Friday 12 January, 2007

Few games offer a better introduction to the Nintendo DS console than Taito's Cooking Mama. Avoiding flashy cutscenes and dramatic characterization, the developer built this game around the completion of a series of simple mini-games. The gamer can expect to measure out portions of water to make rice, to learn how best to chop an onion, or the flip and press an omelette as it cooks. Each of these mini-games makes use of the stylus and both screens of the system. No individual mini-game is too challenging. The hard part is successfully completing each back to back with all the other required mini-game steps. Each recipe requires a unique series of steps to create a dish, the quality of which is graded on a rubric of 0 to 100 points harnessed to how well each task was completed.

Looking at both the Wii and DS we see Nintendo developing games that are quick, easy, and clean fun. Just as quick as I can flip open the lid of my pocket console, the stress of my assignments disappears while I jump into the middle of cooking a perfect Japanese Hamburg steak. I was able to score an 89 on the bus ride to class but I know that, to get any further in the game, I had to go for the gold, a perfect score. Once I get the gold here, all kinds of variations of this steak will appear. That means more even more recipes to unlock and more perfect scores to earn. Player interest are held as one tells themself “just one more game!” for an hour before they stop. The player fights the clock in some games but each game is easy enough that there is little reason to settle for anything beyond perfect. After completing seven straight perfect mini-games, a single flub in a step makes the difference between perfection and mediocrity.

Hands down the most striking characteristic of Cooking Mama is its approachability. Introducing the game to my friends didn't take long once they got started making fried rice. The simplicity of chopping onions builds the players self-confidence in seconds. Players who said to me “I just don't play video games” refused to give up the game after a few seconds of play.

My second session with Cooking Mama was spent picking up the last few medals and unlocking alternate dishes. I'll admit that I'm a bit disappointed by the pacing that I experienced. I had hoped to find later gameplay to be full of new mini games and such, but the process of making dishes felt the same throughout the play-through. I understand that portable games rarely have the depth of unlockables of console games, but it wouldn't take much more effort to add a few new games and unlockable dishes. Players would surely spend a whole lot more time maxing out this game – getting gold medal on every dish, unlocking all hidden dishes, and performing perfectly in practice mode – if the developer focused a bit more on replay value.

Even an NES game like Super Mario Bros., developed in a time that might as well be the stone age compared to the tools available to today's developers, offers more rewards than Cooking Mama for more for skilled gamers. Secret 1-Up's hidden through a level, warp levels with hidden entrances, or unique pipe worlds to explore offer the 1985 player the chance to find new things and explore a game they've all but completed. Super Mario Bros. Each dish in Cooking Mama is effectively its own level as well yet, while Super Mario Bros. offers players an assortment of themed Worlds to explore and boss fights to string them together, there is little to string dishes together in Cooking Mama.