"Bitter"

Cooking is a video game genre that has remained relatively unexplored in America. While popular in Japan, there is little demand for it in the states. Majesco offers American gamers a chance to slice and dice with Cooking Mama, a budget priced cooking game for the Nintendo DS. Is this the cooking genre's “killer app” to sway American gamers?

Graphics:
If the packaging wasn't enough of a clue, a quick boot up of Cooking Mama makes it obvious what demographic this game is geared toward. Majesco shoots for the elusive non-gamer girl market with an overwhelmingly cute bright pink and baby blue presentation. Mama has a clean, 2D, anime appearance, but lacks animation. She'll blink while you cook, sparkle when you do well, and burst fire out of her eyes when a mistake is made, but that's the extent of her animation. While more and smoother animations for Mama would have been a welcome addition, the real action takes place with the food. The food looks great. Cooking Mama favors a 2D graphical presentation over 3D, and you'll be chopping up a wide variety of deliciously textured vegetables and meats. The graphics react well with player input. Stirring around a pile of onions and crab in a pan of sizzling grease is quite the satisfying visual treat.

Gameplay:
Players looking for a chance to up their cooking skills and pick up on some new recipes should look elsewhere. Cooking Mama doesn't walk you through each recipe. Rather, every dish is a string of mini-challenges. Challenges range from inputting the cook time in the oven to kneading various types of dough. Everything is controlled via stylus input. There are quite a few different tasks, but they are all so closely related and over-used that many of them, such as boiling, quickly become a chore. There are, however, a lot of dishes to make. Every dish completed opens another, and often while making one dish, you will be given the option to change the recipe. The game has a subtle sense of humor as to what recipes are opened. After failing miserably at making spaghetti, I was awarded the instant noodles recipe. Each recipe is distinctly broken into parts. Players first select a task to complete, complete the task, Mama awards a medal, player selects the next task, and so on. This setup is necessary to explain the next challenge, but it severely distracts from the experience and breaks up gameplay, making it seem slower and more boring than it really is.

Control:
The DS stylus takes the place of your hand in Cooking Mama; allowing you to cut along dotted lines, knead, stir, and grate all with the drag of the stylus. The game is visually responsive, and makes for a very immersive control scheme. The tight, touch-based mechanics really add to the cooking experience. Unfortunately, sometimes the game doesn't recognize certain gestures, and will require multiple tries to get it just right.

Sound:
Cooking Mama's piano themes will grind your nerves. Which is a shame because it calls so much attention to itself that it distracts from the immersive, aural cooking experience. The crackling sizzle of butter, the rolling boil of soup, the chop of a knife, all are handled well with the DS's speakers.

Overall:
There's certainly a lot to do in Cooking Mama. Recipes stack up fast, and there are even alternate paths players can take on several of them. However, finding the patience to work through them all is another thing. The game is simply too boring. Many of the tasks end up feeling like chores, and the overall experience just isn't that much fun. Cooking Mama looks like an intriguing game, and it very well could have been, but in the end it falls flat. Whenever I pick up the game, I feel like I'm wasting time and can only think of all the other fun games I could be playing. Cooking Mama isn't a horrible abomination, there's just so much better for the DS than this.

Points:
+ Crisp, clean 2D graphics
-- In-your-face girlish presentation
+ Stylus input realistically effects game
-- Certain gestures don't register
-- Boring

Score: 4/10

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 11/17/06, Updated 12/18/07

Game Release: Cooking Mama (US, 09/12/06)