Cooking Mama: Cook Off

Cooking mama's game design just doesn't carry its weight; it can't seem to decide if it wants to be a cooking sim for grown-up food geeks or a party game for kids, and the result is an excersize in frustration for both groups. [May 2007, p.63]

Cooking Mama: Cook-Off is a good idea that just hasn’t been done well here. The game’s controls just don’t work as they should.

As it stands now, the cartoony graphics don’t really make you hungry or even make you feel like you actually made food, nor is the game ridiculous enough to give you that silly kind of fun like WarioWare. Any future entry in this series will probably have to go one of those two ways.

At its worst, however, Cooking Mama is enough to make you want to throw your Wiimote at the screen as the game struggles to recognize the commands that you give it.

It's wildly entertaining for about 90 minutes. After that, even real cooking starts to make more sense.

It's the gaming equivalent of a local neighborhood eatery: the food's good and service is decent, but it certainly won't be the best meal you've ever had.

Cute and fun minigames, for the most part, but lacking drive or motivation for the player, with different tasks getting repetitive quickly. [JPN Import; May 2007, p.50]

It’s a niche game that most won’t like but a few will devour. [JPN Import]

The cute animations and theme music are perfect for little ones. I think it is far more engaging and educational than Dora or anything else on Noggin. For the adult gamer, don't expect this to be anything more than a simple diversion for an hour or two.

Cooking Mama: Cook Off has its moments, such as in multiplayer, in which most players will end up on the same level playing field, partly due to some of the flaws of the gameplay mechanic. It seems as though Taito wanted to get a Wii version out quickly, and we wish it hadn't.

Unfortunately, perfecting one's craft requires much trial and error, thanks to the game's shoddy motion controls. Things work ok most of the time, but like the DS version, every once and a while the game fails to register the simplest of actions.

The concept is more fascinating than the execution. Maybe I’m too used to killing Metroids, but to me this game was just boring.

Light, amusing, and fun in short bursts, Cooking Mama seems like such a suitable title for Wii. Unfortunately, the overall result is hampered by an imprecise control system that throws skill and any sense of weight or meaning to one side, along with a lack of structure that leaves the game little more than a novel yet ultimately trivial experience - ideal for the Wii demographic it seems.

The cooking game concept is off the wall enough to have the potential to be a fun party game, but Cooking Mama is not challenging or deep enough to pull it off. Instead it gives you too much repetition and frustration, kind of like getting stuck eating meatloaf every night.

Perversely appealing. [July 2007, p.70]

The inviting presentation will still bring people in, it’ll still be a blast for certain gamers, and the act of doing motion-controlled cooking pantomime will be a hit with the younger crowd and a niche group of gamers. At the same time, the series has a long way to go before it really "feels right" on Wii.

With repetitious gameplay, chore-like tasks that barely pass for mini-games, and lackluster new modes, Cooking Mama: Cook Off is the kind of game that sounds a lot more fun than it really is, and therefore, it gets its just deserts.

Though Cook Off is a lot like Cooking Mama on the DS, something significant has been lost in the translation to the Wii.

It's a nice idea, it's cute, and it's sometimes fun, but the lack of longevity and control problems mean it's just not worth it.

It could have been much better if there was more freedom to the art of cooking, a more challenging single player structure and - most importantly - responsive and involving controls that actually give you the feeling of slicing, dicing, mincing and everything else.

As opposed to the DS version of the game, Cooking Mama on the Wii is a mess and something that is often very hard to enjoy, especially for the younger crowd. The Wii sensitive controls don't work well and even when they do, there will always be one or two parts of a recipe that you'll maul because of those rogue elements.

Whereas the DS game could be defended for ignoring significant depth for the sake of accessibility, Cook Off's controls are simply too ropey for it to earn any flavour of respect, and leave its repetitive, flash-in-the-pan mini-games open to assault.