Play Wii: Cooking Mama: Cook-Off

Cooking Mama: Cook-Off is a game that perfectly demonstrates the pratfalls of developing games with the Wii’s motion-sensing capabilities in mind, and also makes a good example of what separates Wii design sensibilities from DS design sensibilities. While a Wii port of the quirky DS game seemed like a great idea that had a lot of potential, it seems like something was lost in the mix here.

Many will undoubtedly describe this game as “Wario Ware meets Iron Chef”, but the truth is that the game is hardly ambitious enough for either comparison. Rather, it ends up being like a collection of mini-games with a cooking theme, specifically organized around various food dishes. On the one hand, it’s a bit of a shame the game doesn’t go a bit further with its theme – with a little more development, the food dishes within could have been created according to actual recipes. On the other hand, it’s nice that at the very least cooking these dishes still involves the same kind of work they would require in real life.

While the original DS game featured a mostly Japanese menu, Cooking Mama: Cook-Off has an international theme, with dishes from not only Japan and America, but England, France, Russia, Italy, and Spain as well. This makes the game a great deal more enjoyable, as players are far more likely to recognize dishes like milestone and custard than they are to recognize Japanese octopus balls.

Taking minestrone as an example, the dish is separated into steps. In this case, steps would include stuff like opening a can of tomato paste, peeling potatoes and carrots, chopping the vegetables, slicing the meat, and properly cooking the ingredients. Each of these steps is its own separate minigame (all of them under the clock). Peeling veggies, for example, involves pointing the remote at the screen and making long downward strokes, while cooking the ingredients is a timing-based minigame where you must do one of three activities (add an ingredient, stir, or adjust temperature) at the proper time. Most minigames have you somehow re-enacting what you would actually be doing if you were cooking a recipe. Others are a bit more nonsensical, like one minigame where you must mix ingredients by glimpsing at brief hints at what you need to add next (even though in the end you’re still just tossing it all into a bowl and mixing it).

Recipes can be simple (for example, popcorn is cooked in two steps – you pop it and season it), or they can involve numerous steps, and minigames are naturally recycled where appropriate – you’ll play minigames involving cracking eggs and chopping veggies numerous times. While this might seem repetitive, it actually helps to build a bit of realism, and pull you further into the game.

Unfortunately, the game has some serious issues in control and presentation. Far too often, it seems like you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to and still not getting the desired results. Other times, you may have no idea what you’re supposed to be doing, and the game’s brief instructions and simplistic diagrams don’t help. It’s often difficult to tell if you’re doing the wrong thing, or doing the right thing and simply doing it the wrong way.

What’s worse, there’s no tactile response. It would be easy enough to cut vegetables, for example, if you were actually holding the remote over a flat surface to reproduce the motions you would in real life, and the DS version goes a step further and actually has you interacting with objects directly on-screen, but on the Wii, Cooking Mama: Cook-Off has you pointing at the screen and swinging in the air, and because the game makes poor use of the rumble feature, your actions often feel like they’re affecting the on-screen action indirectly.

The graphics feature cartoony characters and pretty good-looking food, which works fairly well for the game. On the other hand, the music is repetitive, and the hard-to-understand, heavily-accented voice clips from “Mama” are also repetitive and incredibly annoying.

The game does have some nice extra gameplay modes, including options for two-player matches, playing against an AI opponent, and a cute little virtual kitchen. However, the simple fact is that the core game is broken. Gameplay is extremely awkward and confusing, the mechanics are greatly hampered by a lack of tactile response, and the voice clips will drive you nuts. Cooking Mama: Cook-Off is a great concept and perhaps someone will make it into a great game someday, but this title just has too many problems to recommend.

Sursa Speranta.info Am vazut multe ceasuri superbe pe www.topceas.ro Am vazut multe ceasuri superbe pe www.topceas.ro Am vazut multe ceasuri superbe pe www.topceas.ro Am vazut multe ceasuri superbe pe www.topceas.ro Am vazut multe ceasuri superbe pe www.topceas.ro Am vazut multe ceasuri superbe pe www.topceas.ro Am vazut multe ceasuri superbe pe www.topceas.ro Am vazut multe ceasuri superbe pe www.topceas.ro Am vazut multe ceasuri superbe pe www.topceas.ro

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Cooking Mama: Cook-Off