Customer Reviews

Cake Mania 3

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love Cake Mania 1 & 2 so don't get me wrong. I was so looking forward to 3. What a big dissappointment. The machines are smaller which means she now stands in front of some of the buttons so you can't see them. Picking the cake up and making the next doesn't go as smooth. When it comes to layer cakes the top layer is so small it is hard to see. I haven't yet figured out how to see the rest of the discriptions on the power ups. The machine that makes the drinks is small so it is hard to hit the refill button if you have a drink in your hand, she wants put that drink back. For example, this has happened a lot, I place the cake on the froster hit the button quick and I come back and my unfrosted cake is sittng there. I never had that problem in 1 & 2. I'll wait and read user reviews on the next Cake Mania before I buy it. I'm not sure how to rate this game. I've played over half of it so far and I keep liking it less and less. Just wish it was more like the first two.

Having played all 3 Cake Mania games....


CAKE MANIA : Larger buttons for cakes/frosting/toppers.
Your games/ high scores are saved.....which makes it nice for replay so you can beat your other scores.


CAKE MANIA 2 : Large buttons for cakes/frosting machines.....and no side scrolling for the frosting (as in cake mania 1. Nice music in this game. There are 3 games to choose from....1. help your friend Risha launch her new bakery or ....2. save your friend Jack's underwater park bakery or.....3. play the ENDLESS game in which you play through the levels until you lose (the endless game is the ONLY one that keeps track of your high scores and there are NO extra lives here....if you fail, the game is over). Only complaints : The icons for the cake toppers were too close together and it is hard to distinguish the shape of the top layer on the layer cakes. I also found it disappointing that I couldn't save my high scores on the 1st 2 games.


CAKE MANIA 3 : Good story / interesting characters, scenery and music. I thought the addition of the coffee/tea machine was fun. The buttons for the cakes/frosting/toppers are too small and (unless you are PRECISE) you will most definitely screw up a lot of cakes. Sometimes the layer cakes are too challenging as it is often EXTREMELY difficult to see what shape the top layer is because it is so small.

Practically no replay value as you cannot save your games' final scores. You CAN choose to just play the mini games.....and you can save your high scores on those. But if you dislike the mini-games (as I did) this game just doesn't have the appeal that the other 2 cake mania games have.

Overall.....I give cake mania 3....3 stars. I just hope that Cake Mania 4 takes the best of each game and makes a SUPER game.

Everything the first reviewer of this game said is right on. Everything is wee small and Jill is constantly confused. You have to be PRECISE with the stylus to get Jill to do what you want. In addition to the cramped controls these are my biggest gripes:
- You can only have 2 ovens and 2 frosters, unlike the previous editions where you can have 3 of each. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but I missed that 3rd oven and froster.
- The cake toppers are tiny and hard to see, let alone select. In the upper levels when they start ordering double layers with a topper it is extremely hard to tell just what the top cake is. The blue and purple frosted cakes are very hard to differentiate in that little bubble over the customer's head. Cake shape is hard to make out too.
- It is really easy to cancel an action. For example, if I choose a cake to bake, frost, or top and then accidentally tap anything else before that process has a chance to start then that action will cancel out. This is how you end up walking away only to come back and find that the cake is still unfrosted, hasn't been baked, or is still waiting on the topper. In the other games I always thought that it was a little too easy to screw up because there was zero lag time between the screen tap and the action happening which resulted in more than one erroneous cake, but it turns out that the other (older) versions had it right.
- Upgrades on equipment are too expensive and there isn't enough of them. You can't go back and replay levels to build up cash so I struggled through until I upgraded her shoes, the ovens, the frosters all the way and bought the cheapest cake topper. After that it got a little easier to make the super bakery goals, but now I am in the last "area" with enough money to buy every upgrade there is and nothing to spend it on because I have already fully upgraded everything.
- The mini games should be optional. I have found myself stuck on a cake matching mini game that is stupid hard. I am too old (mid 30's) to have video games pissing me off. I wouldn't mind if it were an issue of skill. But the best you can hope for is luck because the cakes basically look like blobs with toppers. I only got through the last mini game like this one because I started clicking on every cake that had a topper like one in the picture (you'll see what I mean when you get there).
- The drink machine is slow and you can't upgrade it to make it faster. Once you've bought the drink machine the only upgrade is to go from a one-drink machine to a two-drink machine with no appreciable difference in speed.
Okay, so that's the annoying stuff. One neat new thing is that you can upgrade the cake display stand so that you can leave a cake in it "overnight". Before I pick up the last customer's money I make the most expensive cake I can and put in the cake display for the next level. Customers in the game are a lot quicker to buy a displayed cake than they ever have been before and the one I start with is usually requested by customer #2 of the day.
Overall I feel like the game merits 4 stars. I give it two just for being Cake Mania, one for being long enough that I couldn't complete it in one day, and one because I feel like it is $20 well spent. I would like to give it 5 stars but the dismal display and it's limited re-playability just won't let me mislead you that way.
Bottom line: flawed but entertaining. I've spend $20 bucks on dumber stuff. I just hope the next installment is more like the first two.

It is as though the game designers didn't have the time to make this game work at all. I'm a huge fan of Cake Mania, but this one is the worst out of all three in my opinion. Here's why:
1. There are only six levels (worlds) that Jill goes to. And once you've gone through those, there's nothing left.Done. You've finished the game. If you recall in the 2nd game, there were three sub-levels in each world.

2. The mini games are dumb and they are incorporated into the actual levels. For example, instead of making cakes for demanding customers,you're playing Cakey Makey.

3. In order to move on from one of these stages, you must complete the impossibly difficult task of playing Cake Match (or something like that...I forgot the actual name of the game). I actually had to have another person use his stylus and help me beat the level because it was that incredibly difficult to beat. The point of the game was to find the three cakes from the top screen and match them to a myriad of impossibly similar looking cakes on the bottom of the screen. Each cake at the top has a time limit and once you've identified the correct cake, another cake comes sliding down. It's a neverending, impossibly difficult task and it actually made me HATE THIS GAME. It stopped being fun and started making me really angry that I spent money on it.

4. Colors are too similar and it's easy to make a blue cake when you were supposed to make a violet one. And no, I'm not color blind, but I think the game designers might have been.
Also, brown and red look very similar as well.

5.Shapes are also hard to discern in this game. Hearts and rounds look deceptively similar when they are so small that you need a magnifying glass to see them.

6.You can buy upgrades for the big-screen T.V., but it won't do you any good. The T.V. shuts off 5 seconds after you put it on. Very annoying.

7.The vocal components are not funny---they're just plain irritating. I'm talking about the things that people say when they walk into the bakery. Okay, they've always been a little on the annoying side, like in other CM games, but this one "takes the cake."
Having to listen to very whiny pseudo-Asian riffs got on my nerves after about 5 minutes. And the executioner in France stating, "cake or death," in his daft, doofy voice made me really regret buying this game.

8.The cake shapes were really difficult to discern like I stated above and they were also lacking in imagination. I think each world/theme should have had cakes to match it. A police-badge-shaped-cake in a world filled with wizards and fairies? That makes no sense! What about leaves, flowers, stars, moons, and other fantastical things?

9. The mini games, while a great idea were, for a lack of a better word, dumb.

The only reason I didn't give this game a 1 star rating is because the graphics were amazing. The art is truly beautiful. At least they did one thing right...

This is just my opinion.

I love all the time managment games like diner dash and the cake mania I was so excited that Cake Mania 3 was out since I own one and two on Ds and the computer. I was very disappointed in this version for the DS. The stuff is way to small and hard to see what it is I even borrowed my husband's glasses and still had difficulty seeing what some of the cakes were I agree with the person who said it looks like a blob. I do not like the cake matching mini game my son and I tried to beat it together and are still having difficult time with it what a bummer. If they make a Cake Mania 4, I hope they read some of the reviews and make it eaiser to see with not so hard mini games.

I have been a big Cake Mania fan for some time now and have all of the Cake Mania's (PC, DS, Wii and PS2) so I was thrilled when I found out that Cake Mania 3 would be on the DS! What a huge disappointment... everything is just so cramped on the screen and like many other posters below have said, it's really hard to see the toppers at times and the top cake layer is so small now. And I miss the 3rd oven and 3rd froster. I won't be keeping this game in my collection. Just not happy with it....

I will totally agree with the other person who reviewed this item and state that it is alittle hard to see some of the items on the screen. Honestly I think that is the case with most games for the Nintendo DS, the screen is alittle small and its hard to see some of the games to play them properly. With that being said I don't think just because its alittle hard to see the items that the games deserves a 2 star rating. I actually like this game for the DS. I purchased it for the PC long before it came available for the DS. The differences I see in the PC version vs the DS version is that in the PC version you can purchase 3 of each of the ovens, frosters, cake toppers, etc. In the DS version you can only purchase 2 ovens, 2 frosters, etc. I don't think it makes much of a difference because I think the DS version is alittle slower paced than the PC version.

However, I still think the game is fun...But if you have issues seeing and playing other DS games, I would suggest renting this game before you buy it. It might save you money in the long run. If you liked the PC version of this game you will be alittle disappointed because the DS version is alittle different, but I still think its a fun game. My opinion is that I love the PC version and I like the DS version. I am still glad I bought it, and don't regret the purchase at all.

I would really like to know what its like on the DSI compared to the DS, since the screen is alittle bigger.

I have been playing this for only a short time, as my son dominated it for a while, but I find that I think I can see just fine, and that the same cake I'm looking at for the customer, I know is the one I made, but the customer won't accept it! WTH??? This makes me lose the level and have to start over again. I paid around $15 for this game and I'm going to ask if I can just trade it for one that actually works. I've had the game actually mess up a few times, such as getting an X instead of a menu, graphics messed up on top screen, causing me to have to restart the game, among other problems. I also don't hear speech, I hear annoying music! Same notes, different tones for different "worlds". UGH!

I like the game, overall, but please, what do I do about these problems? I've had this happen several times, and I hate that I spent money on this game, even if it was only about half of what I would have spent new!

I lucked out to get this for only $4.50. It was a blast on the first 2 or 3 levels. Then it got so hard it was making me miserable. No matter how many upgrades or times I played the levels had to be repeated a lot and were very frusterating. If you get this game cheap-great, otherwise don't waste your money.

I find these kind of games to be very addictive. It is fun and addictive, definitely a nice distraction from stress in the real world. Easy to figure out and fun to play.