My wife borrowed Cooking Mama from her Aunt when we took our trip out to Seattle during Christmas. The idea is for my daughter to have more than just
Clubhouse Games and
Meteos to play during our trip on the plane. The result is my daughter ended up playing the game most of the time and fighting my wife for control of the Nintendo DS during most of the trip. I had to wake up early in the morning to get a chance to play the game myself. Despite two weeks with the game, we decided to purchase our own copy when we found out the price was $20 at most major retailers.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Cooking Mama is a lot like
WarioWare in that you have a short amount of time to do a simple task with precision. However, in Cooking Mama, the games all revolve around the preparation steps of a dish, you have more time, and you are judged on your performance rather than a pass/fail status in WarioWare. The basic premise of Cooking Mama is you're judged on the preparation of a dish based on your performance during individual preparation steps. The preparation steps vary depending on what you're making. For instance, to make boiled rice, you have to measure rice in one step, measure the amount of water to boil in another step, and finally spin the rice instead of straining it.
The main gameplay feature in Cooking Mama is the ingredient steps. Each stage is timed anywhere between 15 seconds and one minute to complete the step. You use your stylus to operate appliances, or adjust food based on the preparation method. The goal varies based on the preparation step. For instance, spinning rice requires the speed to separate the rice, but spin it too fast and it'll splatter all over the counter and you'll fail the step. Other steps require something more basic like tapping the touch screen to chop vegetables like cucumbers or celery. My favorite preparation step is boiling the soup because it's a crude rhythm game in that you have to change temperatures, add ingredients, or stir the contents at specific intervals.
Preparation of a dish is also scored by Mama. You're allowed to make a couple major mistakes and still get a bronze medal. However to get a silver medal you have to be much more precise. A gold medal is only awarded for a flawless dish. Some dishes are difficult to prepare perfectly, while others are quite simple. It all depends on which steps are involved. For instance, chopping vegetables, measuring or adding ingredients, and tenderizing meat are examples of easier preparation steps, but others like sauteing, baking, and boiling soup are much more difficult to finish flawlessly. Overall it provides a decent challenge for most gamers.
There are three different modes in Cooking Mama: Let's Cook, Let's Combine, and Use Skill. Let's Cook mode allows you to create dishes as described above. It's also where you unlock many of the different recipes. There are 78 total recipes where 15 are available in the beginning. Most of the unlocked recipes however are variations on one of the original 15. It just involves different ingredients and therefore different preparation steps. There's also a practice mode that allows you to hone your skills in specific preparation stages for a dish. It also walks you through the process that's much clearer than when you're being scored. Let's Combine creates new dishes by combining existing recipes. I like this mode not because it offers anything new in the gameplay department, but rather because cooking is all about the creativity of preparing something new. You can't really combine dishes that do not make sense, instead there are a set of combined dishes to choose from. I would have liked this mode to have a palatability score. Finally, the Use Skill mode measures your ability to perform a single preparation step in repetition for a set amount of time.
While the gameplay in Cooking Mama is pretty fun, it can get repetitive rather quickly. Mini games like chopping vegetables, slicing meat, and straining food offers little variation in difficulty or procedure. Other procedures like mixing soup can add quite a bit of variation between dishes. As for the accuracy of the game, this is something I cannot comment on. Obviously preparation time for specific dishes is shortened drastically because it's not terribly fun waiting for water to boil. However, I've never deep fried anything before, and I'm terrible at making rice. However thanks to Cooking Mama, my daughter has taken a greater interest in how to prepare a meal, which is great.
Controls
The controls for Cooking Mama use the stylus almost exclusively and are surprisingly good. The game strikes a good balance of needing precise timing and having a forgiving interface when needed. For instance, folding batter is accomplished by drawing a semi-circle with your stylus on the rolled batter, and just so long as you draw something resembling a semi-circle it'll recognize it. However other aspects like straining food requires timing and precision with your stylus. Push your stylus too far to one side and you'll dump out food into the sink, but tip too slow and you'll run out of time. There is little room in between. There's only one exception where the controls aren't intuitive and hard to execute. When making soup, you'll have to mix in vegetables at specific intervals, but if you don't hit the right spot at the right time, you'll be deducted points. The problem is, the motion to add the vegetables isn't a logical one and I frequently miss the queue during demanding soup recipes.
The microphone is also implemented as a control feature of the game. It's only used in a few features, such as blowing flour to coat a piece of fish or chicken. You blow into the microphone and the recognition works pretty well if you have a
Nintendo DS Lite simply because the microphone is positioned in the middle of the system. If you have a old style
Nintendo DS, it could prove a little more tricky depending on which hand you hold the stylus with.
Graphics
The graphics were pretty decent. The colors are bright and you can always tell what a particular ingredient or cooking utensil is even if you've never used one before in your life. Mama sees to look pretty young for, well a Mama; and certainly one who's a master chef. I envisioned Mama to be more of a 300 pound babushka type, but this game was probably designed more for the Japanese market. She's portrayed in a typical anime style, which seems a little overdone these days, but that's ok. It's really funny when you screw up royally or perfectly prepare an ingredient as she'll literally has fire or stars in her eyes.
The animations aren't anything revolutionary for the Nintendo DS, but you don't need anything spectacular for a game like this. Yeah the animations are a little lacking when you're chopping up some vegetables, but it doesn't really affect the gameplay at all. Other animations like soup preparation are much smoother and really add a little bit of realism to the process.
Sound
I wasn't thrilled with the audio in Cooking Mama the slightest. The sound effects were shrill at times, other times they just didn't correspond with anything logical. Half the time you were wondering what a particular sound meant, whether it was related to the timer or something you accomplished. The music pulls the rare trifecta of sounding like elevator music, yet having the ability to get stuck in your head, while being incredibly loud. I frequently have to tell my daughter to turn off the audio because it's driving me nuts and I can't hear anything else. The audio is by far the worst aspect of Cooking Mama.
Replay
The replay value of Cooking Mama is limited, but there is sufficient reason to play it over and over. First, you unlock new variations on existing dishes by sufficiently preparing the more basic recipes. There's a decent amount of recipes to unlock, but you're still left with plenty of variety out of the box. Second, the variable scoring allows you to set the goal of getting the perfect score on every dish. However, that's no walk in the park, save for the most talented gamers. The bad part is the basic gameplay doesn't lend itself well to strong replayability. Even though there are a variety of preparation techniques, they do become repetitive quickly. Besides, by the time you've invested more than 8-10 hours in this game, you'll have a greater desire to cook something for yourself instead. It's just as fun, and you can eat the rewards (though you also have to clean up too).
Cooking Mama is a good game, and a really good value at $20. It should appeal to many different gamers, especially casual ones. However accomplished gamers will want to rent this game because they'll be finished with it rather quick. I'll also extend that advice to anyone who rents video games as well. With my daughter, this game has lasted well over 20 hours with her and it is still going strong. My wife became bored of it about as quickly as I did, but for different reasons. I was rarely challenged, while she just didn't feel compelled to stick with it. So we'll keep the game for my daughter, but she'll be the only one playing it. That is, until my son starts to use the DS as well.
