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Cooking, cooking!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 96 / 100
Date: September 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is a very cute game for the DS. A good one if you've just purchased a DS and want a game that really shows you what a stylus can do. ;) Some recipes are kinda easy, while others proove more challenging. I'm still working on peeling potatoes fast enough. The graphics are very amuzing. I laughed out loud as I spilled water all over the place while trying to drain some pasta. The meals are japanese based...and make you want to go out and make your own gyoza! This is very fun for an adult who likes DS mini games, and it doesn't seem too 'kiddish' as I had feared. I'm so glad this unique japanese game made it to the states. Two thumbs up for Cooking Mama!

Fun new innovative cooking game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 49 / 52
Date: September 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I got this for my girl along with one of the new pink DS Lite and she is loving both the machine and the game. I think anybody that enjoys cooking will probably enjoy this game.

It is basically simple stylus controlled fun little minigames (200+) through which you make 76 real world food items.

It has a great progression so it is easy to learn even if you don't know cooking or don't know how to play games. For example first you learn to make boiled rice which is as simple as adding the right about of water to the pot with a simple minigame... and then if you do that successfully then next you can try making fried rice.

I really like the low price of the game. It should appeal to anybody that enjoys Warioware, Feel the Magic, etc type games.

Fun but simple

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 18
Date: September 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I looked forward to this game coming out here in the USA after I read about the Japanese version, and I have to say I'm glad we got it. It's a fun, quirky game that's simple and quick to play, nice if you've just got a few spare moments to play, doesn't take a lot of concentration and is easy enough to not be frustrating. Mama is pretty forgiving though, she gets a nasty glare if you mess up but then she "fixes" things for you, although she lowers your score if you don't do it right.

Most of the recipes have a Japanese feel to them, which is nice if you wanted the game to be the same as the Japanese version, but maybe not so good if you don't relate to sweet fried eggs or sushi. Also, I think the Japanese version had voices, but this one only has sound effects (not sure, but in the videos of the Japanese version there was talking, it might have just been narration though.)

The only main drawback is that it might just be a bit TOO easy, the only real challenge is trying to get higher level medals. But the price is right, and I wish more quirky games from Japan made it to the US.

Let's get Cooking with Mama ...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: September 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is so much FUN !! I read a review on a website and thought at first this game must be lame just by the name but curiousity got me and I purchased the game. I was wrong ... totally wrong !! It's more fun than a barrel of monkeys. You follow easy instructions to cook many different japanese inspired dishes. Many of wish my Mama cooks all the time so it kinda hit me in the heart to learn to cook all of my Mama's dishes through a DS. I really enjoy it a lot and you should BUY IT !!!

Fun game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: September 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When I first came home with this game and tried it, I thought it was going to be kind of dumb. But it is lots of fun and kind of addicting. I even got my 11yr old son doing some of the cooking. Plus it is a good price.

Kitchen Madness

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 147 / 155
Date: September 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I won't say that Cooking Mama is the best game I've played in recent months. Surely, there's something more important than cooking - like, killing zombies on the X360, for example. However, it's certainly the most innovative, especially when you consider how much you can do on the limited dimensions of a Nintendo DS touch screen.

In Cooking Mama, you're an apprentice in the fine art of cuisine management. Your master, a certain Mama, will put you through a series of saliva-inducing recipes, and will grill you through the preparation of each as if it's the only thing you live for. You can choose to practise before hand, but when you go into the actual process of making a particular food, you'll find that there's no room for error. A wrong move, and Mama will not hesitate to show you her wrath.

Making a food involves several steps. Some are short, while some may take forever. For example, when preparing a pan-fried fish, you'll have to go through the coating of the fish slices, the melting of the butter, the actual pan-frying and the arranging of the plate. Each process in turn involves different ways of doing things. Coating the fish slices, for example, requires you to drag your stylus in a left-right manner while touching the fish. Melting the butter requires you to rapidly drag the butter in a circular motion when it's on a hot plate. Pan-frying involves a "following the command on-screen" mini-game that requires you to perform whatever Mama tells you to, and so on.

The impressive thing here is that, even though you're just stroking your stylus throughout the game's 70+ recipes, you're essentially doing different things. It's a bit like Trauma Centre from last year, but instead of seeing body parts, you're looking at food. If you're more adventurous, you can even combine recipes to form new ones, which adds depth to the gameplay.

For a game as quirky as this, it's understandable that it uses quirky graphics. The presentation of Cooking Mama is light-hearted, and makes the hectic process of cooking (to me, at least) much more enjoyable. The music is a little weak, even though it does have some nice variety. But seriously, graphics and audios are not what you'd buy this game for. I mean, who cares about these things when you've Fried Octopus Balls to make?

For its sheer audacity in bringing the kitchen onto the DS, I'd recommend Cooking Mama to every owner of the DS. Don't expect to see your DS in a few weeks, however, if you bought this game, and have a missus in the house. Now, if only my wife can learn a few tips out of this.

Fun, but where's the beef?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: September 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Cooking Mama is esentially a series of cooking mini-games strung together to form 'recipes' for dishes. It's an enjoyable game but it lacks enough depth to be truely replayable. When enjoyed casually I think this game could last a while, but aside from these dishes there is little else to do. I found myself wanting to unlock more than recipes, to find new ways of using my cooking practice. One way this game could have easily been made a classic would have been to add some competitive play to it. How about Iron Chef matches or Wi-Fi tournaments? But there's not much to this game once the novelty wears off, which for me was about 6 hours later. I've come back to it casually but not for more than a few minutes here and there. It is, however, well worth the $20 price tag.

Mesmerizing Monotony

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 19
Date: October 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The problem I've noticed with a lot of DS games is that they totally lack any kind of replay value. Out of the five games I've bought since I got this hand held, I've only kept two of them. The main problem I've noticed is that the games where either too repetative or the difficulty was skewed towards being too difficult or too easy. Cooking Mama embodies both of this common problems, as once the novelty of the touch screen control weares off, there is very little substance remaining.

Cooking Mama is about cooking, of course. As you complete recipes, new ones become available for a total of 76 unique dishes. After unlocking of those, you can combine two recipes for even more complex and difficult culinary challenges, and practice certain cooking skills. It may seem on paper that there is a lot to do here, but in reality there really isn't. Each recipe is broken down into a series of steps, each step representing a beat the clock mini-game. Here in lies Cooking Mama's main problem. The mini-games are really repetative. You'll see seeing a lot of the same one's over and over again, sometimes twice in the same recipe. Cut the vegetables, boil the ingredients, slice meat, dry fry the food. The recipe unique games are few and far between. And goodness help you if really hate one of the games that pop up frequently. I can't stand the game where a series of intrustions scrolls across the top screen and you must perform the action just as it passes over this little line. It's not hard or anything, just annoying and sometimes you can do it up to three times per recipe.

The DS cartridge is capable of holding ports of 3D Nintendo 64 games so there really is no excuse why Cooking Mama only seems to have about 30 mini-games total. Some of the challenges are utterly ridiculous too. One game has you imputting the number of minutes Mama tells you to onto a microwave. It's no challenge at all, and its the kind of activity that belongs on a Speak-N-Spell. In fact most of the mini-games really aren't very challenging. The only one that I ever found difficult was the game where you have to coat meat in bread crumbs because it takes forever to do it.

Cooking Mama is okay for its low price, but after a few days I imagine you will put it away and never look at it again.

Fun... even for older kids!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: October 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Hi, I am 11 yrs old, and my next door neighboor's little sister got a pink nintendo lite. She is 6 yrs old and she recieved it for her birthday. With the nintendo ds lite, she recieved cooking mama. I started to play it, and it was really fun! It is fun to get new recipies and prepare the food. My favorite is making the pizza, and beef stew.

The Best of Fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 24
Date: October 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

My mom got this game for me. I liked it except for my mom said it will rot my brains. I said she's an old hag with ugly feet. Because this game is a best seller in most places, ok? It's funny when you do badly on it and give everyone the farts! When you do good everyone is happy! I wish there were some guns in it though because the girl is annyoing and I wish she could be died!

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