The minigames in Cooking Mama can be quite fun
Cooking Mama on DS personified the broader market push of the wonderkid handheld. A cutesy cooking minigame compilation? In another time it would have tanked, but the tactile control method offered by the DS' stylus, combined with an established audience of both casual and established gamers willing to try something different led to it being a hit. The Wii game, known as Cooking Mama: Cook Off in the US but simply Cooking Mama again here, is a re-mix of the same idea, but with motion control in place of the original's stylus controls. And given much of the mainstream appeal of the Wii is local multiplayer, Cooking Mama for Wii also has a multiplayer mode and an overall focus on competition.
The basics are still the same – you select a dish, then work your way through a series of simple, Warioware style minigames which roughly translate to various stages of preparation and cooking of that dish, such as cutting an onion by making a cutting motion, frying ingredients in a pan with a stir-fry motion, or stirring a pot of sauce with a stirring motion. An anime 'home style chef' called Mama rates you on your performance on each stage, as well as overall, and you'll need to complete each stage within a certain time limit to proceed. As you complete dishes, more become available – there are 55 in all, with 300 individual minigames. New to the Wii version is a battle theme, where you'll have to play against cooks 'from all over the world' (although they all still sound very Japanese), and you can also play any of the recipes in two player mode.
Competition is the order of the day.
So far, so good, but there are some problems with the transition from DS to Wii. The game is controlled with the Remote only, and many of the minigames require you to use the pointer just like the DS' stylus with the aid of an on screen cursor, such as precision slicing, while others require motions, such as chopping. The best stages are the more involved ones that require a series of steps in time with a scrolling timer on the bottom of the screen. In these stages, you must do things like adjust the heat, add spices, and stir.
The more involved steps are about time management
The motion sections are much more fun than the 'pointer' sections, but neither is implemented perfectly. This is a shame, as the DS version controlled flawlessly. Many of the motions can work fine, but it's often difficult to tell exactly what motion the game wants from you – cracking an egg requires a precise sideways rotation at the exact right speed, and it can be very difficult to get it exactly right. Wii Play's shooting game shows how razor-sharp pointer control can be, but here it can feel slippery and loose. These are both forgivable, but sometimes the game just seems to get stuck. Once or twice we swore our sensor bar wasn't working when the peeler simply refused to follow our orders, but a quick press of the home button to bring up the Wii menu and cursor showed us there was nothing wrong with our set-up. Similar problems pop up in motion based activities, the primary culprit being a grating minigame, which works fine until you have to 'shake' free a clogged grater, and it simply doesn't register half the time. Luckily none of these minor bugs a deal breakers, as you can usually finish the recipe anyway, but especially in competition it feels unfair when you simply get stuck through seemingly no fault of your own.
But the biggest problem is that it can just get boring. In an effort to give the game more substance than the DS original, the recipes can be quite long, and sometimes you have to do a very similar action over and over. The tension of competition can keep it going for a while, but after a few hours some of the minigames can feel like actual work. The pacing doesn't help – after each minigame you're dumped back to the recipe menu to receive instruction on the next, so you can't even immerse yourself in the game for more than one minute at a time. The finicky motions and extremely wordy descriptions of each step will be an impediment to younger children playing the game without the assistance of an adult, surely an audience that the game would otherwise serve well. And it's not going to last very long for anyone. Even if you do complete every recipe, you'll have done certain minigames dozens of times by that point, and there's only a few hours of content. It has some legs as a simple multiplayer game, but only if you've exhausted Warioware Smooth Moves.
Unfortunately, sometimes the game just doesn't do what you told it to.
Graphically, Cooking Mama for Wii shows its DS heritage with a very simple look, but it's pleasing on the eyes. It's anime-meets Saturday morning cartoon look is a little rough around the edges – the polygonal models of the ingredients are simple in both geometry and textures, and there is often some dithering around the thick black outlines of anything 3D, but the bright, cheerful 2D art of the backgrounds as well as Mama and the other characters is pleasant. Sonically, the game features an unobtrusive upbeat soundtrack, and basic but inoffensive sound effects. Mama's running commentary on your actions will be either a high or low point depending on your love of Engrish - the Japanese voice actors can barely pronounce much of what's said, and sometimes say things that don't even make sense. We loved it to start with, but it did start to grate somewhat after a few hours.
Overall, Cooking Mama for Wii would still be a decent pick-up for minigame fans or kids, but at full retail price it can't be recommended. It's a nice idea, it's cute, and it's sometimes fun, but the lack of longevity and control problems mean it's just not worth it. If you're interested in the game, we suggest you pick up the DS version – while it doesn't have the multiplayer appeal, it's mechanically superior and half the price.
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