However, it’s not all such good news. Although there is a huge variety of recipes, each with their own ingredients, preparation steps and cooking techniques, there are a limited number of ways you can move the stylus on the screen to perform tasks and the subject matter fails to disguise the repetition (where other mini-game-based titles have succeeded). Chopping an onion as quickly as possible (by flicking the stylus along it) is very similar to chopping a leek as quickly as possible. Stirring a stir-fry with a certain set of ingredients is fairly similar to stirring another with a different set of ingredients. Shelling a langoustine is very similar to preparing a piece of meat (well, it is in Cooking Mama). Peeling a carrot is the same as peeling a potato.
Where the games stand out is through the use of a time factor in most cases. Taking too long to complete a task and burning the ingredients is just as risky as undercooking the meat. For example, you might have to dunk some dough balls into the deep fry. Taking them out too early or too late will lose the gold medal and burning them will sacrifice it completely. Stirring a pot, aiming for a sufficient speed at the end of the time limit is all important, letting off the stirring rate to keep that speed. As is beating some eggs to the right consistency within a time limit, but if they are over-beaten, there’s no going back and the egg mixture is ruined. It’s not always intuitive though – cooking onions takes less time than cooking chicken in the game, but in real-life, you’d want to leave the onions on to start going brown, but without burning them, before starting the rest of the curry recipe. So it grates slightly that it’s sometimes more a case of trying a mini-game once, figuring it out and then perfecting it the next time. The GBA-style graphics are clean and crisp enough to ensure it’s always clear what to do, apart from in the “rhythm-action-alike” sections (that don’t have any rhythm), in which it will take a few tries to figure out which actions are needed when points on a scrolling bar on the top screen reach a marker. In the unlikely event it is too tricky to work out, there are some great resources on the web to help you through.
Sometimes to spice up the proceedings, an option will pop-up during a recipe, allowing the player to increase the complexity a bit. This fails to really crank up the excitement at the same time though, but it will unlock a new dish on the menu. New food choices are also unlocked just by completing the ones that are initially unlocked. It won’t take long to see them all though and the draw of getting gold medals across the range is not strong. Mini-game styles completed within the main game recipes then become available to try out on their own and here it becomes even more apparent that the number of game styles is very limited even though the ingredients look different. Even the ability to combine different recipes for an extended cooking session gives little incentive to replay Cooking Mama once it’s had the first run through.
It’s not particularly expensive and it will be a budget title when released in the rest of the world, which would make up for the lack of substance in the game somewhat. However, although there are a few clever mini-game ideas worth seeing, overall it will not hold your interest for long, which is disappointing since the whole concept of using the DS touch screen to control your way around the kitchen seems so natural.