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Cooking Mama: World Kitchen
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Graphics & Sound:
I cannot cook. In all the history of people who have not been able to cook (armless men, blind mole rats, and those that have scissors for hands), I am listed at the top for abysmal cooking. I have made "pumpkin pie" that tasted a bit like spoiled milk - although, most people would have rather drank the chunky milk - chocolate cornbread (corn meal looks so much like flour!), and I have set no less than five fire alarms off in four different places. When I say I am cooking, people literally run. Cooking Mama: World Kitchen is no different. I cannot play it. However, I can sit back and look at the cute pictures on my television.
The graphics are a bit cel-shaded-ish, and so mega cute! The characters have sparkly eyes, massive heads, and no pixels to be found. Backdrops for the mini-games are appropriately set in a bright cheery kitchen (until you screw up and royally pee on Cooking Mama's parade). The animations are cute and easy to follow, and you really know when you did something wrong. If you lose, the entire upper screen does that fun, blue-lined wall of doom that animes like to use.
Music for the game is cute, but after a while, I started listening to The Guild in the background. The characters tend to repeat the same stupid phrases over and over again, and at such close intervals that you want to shove a potato into their mouths and mash it. The chick I chose kept going "seriously!" every time I mucked up... and there was quite a bit of that. |
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Gameplay:
Cooking Mama: World Kitchen should be insanely fun. It should be, and it can be, but for the most part, it was frustrating. There is no tutorial (only a black and white, hard to read page in the manual); this is obnoxious. Apparently, games imitate life, because I cannot cook in the game either. By the time it takes me to figure out which way to hold the Wii-mote, and which way to swing it, the time is up, Cooking Mama is yelling at me, and I have failed the mission. When I am doing the game correctly, it is still a bit frustrating. The mini-games are about ten seconds long... but so are the loading screens in between each stage of cooking.
The flipping, slicing, spreading, burning my hands because I didn't shake the Wii-Mote quickly enough, are all so promising, but it just falls short. I don't want to wait eight hours between each part of making my potato balls... especially when Cooking Mama's eyes are on fire and she is screaming at me for burning my own hands. Is she really that upset? I mean, I'm the one that is going to need to pay tons of medical bills because I have third degree burns.
You can create your own character, which is neat. There isn't much to it, however, but it is still fun to have blue hair! You can either cook with Mama (not recommended if you don't want fire eyes of doom shot at you), or with an actual person or character on the Wii. The girl I cooked for in the "Let's Cook!" section was not impressed with my cookies. At all.
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Difficulty:
Cooking Mama: World Kitchen is only hard because it takes so long to figure out the controls, and they aren't always responsive. Don't misunderstand me, if you are in a group, or bored and want to make zero-calorie cookies, Cooking Mama: World Kitchen is entertaining. If you are expecting an awesome onslaught of mini-game goodness... you will be left disappointed. I was doing really well at one point, and a circle popped up on the screen. I, of course, began circling my Wii-mote... but nothing would happen! Mama started screaming at me, my food burnt a hole in my hands, and I lost the game and had to start again (after four hours of wait time).
After you get the hang of the controls (if you manage to get past the frustration of it), it is actually pretty easy. The only real challenge comes from guessing if the game will react to your controls in time to smash the potato or get your hand out of the boiling water. I spent a lot of time smashing my stick into the cutting board instead of on potatoes. If you have heart problems, or find that shaking your arms around vigorously gives you heart problems... you might want to look toward the DS Cooking Mama. Not only does the shaking and tilting wear you out after an hour or so, but the learning curve gets your blood pressure up as well. This would be a great-paced game for people just getting into games (older or younger), or people trying to recover from cooking-a-phobia. Just don't let them see Mama when she gets angry!
The difficulty comes from trying to time things correctly, and trying to achieve your goal in a set amount of time. Only mashed 45 potatoes instead of 46? Too bad! You still fail! If you have a really poor response time, this game will drive you nuts. On the up side, it might improve your slowness and help you to become a ninja.
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Game Mechanics:
Ok, the controls for Cooking Mama: World Kitchen are fun, but slightly awkward. They definitely take full advantage of the movement sensing. There are four ways to hold the Wii-mote: One is the "Normal" way, which is facing the screen with the control pad on top. Two is held vertically: facing the screen with the control pad toward yourself. There is also two types of horizontal positions. Position one is with the control pad toward yourself and two is with it on top. Then, with these basic positions, there are seven ways to wiggle the Wii-mote to get it to slice, dice, peel, mash, spread, boiled, cover, steam, and chop. You can shake it left and right, up and down, back and forth, in a circle, press the (A) button, the (B) button, or tilt the remote.
Cooking Mama: World Kitchen was fun, and it helped me kill some time after watching the nutcracker, but I can tell that if I was in a bad mood, I would burn this game to the ground. I do not like unresponsive games; especially without a tutorial and with a slow load screen in between each mega-fast fail fest. Granted, I may be blaming my woeful response time on the game, and it wasn't such an issue that it killed the gameplay. It just added to the frustration at times. This would be a really fun game to play with a grandkid or niece/nephew. You could cook together without burning the house down. Too bad it doesn't actually teach you the recipe as you go along.
All in all, a fun game if you have patience and don't mind a slight learning curve (slight as in climbing a mountain) while you get used to what the stupid icons want you to do when they pop up. It is all trial and tons of error, but you will eventually get the hang of it and, hopefully, impress at least one of your Cooking Mama friends! |
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-Phate Kills, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Field |
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