Cooking Mama: World Kitchen Review

During that first year with my Nintendo Wii, I fell in love with the Cooking Mama: Cook Off game.  I was instantly drawn to it because I love to cook but also because I have met plenty of female cooks during my travels to Osaka who have referred to themselves as “mama.”  The food they served in their little restaurants rivals any I’ve had in any fine dining restaurant.

I wanted to be a “cooking mama” too so I bought the game.  Sure, I couldn’t understand half of what she said as I attempted to move from one recipe to another but I didn’t care – her incoherent Japanese accent was part of the charm.

I’ve had that game for a while now and I still haven’t made all of the recipes, nor have I mastered the ones I did complete (I can’t get past “Try Harder” for the popcorn, but I digress…).  Still, I wanted to try Cooking Mama: World Kitchen so I got it.

The first thing I noticed is that Cooking Mama’s accent has been toned down – a lot!  Sometimes, she doesn’t even sound like she has a Japanese accent but, instead, is suffering from some sort of language confusion.  I was disappointed by that but I let it go.  Before I get into the things that I disliked, I would like to focus on the positive.

I like that you can customize your character.  Actually, it’s nice to have a face at all since in the first Cooking Mama game, all we had were hands (if anything at all – sometimes the salt and pepper just shook themselves!).

Along the same grain, I like that you have to do small things like put your tray into the oven and close the door or put the lid on the blender while you are preparing food, much like you have to do in real life.

I also like some of the new things you have to do to make your meals like use a meat slicer (pictured at left).

I LOVE that you don’t have to be perfect to get a gold medal.  Instead of going on the number of points you have (and whether you got “Very Good” “Good” or “Try Harder”), it uses a percentage to determine how much of the recipe you did correctly.  If you get 90% or higher, you get your gold medal.  I think it’s more fair.  There have been times on the old game where I got “Very Good” on everything except for one step and I had to settle for a silver.  Not fair.

The recipes are good too.  I prefer the ones in the first game but it is nice to make drinks like fruit juice in this one.  Also, if you are doing something like making kebobs (pictured above), you actually have to go outside to a barbeque which makes it more realistic.

There are drawbacks, however.  Some are similar to those present in the first game (like unrealistic cooking techniques such as catching meat that is falling from the sky) but others are just unnecessary.  For example, if you make a club sandwich, you not only have to use a toaster that shoots the bread hit into the air (and you must catch it) but you’ve also got to catch the meat, tomatoes and other ingredients as they fall from mid-air.  As if that is not bad enough, you’ve got to keep the plate steady so that the sandwich doesn’t topple over.  If it does, Cooking Mama shows up and tries to rescue your sandwich.  If she succeeds (you’re controlling her), then you don’t lose any points which, really, is a good feature of the game.

Another thing that disappointed me was the format of the actual game.  The first problem is that the original one had the recipes laid out in a cook book.  It was organized, neater and was more relevant to cooking.  Now the recipes are just thrown together in no particular way and you can go from screen to screen to see all of them.

I also disliked how the “Let’s Cook” section of the game worked.  In the older version, two players could cook at the same time using a split-screen.  This doesn’t allow that.  You can do activities together in the Cooking Contest section but it’s just little things like making rice or chipping ice.  This was probably the most discouraging change.

Despite it’s shortcomings, Cooking Mama: World Kitchen is a fun game and is a bit more challenging and realistic than the first.  It’s perfect for the whole family too!

images: Nintendo.com