Platform	DS
	Genre	Family Fun
	Publisher	Majesco / 505 Gamestreet
	Rating	8.6 / 10

Review

Now we’re cooking with gas! Cooking Mama is one of those games where someone describes the premise of the game and you think to yourself “What the heck?” or “That sounds rubbish!” but it is actually one of the most fun games on the Nintendo DS.

In Cooking Mama you must chop, slice, dice, fry, sauté and sizzle your way through 70 or so recipes using the touch screen to perform each of the said actions. The game takes on a Wario Ware Touched style where you have several different types of mini-game, all involving the touch-screen or microphone in order to perform the right action. Each recipe is broken down into its fundamental actions and in order to get a gold medal you have to perform each action to perfection. So if it’s some pan fried vegetables you fancy then first you have to tear your cabbage leaves off the cabbage, and then you have to pull the ends of your bean sprouts, and then slice your carrots and so on and so forth. Once you have worked your way through the main recipes you can then become a real chef and combine the individual recipes to make a full meal; Pork curry and boiled rice anyone? Mixing the main recipes means the game isn’t over when you’ve mastered the basics; it allows you to extend the life of the game and replay what you’ve already done but at a completely different angle.

Let’s not forget that Cooking Mama is a game and doesn’t teach you real recipes, which is a real shame as being taught how to cook whilst playing a game would be genius. However, what it does do is teach people the fundamentals. If a 10 year old child was to pick up this game it would surely prepare them for the real world of culinary needs.

Cooking Mama is nothing but fun all the way through, although the basics are reused and repeated here and there, you still get a joy out of chopping the carrot, or slicing the pork. If you feel you need to brush up on a certain skill, Cooking Mama also lets you enter the ‘Use Skill’ mode in which you use just one skill at varying difficulties which become progressively more difficult; yet another feature that extends the game’s life.

When you think of top selling DS titles you wouldn’t expect to find a game about cooking to be up there with the rest. Well it is, and it has sold a whole heck of a lot. When Taito showed off Cooking Mama at E3 2006 it was well received by everyone and it even won IGN’s coveted ‘Best of E3’ award. It has also been a key factor in Majesco Entertainment’s current profit increases.

Cooking Mama proves that simple ideas, done well, become the most fun games to play.