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Cooking Mama: Cook Off review

Game: Cooking Mama: Cook Off
Platform: Wii
Genre: Casual (Other)
Developer: Office Create
AKA: Cooking Mama: Minna to Issho ni Oryouri Taikai! (JP)

Reader review by JEFFARGH

October 08, 2007

I'm an actual chef (part time) and I can tell you that it'd be more worth it to just learn to cook. This game isn't really flawed, other than the Wiimote bugging out and flying up when you swing down, but it's not that fun.

The game's premise is this: you're learning to cook with Mama! It's chock-full of minigames that involve waggling the Wiimote back and forth in one direction or another to chop up your ingredients. Other than tracing the direction an arrow points or cracking eggs by swinging the Wiimote in an arc (which isn't responsive at all), that's all you do.

Cooking, for me, is really quite fun. I even look forward to going to work (on the days I'm not on pots--so most days). I played this game for about an hour and a half, put it back in the GameFly envelope, and put it on our sideboard next to the wallet, the pile of change, the keys, and the rest of the leaving-in-the-morning supplies. Cooking Mama, unlike cooking, is simply not fun.

The Wii controls in this game are iffy. As I mentioned before, the cursor will shoot upward, it's imprecise as for slicing, and when you're deep frying, your food items will snag on the edge of the pot and you drop them on the burner. In the events where you had to make a sweeping motion with the Wiimote - any sweeping motion at all - the cursor usually gets stuck somewhere along the way, unsnags once you reach the end of the swing, and flys to the end, thereby smashing the egg, breaking the flan, or whatever you happen to be doing. The Wiimote isn't good for swift, abrupt motions. The best time I had with it was the Warioware-esc minigame where you have to guess an ingredient before a square containing an image of the ingredient clears up in and pour it (and even that wasn't fun). I also liked the chopping sound effect.

For comparisons to the DS version, don't look at me. I didn't play it.

All in all, you're just better off learning to cook. On a 1-10 scale, 5-6.5 being average, this game gets a 4.

...And you can't pause. What's that crap?

Rating: 4/10

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