In a time when DS games had you performing surgery or solving murder mysteries Cooking Mama stood out as a quirky title about making food. I always figured it was one of those titles that tried to cash in on the DS craze so I avoided it. Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends was recently released and I figured it was time to see what all the fuss was about. The most ironic thing about the game is I found myself playing it while waiting for things to cook in the real kitchen.
The basic premise of the game to cook fast, and to cook accurately. The idea is you are presented with a bunch of recipes, and each recipe is broken down into a step. Each step is basically a mini-game. Does the recipe call for diced onions? There’s a little dicing mini game to play. Does the recipe require skewered eel? Then there’s a little eel skewering mini game. Perhaps you need to blend corn? You get the idea. With 80 some recipes in the game, there are over 150 different mini games. And while the variety of the mini-games follow a few basic patterns, there seems to be enough variety to keep you interested for quite some time. From dicing, stirring, chopping, tossing, spreading, and combining ingredients each mini-game has a unique hook to it that is strangely addicting. Some games require a memory type mechanism, others require your ability to recognize blurry pictures while most of them are basically using the stylus to mimic some sort of motion. Cooking Mama 2 has you cooking not only with Mama, but Mama’s friends for a variety of different recipes. Each step in a recipe has a set time it needs to be completed in, and the faster and more accurate you complete the step the higher your rating is. Eventually you’ll earn medals and unlock content to help customize your kitchen and cook new recipes. Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends also has the ability to have a cooking contest with friends using just 1 cartridge. Just think, you can have your very own Iron Chef Cook-off without the mess!
While the game is strangely addictive, there are a few quirks. In some of the mini-games it isn’t very apparent what the game wants you to do. I also would have loved to see the actual recipes for the dishes so you can actually cook the food (in real life). And while Cooking Mama 2 is a solid title on it’s own, but from what I hear it’s not all that different from the original.
Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends is your quintessential Nintendo DS game. It’s quick pickup and play design, combined with some inventive uses for the stylus make it strangely addicting and fun. If you are looking for a game that’s a great distraction, and to fill those few minutes while you nuke a pizza in the microwave, look no further than Cooking Mama 2. And who knows…soon you might be cooking “Even better than mama!”
Score: 3.5 out of 5
Buy it at Amazon!
