really don't expect to see sweet glistening down the side of your chef's head, as they flurry to get their dish finished. What this game does give you is nice clean, crisp, and just plain cute. You just can't get mad at characters that cute. The ingridients are nice and colorful, and easily recognizable. I never have been confused about what I've seen on screen. The animations are all very nice and easy to see, and you never at any time will have problems understanding what you're seeing. The back grounds are nice, but they are very simple. In fact, that is probably the only real knock about the graphics is that they are all very plain. A little more detail wouldn't have hurt the anime feel to the graphics at all, but they are very workable and overall I like them. I do wish that there had been a feature that let the food appear as you cook it, ala if you burn the steak, it stays burnt the whole course of the cooking process.

Gameplay(8-10): This game is all about the cooking, and trust me, the cooking is good! The game is played using the Wiimote alone, and FROM MY EXPERIENCE it reacts VERY well. The game gives you in house directions that if you pay attention to them and follow them, the game almost always reacts well. Every step of the way is broken down so that it is not very hard to follow. There is a good deal of variety to everything that you do. Don't mistake me though, there is a lot of repetition as well. The basic format of the game is pick a reciepe, and cook it using the core mini-games. Because the receipies are made up of the same mini-games, things WILL seem a slight bit repetitive, and it does lower the gameplay score a bit. Repetitive as it may be, it still is very fun. There is just something about choping, grating, slicing and dicing that just translates to pure fun.

Multiplayer(10-10): Yes you read that correctly. I give this gave a 10 in multiplayer. We consistently have game night at our house, and out of Wii Sports, Mario Party 8, Mario Kart Double Dash, Red Factions 1&2, Guiter Hero 1&2 and this, Cooking Mama only comes second to Smash Brothers Melee. Everyone loves the game. It offers quick, simple and suprisingly intense action. Once you get into the multiplayer mode of this game it suduces you. Just a really fun time for playing.

Replayability(6-7): There are a lot of reciepies to unlock, and it can be quite tricky to gold medal everyone of them. As you medal in one, you'll unlock another. A nice added feature is the Cooking against the world wide friends. Basically, it's a cook-off against a computer opponent. You win, and you unlock golden untensils for your kitchen. You lose, and you unlock items for your kitchen which you can view later. However after you've unlocked everything else the game does get a little stale in the single player aspect. How ever it always picks up fresh anew.

Rent-or-Buy(Buy): I have to reccomend this game to everyone. If you like fun, nice family games, you won't get much better than this. If you enjoy multiplayer romps, this game more than hokds it's own. If you are looking for a fresh gaming experience, I can't express this game's potential to be what you need to get your fill. Cooking Mama gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

p.w.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/21/07

Game Release: Cooking Mama: Cook Off (US, 03/20/07)