Max the mouse wants to be the best chef in the world. He’s visited Paris to find the best. However he’s told he needs a special cookbook toMax the mouse wants to be the best chef in the world. He’s visited Paris to find the best. However he’s told he needs a special cookbook to learn the finest recipes, which has had pages torn out. As Max you travel around Paris offering help to those that need it in order to recover the missing pages while hoping you don’t end up on the menu. Good luck, it’s a jungle out there!
Every now and again playing HOGs and HOPAS you think you’ve seen it all. It’s no secret there’s a certain predictable charm to be had with the genre. That’s fine yet nothing could prepare me for Alawar’s Mystery Cookbook (2008). It’s one of those rare times Alawar must have asked their developers to come up with something a little...different and different is definitely what we got. Going from one restaurant or food store to another finding pages of an almost mythical cookbook makes perfect sense for this type of game and hey it’s set in Paris so all the characters have French accents. What’s wrong with that? It only takes the first screen to realise every character in this world is populated by talking animals. You play as a mouse; no not a telltale I mean an actual mouse taking orders from a chef that’s a cat. This game loves its French accented anthropomorphic animals because as Max the mouse you’ll meet chefs or store owners who are ducks, dogs, birds and pigs. If every animal is on everyone’s basic food group how does that even work?! The owner of the butchers is a pig; bringing a whole new meaning to the term ‘slaughterhouse’. Where are the humans? Who knows; all I know is Paris has been taken over by frickin zoo animals! The game has you go from one store or restaurant to another helping those in charge to recover missing items. At a restaurant you click from a list of what must be various animal delicacies, soon realising that in this game they’re probably the customers. The game has you go from assisting a gerbil escape to Mexico to investigating a dirty rat (again an actual rat) down a back alley to competing along with your master cat chef in a food competition which seems to think it’s also a get well soon or birthday party. Surely the combined efforts of both Shape Games and Positive Games didn’t realise how nutty this whole premise was? Yeah sure maybe I’m over thinking it but when I’m playing as a mouse trying to win the appreciation of a cat who runs a restaurant in a Paris made up of talking animals I’m going to ask questions. However if this HOG is indeed for kids one of these questions must be why the developers included a mandatory timer for play. Hints are limited but worse Mystery Cookbook has a very hypocritical or contradictory way of playing. You might be asked to click on a food can when there’s three onscreen; trouble is only one of those food cans is correct and you get seconds shaved off the clock for incorrect object clicking. Another problem is some of the object names aren’t correct which unfortunately is a result of English not being the developer’s native language.
Mystery Cookbook stands out as one of the weirdest HOGs of the genre. Truth be told its tale of anthropomorphic animals is pretty inoffensive and the game is mostly geared towards little kids. The problems listed above however shouldn’t be ignored. These are things that with a bit more effort could have been fixed. What you end up with is a mildly charming story with some irritating and problematic hidden object gaming. Insert your own animal pun about how disappointing this game ended up.… Expand
