Customer Reviews

Cooking Mama 2: Dinner With Friends

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Cooking Mama series can do no wrong by me. These are near perfect games because you get exactly what you're expecting, and then some. As the title suggests, Cooking Mama 2 is a cooking game with 80 recipes from around the world, including favorites like kimchee and pancakes. You prepare food in steps, with Mama giving you helpful hints and scores along the way. The over-the-top cutesy graphics and intuitive gameplay make this a favorite with kids, but there's finesse involved that even adults will find frustrating. These games are perfect for the Achiever in your life, and Cooking Mama 2 pushes the idea further, adding unlockable customizations to your kitchen and Mama's wardrobe.

The most impressive feature of the Cooking Mama titles are their utilization of Nintendo hardware. Cooking Mama 2 continues to caress the DS with innovative stylus play. Move your stylus around a meat grinder's handle to make it go. Crack an egg by drawing a line to the bowl - slowly, or you'll wind up with egg on your hand. Blow into the microphone to ensure a pot of boiling water won't boil over. There are several dozen different mechanics available, and most of them are easy to grasp, but difficult to master. Most of the preparation requires that you beat the clock, but if you chop without stopping, or pull a piece of meat out of the frier at just the right moment, you can receive bonuses. This makes basic gameplay a snap, and advanced gameplay an ART.

After you've unlocked some recipes, you can cook for Mama's friends. Mama won't give you hints on what you should do, but since you've worked through the recipe at least once, you won't need hints. As a result, preparing food for Mama's friends is a much speedier process, and the rewards or penalties are greater. If you mess up when you're cooking for Mama's friends, Mama's not there to help you and your preparation is cut short before you can finish. If you do well, you receive presents and can unlock special items for customizing your game.

You can customize Mama's dress, accessories, the appearance of her kitchen, and the color of all the kitchen utensils you use in the game. There are 10 dress types (with several color options each), 5 accessories, and 5 kitchen settings to unlock. I like customizing everything to match to an unnatural degree, but many players will love dressing up Mama in wacky lemon earrings and strange cheerleader outfits. Not every friend you impress will unlock an item - sometimes the presents are just nice things to look at that don't stay in your game, like a kitten or a treasure chest.

As with previous releases, you can practice any part of a recipe, and set records for yourself in specific preparation techniques. Both Cooking Mama 1 and 2 for the DS offer wireless play, so you can challenge your friends to an egg-cracking contest. This isn't as cool as Cooking Mama Cookoff for the Wii, where you can execute an entire recipe against friends, but there's still something very appealing about proclaiming yourself the Queen of the Deep Fryer and laying the smackdown in an egg-cracking competition.

There are a few annoying parts of the game. Bonuses are now meaningful - each one you get earns you one star out of 5, and for every 5 stars, you get a present. But the presents aren't unlocked items, they're just cute graphic rewards. Calculating these bonuses takes a lot of time, and the accompanying music is very loud. It's nice that the bonuses have some kind of reward, but I'd prefer points or records to an overkill of praise. Some of the mechanics are still a little too hard to master. I find stewing and simmering to be a pain, because you have to wait for the food the food to cook until it's reached the green part of the progress meter, but you also have to control temperature and stir - not too often - to make sure the food doesn't pass the green sweet spot on the meter and remains exactly there until time is up. Adjusting the temperature of the stove and stirring will wildly change the food's progress meter, so it's very difficult to do with respect to the timer.

This is not my favorite Cooking Mama title, but the improvements significantly enhance the replay value and enjoyability of the game. Within a release or two, this game will be perfect, deadly addictive, and completely free of design flaws. Let's hope the world doesn't run out of interesting recipes in the mean time!

This sequel is just as fun as the first game. This time you get bonus stars for doing things extra good (I guess) and you win presents, which I have yet to find. If you get gold medals and more of these stars you can change Mama's outfit and the style and colors of the kitchen and your utensils. It's fun but again the replay value is low once you get all gold medals. Now however you can challenge your friends via wireless instead of just sending a demo. The recipes are different and there's some new utensils to use as well. I only gave it four stars because of the replay value and the sort of annoying new graphics.
update: OK, the presents you win can be used in the Diary to decorate pictures of your food. It doesnt serve much of a purpose, but it's still fun.

I myself have only played for a few minutes but those few minutes were a blast.

On the other hand, my children had a sleepover where they played COOKING MAMA, both 1 and 2 ALL NIGHT LONG!! The game kept their attention, they helped each other and there were a lot of laughs. The game helps to learn to work more adeptly with the stylus and is fun.

Nice additions are enabling the player to change mama's outfits. This time, we can also hear Mama, my girls LOVE hearing the "even better than Mama!!", the ultimate compliment.

We still have loads to go on this and I suppose some people will get through it quickly and the replay value will just not be there but for the younger ones, there seems to be a LOT of replay value.

Working towards the rewards is enjoyable and an attainable goal for those little hands not quite as skilled with the stylus. While it seems that some games seem to be near impossible, the game here really does seem geared towards a younger crowd. I'm not saying that's a con. Additionally, just seeing the wide variety of recipes and what countries they are from can add a little learning to the mix as well.

Well done! (no pun intended).

Cooking Mama was one of the first games I bought when I got my DS because it looked cute and fun and good for when I just wanted to turn my brain off for a few minutes. I ended up getting ridiculously obsessed with it and bought Cooking Mama 2 before I'd even finished half of the first game.

And it was definitely worth getting even if, for the most part, it's just more of the same. Being able to change Mama's look is fun, and cooking for Mama's friends adds a bit more challenge than was present in the first game. One thing I really love is that some steps have been condensed; slicing up and chopping an onion is now all included in one step instead of having you slice, see Mama's assessment, slice another way, see Mama's assessment, chop, etc.

My only big complaint is about the new bonus presents. While they are not entirely pointless (you can use them to decorate your diary entries, although I'm personally not using the diary), they really seem to be that way, and it takes forever for the bonus to be calculated, the presents to appear, and the one you picked to open up. And with some longer recipes you might have enough bonus stars to have to sit through the whole thing more than once! It's definitely an annoyance, but when the rest of the game is so enjoyable, it's an annoyance I can live with.

If you weren't a big fan of the first one, Cooking Mama 2 is going to be just as repetitive and not different enough to win you over. But if you really loved the first one, it's definitely worth checking out. And if you're new to the world of Cooking Mama, I would very much recommend this game over the first; the concept hasn't changed much, but the slight improvements make it an even more enjoyable game.

This game deserves more than 5 stars. You will not believe if u have cooking mama 1 that this game is from the same company! You only use about 3 technics from the 1 st game and the rest are new. When i got this i expected it to be like the old one. But I was speechless
In this game you can cut, dice, blend,mix and etc. and etc! But one problem was that u cant play at ur on speed. You are again timed. But I dont care this game is so good looking out from the timing. Well I hope this review helped. Trust me u will want this game.

My 4 year old girl loves this game even more than the original cooking mama. This game has more to do and it keeps her busy for awhile. She has fun cooking for friends as they judge her cooking. I recommend this game for a young girl.

Cooking Mama 2 is good fun. There is more talking and the game is easier to navigate than the first one. I also think this version is more sensitive to the stylus. I find I don't have to press as hard when doing the movements such as slicing and flipping. I also like the option of customizing mama's clothes, kitchen,and utensils. This version also seems much more colorful than the last and the graphics have improved.

My 6 year old daughter love it. Also my 8 year old son play with it as well (when he can take it from her) and he like it as well.

I'm nine years old and this game is really fun. In this game you use your skills in cooking. Whoever reads this should buy this game because Cooking Mama 2 is the only game I really play!!!!

Cookin Mama might look childish and funny to some people, but for us fans of the series its an extremely addictive cookin simulator. Cookin mama 2 is also my favorite of the series. You basically go to the kitchen and choose a recipe. than you're put in a series of minigames that involve chopping up ingredients, mixing, or cookin your food with your trusty DS stylus. As you cook new recipes will become available and bonuses that allow you to dress up Mama or decorate your kitchen. You're graded depending on how many steps must be taken to cook the recipe and how well you complete each minigame. You can also cook dinner for friends you invite over, but if you fail a minigame you fail the entire recipe instead of getting to just go on to the next minigame and have to start the dish all over from scratch. Trust me you don't want to fail because Mama get so angry her eyes catch on fire. Shivers...scary. Plus you're rewarded with a cracked metal next to your failed recipe. One thing though that kind of disappoints me is that theres no wifi support for new recipes. It would be cool if you could go on the internet and download new recipes instead of being stuck with the ones the game gives you. On another note I love the improvements in control. In the 1st cookin mama when it came to peeling potatos and cutting meat it felt like the DS wouldn't read my motions to well. Its improved in this one because the stylus read these motions almost perfectly. Yup Cookin mama isn't GTA or Mortal Kombat, but its a fun and addicting little game that everyone will enjoy.