If you're ever feeling like a failure in the kitchen, there's a handy $20 remedy for you: Cooking Mama. Even the most demanding culinary tasks are made straightforward in this game, almost to the point of failure.
It's true: I almost didn't play enough of Cooking Mama to actually write this review. Maybe it's the skills I've built up obsessing over games like Feel the Magic: XY♥XX and Wario Ware Touched!, but while I was working my way through the first dozen or so recipes, I nearly drove myself to boredom over the lack of challenge.
That's not to say Cooking Mama didn't get any better: it did, and was still occasionally a fun diversion, but it seems to be so primarily by playing off the sheer variety coming from the 76 recipes that the game will gradually unlock as you clear other recipes, and through the carefully meted-out introduction of new cooking minigames those new recipes introduce every so often.
How this variety introduction works: Cooking Mama's "Let's Cook" mode, the primary game mode, consists of a set of minigames strung together by the recipe you're making. For example, if you opt to make boiled eggs, you'll first play the "Measure and Add" game to fill the pot up exactly to the dotted line (by toggling the faucet on and off to fill the measuring cup, then dragging the measuring cup over the pot to empty it). Next up is one of many variations on a game that has you following scrolling directions on the top screen--things like mix (stir with your stylus), blow (self-explanatory), and add (tap the ingredient to drop it into the pot). Finally, you'll tap the boiled eggs to crack and remove their shells (one of a small handful of examples of highly-recipe-specific minigames), and voilà : you're done. The variety comes in as new minigames are introduced for new recipes, and as you play them in different sequences.
The simple problem here is that it's near-impossible (for me, perhaps?) to do so poorly that I get anything less than a silver medal on my first try. I originally started playing the game by going through the practice option available on each recipe, which gave me the option to practice to perfection every step before I actually went in to "make" the food. That rapidly proved itself to reduce the game from somewhat repetitive to sheer boredom, so I opted instead to jump straight into making the dish every time. It's still rare that I score low enough to get a bronze medal on the recipe—silvers and golds (perfect) are far more likely.
To try to mix things up a bit, two new game modes are added. The first entirely fails at mixing anything up: "Let's Combine". A set of unlocked recipes are presented, and after you choose one, you can choose another recipe to add to it from another set. Whether the recipe will taste good or not doesn't seem to be factored into anything: the game simply has you make one, then the other, then shows you a picture of the two together. The other mode, "Use Skill" will let you revisit many of the minigames and challenge yourself in a far more hardcore fashion than the pitifully easy challenge the main game mode provides. Unfortunately, these go too rapidly from "easy" to "more than the touchscreen can handle" far too fast.
Still... despite all this... simply playing the minigames is fun, in short bursts. Developer Office Create really did make an entertaining set of cooking minigames to play. It's a shame that they then packaged them up in such a mediocre fashion; I suspect that marrying higher difficulty with some more creative modes like an Iron Chef-style battle where you have to create the best dishes from the ingredients you are given would have made an awesome package. Really, any number of more creative ways of tying the package together would have improved it tremendously.
It's true: I almost didn't play enough of Cooking Mama to actually write this review. Maybe it's the skills I've built up obsessing over games like Feel the Magic: XY♥XX and Wario Ware Touched!, but while I was working my way through the first dozen or so recipes, I nearly drove myself to boredom over the lack of challenge.
That's not to say Cooking Mama didn't get any better: it did, and was still occasionally a fun diversion, but it seems to be so primarily by playing off the sheer variety coming from the 76 recipes that the game will gradually unlock as you clear other recipes, and through the carefully meted-out introduction of new cooking minigames those new recipes introduce every so often.
How this variety introduction works: Cooking Mama's "Let's Cook" mode, the primary game mode, consists of a set of minigames strung together by the recipe you're making. For example, if you opt to make boiled eggs, you'll first play the "Measure and Add" game to fill the pot up exactly to the dotted line (by toggling the faucet on and off to fill the measuring cup, then dragging the measuring cup over the pot to empty it). Next up is one of many variations on a game that has you following scrolling directions on the top screen--things like mix (stir with your stylus), blow (self-explanatory), and add (tap the ingredient to drop it into the pot). Finally, you'll tap the boiled eggs to crack and remove their shells (one of a small handful of examples of highly-recipe-specific minigames), and voilà : you're done. The variety comes in as new minigames are introduced for new recipes, and as you play them in different sequences.
The simple problem here is that it's near-impossible (for me, perhaps?) to do so poorly that I get anything less than a silver medal on my first try. I originally started playing the game by going through the practice option available on each recipe, which gave me the option to practice to perfection every step before I actually went in to "make" the food. That rapidly proved itself to reduce the game from somewhat repetitive to sheer boredom, so I opted instead to jump straight into making the dish every time. It's still rare that I score low enough to get a bronze medal on the recipe—silvers and golds (perfect) are far more likely.
To try to mix things up a bit, two new game modes are added. The first entirely fails at mixing anything up: "Let's Combine". A set of unlocked recipes are presented, and after you choose one, you can choose another recipe to add to it from another set. Whether the recipe will taste good or not doesn't seem to be factored into anything: the game simply has you make one, then the other, then shows you a picture of the two together. The other mode, "Use Skill" will let you revisit many of the minigames and challenge yourself in a far more hardcore fashion than the pitifully easy challenge the main game mode provides. Unfortunately, these go too rapidly from "easy" to "more than the touchscreen can handle" far too fast.
Still... despite all this... simply playing the minigames is fun, in short bursts. Developer Office Create really did make an entertaining set of cooking minigames to play. It's a shame that they then packaged them up in such a mediocre fashion; I suspect that marrying higher difficulty with some more creative modes like an Iron Chef-style battle where you have to create the best dishes from the ingredients you are given would have made an awesome package. Really, any number of more creative ways of tying the package together would have improved it tremendously.