Gardening Mama for Nintendo DS Reviews by Gamers

The Cooking Mama series has coasted by for several years now solely on the titular character's charm and thick Japanese accent. There certainly isn't a lot of intriguing gameplay in these mini-game collections. But the art style is adorable and Mama's always-encouraging words act as a suitable reward for putting up with the usually wonky controls and shallow gameplay. Now Mama is venturing out of the kitchen and into the garden. The formula remains the same in Gardening Mama, but the lack of explanation for many of the included tasks ruins this casual effort.



Mama will walk you through the steps of planting seeds and harvesting fruits and vegetables, all of which is done with simple touch screen controls. Nothing in this game requires more than a quick swish of your stylus. The controls are too elementary, really. Younger gamers may not mind reducing the art of gardening to a mere tap of a touch screen, but for the rest of us it gets old fast. The touch controls don't even work every time and the game won't register some of your taps and slides.



But the juvenile controls aren't the real problem here. Many of the tasks can be explained with a simple onscreen icon. But there are also steps that aren't explained, and you'll have no idea how to fulfill them. One such task requires you to dig with a shovel, but the game wants specific sizes of dirt clumps. To dig, all you do is draw a line down the shovel with your stylus. But how do you determine the amount you shovel? The game doesn't feel like explaining that. After playing this particular mini-game several times, it is still a mystery to me. Way, way too often you will fail a task in Gardening Mama and have no idea why. There is always an option to practice a step before you do it for real, but there is still no explanation of what we are supposed to do.



There is a wide variety of tasks to be done in Gardening Mama, and you'll soon have several projects going at once. You can plant seeds in one spot, then tend to a wilting flower in another, mix some fertilizer, then return to see how those seeds are doing. I do appreciate the freedom to take on tasks in the order of my choosing. There is also a healthy assortment of steps (mini-games) to perform – although, as I mentioned before, many of them are flat out broken.



Single-cart multiplayer is available, allowing you and a friend to compete in timed gardening challenges. All of the game's challenges are unlocked in this mode, so you're free to jump right into even advanced mini-games.



After all these years, Mama is still a charmer. If you fail a challenge (through no fault of your own), she's there with a quick word of encouragement -- spoken in a nearly unintelligible Japanese accent. It is adorable, and these games are usually worth spending a little time with if just to hear Mama's voice. The art style is also super cute.

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