N-Philes

Cooking Mama

Posted November 5th 2006 by D. Cassandra Garcia.

Much the the chagrin of my feminist counterparts, I've been in the kitchen since I was a wee little girl. From the time I was old enough to sit up in a highchair, I've been in one of my grandmothers' kitchens, observing and learning. Cooking and baking are two things that I not only enjoy doing, but that I'm really good at doing. Since my mother can barely boil water without burning the pan, it was up to the elder generation to pass along their old family recipes. My maternal grandmother taught me how to cook good old fashioned Southern recipes; "soul food" because it's "good for the soul" according to just about any sweet Southern lady. My paternal grandmother taught me how to cook a plethora of Asian dishes, everything from Filipino pancit bihon to Japanese gōyā chanpurū. My passion for cooking hasn't swayed over the years and I've since added many other cultural dishes to my repertoire.

So when we hit E3 back in May and came across one of the the winners of the IGN Best of E3 stamp of approval, more specifically Cooking Mama for the DS, I was in my own private gamer heaven. I've been a huge fan of the Nintendo DS and its attempts at non-gaming titles to bring in a new market. From Nintendogs to Elecktroplankton, I've been eagerly anticipating new and innovative ideas that could be incorporated into the shoot 'em up, beat 'em up dynasty that has ruled the industry for oh so long. Games such as Trauma Center and Phoenix Wright showed the rest of the developers that real-life situations work just as well in gaming as those more based in the realm of fantasies.

Last week I trudged my way to the local gaming emporium, and found a pleasant sight: the eye of a stove, lit underneath a frying pan on a familiar DS case. I lept up and snatched the game from its spot on the shelf and with my mouth agape started shrieking "Ohmigod they have Cooking Mama!" after which I passed out from the excitement. Okay, I didn't really, but I did take it home to see if my cooking skills were up to par with this game's. Its cutesy art and peppy carouselesque music make this a hard game not to enjoy.

Cooking Mama has a simple enough task: learn to cook just like Mama, a redheaded, kerchiefed chef who doesn't look old enough to be anyone's mama. You get to choose what meals you're going to learn how to make, the simplest being plain rice. Stirring, peeling, mixing, and adjusting heat are all accomplished by using the stylus on the touch screen, and just for good measure (a cooking pun for cooking fans) you can cool down any overheated meals by blowing into the microphone. When you start a new file you have the option of practicing how to cook based on directions or can jump right in and get down to being judged by Mama. To give you the best idea of how Cooking Mama plays, I'll walk you through my first recipe.

Cooking rice is simple enough in reality: rice plus water plus a covered pot and you're about there. Making rice in the game is just as simple. Fill your measuring cup with rice, pour into the pan until you have enough rice to reach the green line. Got it? Okay, good. Next you have to do basically the same thing with water. Turn on the faucet and fill another meauring cup with water, fill it to another line and voilá! Onto your next task, washing the rice. Now, see, I don't normally do this with real rice, mostly because I find it to be extraneous, but since you're never told exactly what grain of rice you're making, you go along with it. Stir it up, within a certain amount of time and make sure you don't spill it from the mixing bowl. Now all you have to do is set the oven timer to the correct time and you're good to go. If this part gets screwed up, you're an idiot, because it's really the simplest of all the directions. If you've completed the tasks correctly, a happy Mama beams with pride and blesses you with a bronze, silver, or gold chef's hat. If you've messed up at some point, a very angry Mama is blistering with disappointment. Kind of like real life.

With each meal, even just simple rice, you are given the option to alter the recipe. You can change pork dishes to beef or veggie dishes, much to my own delight. You can add different ingredients to the base to create something more elaborate and if you have a good enough score at the end of the meal, you unlock a new recipe! There are about 137 recipes in the game, 61 of which are locked, so really it's just a matter of practice if you don't unlock one right away. The main disappointment I had in this game (which for others might not be a real disappointment at all) is the simplicity of the directions. You are told exactly what to do at all points and while you are under a certain time limit, there isn't much to it in the cerebral realm. It ends up becoming something like a "press the button on the beat" music game, only without the rhythm.

Once you master the recipes, or really at any point where you want to try out something new, you can go to the main menu and combine different learned recipes to create a new dish You can also choose to just utilize your newfound prep-cooking skills, such as grating or chopping to see how fast you can do it. The best part of the game? Getting to compare Cooking Mama's versions of these recipes to the ones I've been working off of in my head since I was old enough to turn on the oven.

Anyone who's ever stood over a frying pan can tell you how remarkably close the game's sound is to it. The crackling of oil in a frying pan followed by the familiar sizzle as you fry up some fresh veggies is so clear that one could expect to start smelling them sauteé. Even the tapping of your stylus as fast as possible to simulate chopping sounds so much like a cleaver on a wooden cutting board; I was almost afraid that I might chop off a finger of my player's hand. From running water to stir-fry sizzle, it's all here, a veritable cornicopia for the senses.

Slight Pulse - Needs a little more gah-lic.

As simplistically fun as this game is to me, I was a bit disappointed to see that it's ultimately no different from any other DS do-neat-things-with-your-stylus title. The graphics are cute and colorful, which are a personal favorite of mine, but so very reminiscent of similar minigame titles such as Wario Ware. There isn't really any challenge at all to completing the recipes. As long as you can follow extremely straightforward directions and are nimble enough to do so in the allotted amount of time, you're golden. If not, then you probably shouldn't be playing video games at all. This game was made and is being marketed towards non-gamers to show them games are for everyone; Nintendo would be wise to start pimping Cooking Mama commercials on the Food Network, widely known for its younger and smarter audiences. For the gaming generation raised on good ol' Atari and NES, this would be a perfect game to bring them back on home. Happy cooking!

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