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IGN Review of Cooking Mama: Cook Off
If you've been paying attention to Nintendo's "casual gamer" push since the very beginning, chances are you already know the name Cooking Mama. Along with games like Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, and Nintendogs, Cooking Mama has worked to make the DS an ageless system, appealing not only to the Mario fanbase, but to the family members of the Mario fan-base. Majesco seems to have found its groove with the series on the portable front, as the medium-rated title is seeing strong sales and a supportive niche crowd of true gamers, as well as casual adopters. With the game moving to Wii, however, there are necessary changes that need to be made to the franchise, and while a few of them work, Cooking Mama may need to see at least one more true evolution before considering it a must-have casual classic on Wii.
It's important to note straight-away that if you're a fan of the original Cooking Mama on DS, you're going to find fun in Cooking Mama: Cook Off for Wii as well. It isn't as solid of a core design (for reasons we'll detail), but it can be nearly as fun as the portable rendition was on DS. But as a true innovator on the platform, and as a game that seeks to appeal to the fun-loving casual crowd, Cooking Mama has some issues that simply can't (and won't) be ignored as well. The series may have been an easy-to-use experience on DS, but some of that magic has definitely been sacrificed when moving to motion control.
With the DS version, Cooking Mama was all about selecting a dish, practicing the elements, and preparing it in front of Mama to be ranked and judged on your DS cooking talent. Each dish is made up of different steps, each essentially a mini-game with a rating system attached to it. Once the dish is finished, you're awarded an overall score and rank, and more recipes are unlocked. Simple, but strangely addictive. On Wii, that formula is added to just a bit. The premise is still the same - cook, cook, cook - but now the game has an overarching "battle" system as well. As more dishes become unlocked players can participate in worldwide battles with cooks from other regions, each specializing in their own key dishes. In addition, any dish in the game can be played in a two-player vs. mode, where the Wii pits chef against chef to see whose cuisine reigns supreme (thank you Iron Chef).
The general consensus: it works. Battles are fun, if not a bit hard for the casual audience. Since the dishes you battle with are available in your main recipe book you can practice them until you feel ready to do battle, and then work to trounce the worldwide competition with your superior culinary skills. The computer vs. matches are fun, as are the multiplayer battles.
What really suffers in the game, however, are the actual cooking actions. Previously the core appeal to the game on DS, the moves needed to perform Wii cooking are a bit less defined. Sure you'll make a chopping motion to cut up onions or clip a frying pan with the flick of the wrist, but since there's no tactile feeling of touching the screen, grabbing the food item, or tracing your cut with a stylus a lot of the immersion in the game is taken away. Half of the moves from the DS game are transitioned into full motions, while others are done with an on-screen cursor. While the full motion control is the obvious evolution for the series it's also where the game suffers a bit, as exact motion recognition can be a bit wonky.
During the classic cheese grating, for example, you need to shift the Wii remote back and forth to grate a virtual block of parmesan. Once the shredder gets clogged up, you shake the Wii remote up and down to clear out the cheese. This action may work 9/10 times, but when it doesn't, it's extremely frustrating. We had moments where quick actions, slow actions, banging the controller on our knee, or smacking it in our hand still wouldn't result in a simply "down/up" motion, and that can be extremely annoying during a heated culinary competition. The result - Cooking Mama: Cook Off has some great moments of control, but also has more than a fair share of detached instances as well, which tend to frustrate.
The biggest problem with the conversion from DS to Wii is the loss of tactile immersion. When you physically grab an egg and crack it with a stylus, you feel like you initiated, carried out, and received a result of your action. On Wii, the Wii-mote isn't your object. Cracking an egg isn't a 1:1 motion, so it ends up being a guessing game. Swinging the controller a little results in a weak crack, whereas too strong of a swing will break the egg open, but you aren't technically holding, moving, and interacting with the egg itself. The end result is similar - learn the motion and execute the move - but the act of actually interacting with the food you're preparing isn't there, and that's a let-down.
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
It's important to note straight-away that if you're a fan of the original Cooking Mama on DS, you're going to find fun in Cooking Mama: Cook Off for Wii as well. It isn't as solid of a core design (for reasons we'll detail), but it can be nearly as fun as the portable rendition was on DS. But as a true innovator on the platform, and as a game that seeks to appeal to the fun-loving casual crowd, Cooking Mama has some issues that simply can't (and won't) be ignored as well. The series may have been an easy-to-use experience on DS, but some of that magic has definitely been sacrificed when moving to motion control.
With the DS version, Cooking Mama was all about selecting a dish, practicing the elements, and preparing it in front of Mama to be ranked and judged on your DS cooking talent. Each dish is made up of different steps, each essentially a mini-game with a rating system attached to it. Once the dish is finished, you're awarded an overall score and rank, and more recipes are unlocked. Simple, but strangely addictive. On Wii, that formula is added to just a bit. The premise is still the same - cook, cook, cook - but now the game has an overarching "battle" system as well. As more dishes become unlocked players can participate in worldwide battles with cooks from other regions, each specializing in their own key dishes. In addition, any dish in the game can be played in a two-player vs. mode, where the Wii pits chef against chef to see whose cuisine reigns supreme (thank you Iron Chef).
The general consensus: it works. Battles are fun, if not a bit hard for the casual audience. Since the dishes you battle with are available in your main recipe book you can practice them until you feel ready to do battle, and then work to trounce the worldwide competition with your superior culinary skills. The computer vs. matches are fun, as are the multiplayer battles.
What really suffers in the game, however, are the actual cooking actions. Previously the core appeal to the game on DS, the moves needed to perform Wii cooking are a bit less defined. Sure you'll make a chopping motion to cut up onions or clip a frying pan with the flick of the wrist, but since there's no tactile feeling of touching the screen, grabbing the food item, or tracing your cut with a stylus a lot of the immersion in the game is taken away. Half of the moves from the DS game are transitioned into full motions, while others are done with an on-screen cursor. While the full motion control is the obvious evolution for the series it's also where the game suffers a bit, as exact motion recognition can be a bit wonky.
During the classic cheese grating, for example, you need to shift the Wii remote back and forth to grate a virtual block of parmesan. Once the shredder gets clogged up, you shake the Wii remote up and down to clear out the cheese. This action may work 9/10 times, but when it doesn't, it's extremely frustrating. We had moments where quick actions, slow actions, banging the controller on our knee, or smacking it in our hand still wouldn't result in a simply "down/up" motion, and that can be extremely annoying during a heated culinary competition. The result - Cooking Mama: Cook Off has some great moments of control, but also has more than a fair share of detached instances as well, which tend to frustrate.
The biggest problem with the conversion from DS to Wii is the loss of tactile immersion. When you physically grab an egg and crack it with a stylus, you feel like you initiated, carried out, and received a result of your action. On Wii, the Wii-mote isn't your object. Cracking an egg isn't a 1:1 motion, so it ends up being a guessing game. Swinging the controller a little results in a weak crack, whereas too strong of a swing will break the egg open, but you aren't technically holding, moving, and interacting with the egg itself. The end result is similar - learn the motion and execute the move - but the act of actually interacting with the food you're preparing isn't there, and that's a let-down.
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved