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.
This game is really great. The beginning recipes are easy, but they get harder as you unlock new ones. I always am exited when I get to see what new things they have you cook. The combination mode also lets you be creative with the recipes, letting you make a more unique dish. The graphics are also really cute. It is just a really good game to unwind with. The skill mastry levels are also quite challenging once you get into them.
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.
"Purchased for my 11 year old daughter as first game for nintendo dsi - she enjoys."
"This is a very nice game for kids and my kids love it. Very fast shipping.."
