Cooking Mama has become a staple of the Nintendo DS and Wii lineup as being fun for the whole family and slightly addicting. How does this title stack up in the Cooking Mama franchise? Can Mama keep on cooking, or should she hang up her apron?
Well let me reassure you Cooking Mama fans young and old, it is still addicting as ever. Once you get started you will want to keep playing and trying out all the difference recipes and different mini-games the title has to offer (200 in total). The very smart and innovative development team did some amazing concepts with the DS and its Stylus. For instance, you have to check and taste test a strand of spagettei in one of the recipes. So in order to get it to the right edible temperature you blow on your DS screen and the game reads it and makes a cool effect like your blowing it down. It’s really cool. Trust me. The real downside comes with the voice acting, I mean sure it’s essentially a Japanese game but they could have done better by using new voice actors to record the maybe 50 lines of spoken dialogue. Other than that the game is really all about sticking to Cooking Mama’s roots.
The game contains multiple game modes, ‘Cook With Mama’ the primary game mode that takes you through every dish and gives you a medal and score rank at the end and depending on your score/medal you unlock a new dish to cook. ‘Let’s Cook’ is a game mode where you choose who to cook for, Grandma or David and your goal is to please them with your dishes. ‘Let’s Match’ has the player match any two ingredients and choose practice to play any mini-games related to the ingredients. ‘Let’s Shop’ is a fun little time waster has you running around looking for key ingredients in a grocery store while avoiding annoying taste testers and other various objects that in-turn start mini games. ‘Cooking Contest’ allows you to either play against a friend in wireless or against the clock in 16 different mini-games to see how many you can get done in the allotted time. You can also keep notes in the in game diary or dress up Mama with different articles of her costume or redecorate the kitchen with items you unlock by completing more recipes.
For a DS game, it offers a lot of value and a lot of replay value to overall package. When you purchase it you are getting over 80 total recipes, over 200 mini-games across 5 different game modes and the ability to dress up Mama and her kitchen however you want it. For everyone young and old this is a great game if you’re bored at work or on break. It’s fun for everyone in the whole family. So give it a try it’s just what Mama ordered.
