Customer Reviews

Cooking Mama World Kitchen

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Being a fan of Cooking Mama, I was excited to purchase this game the other day. However, upon playing it I wish I had never seen it to begin with. Yes, the graphics are better, but the steps involved in recipes are either ridiculously easy or incredibly hard. The game is also extremely sensitive to the motions of the Wii-mote, and if not done exactly right- won't respond at all. The directions on how to use the Wii-mote are vague at best. The time limit for each task is also extremely short- and basically if you mess up even once you can easily fail that step. There is no margin for error.

Coming from someone who has spent a lot of time playing Cooking Mama - Cook Off, this game was incredibly frustrating and not worth the effort. Adding insult to injury, Mama has sold out to Nestle so included is a Nestle coupon and many Nestle "trademark" recipes. Half the fun of Cooking Mama is the insanely weird recipes like "Spaghetti in Squid Ink" to begin with.

Do yourself a favor and buy Cooking Mama Cook Off instead!

Length:: 3:34 Mins

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I have never played any other version of Cooking Mama, so I can't say how it compares with previous titles. I have 9 year old twin boys, one of whom has spent many hours with the neighborhood girls creating recipes in WebKinz. They have had so much fun with that, that Cooking Mama World Kitchen (CMWK) seemed like an obvious choice for us.

A little about the game: There are three game scenarios, the first of which is "Cook with Mama" in which Mama is the cooking instructor and you are the cook-in-training. It starts with eight recipes which Mama oversees as you cook. The steps in the recipes are well defined and visually represented, with about five to ten steps per recipe, at least in the beginning. You always know where you are in the recipe and Mama gives you feedback on each step. When you have completed the recipe, you get a final overall score which results in one of four medals - bronze, silver, gold or lead. If you get a lead medal, expect to hang your head in shame and Mama will join with you. When you successfully complete a recipe in this scenario a new recipe is unlocked. Sometimes when you make a mistake a mini-game pops up to give you a chance to recover from the mistake.

The second scenario is "Let's Cook" in which you cook alone without Mama's help and serve the food to "friends" that come with the game. The visual instructions are the same as in "Cook with Mama" but you don't get rated on each step and you don't have Mama's help.

The third scenario is a competition with dual player, single player and surprise modes. This is supposed to be fast-paced and I have not tried it for reasons you will soon understand.

There is also an "Album" feature that captures your cooking mistakes for you to relive and which allows you to replay any of the mini-games you have unlocked. The mini-games aren't that exciting, lasting only a few seconds. They are a little bit more fun when they come up as a surprise in game play when you make a cooking mistake. The surprise element makes them more entertaining and the fact that they last only a few seconds makes them bearable if you get one you don't like. You don't have a choice about whether or not to play.

The first thing I noticed about CMWK is that it comes with a coupon for Nestle Toll House morsels and four of the thirteen pages in the instruction booklet are dedicated solely to real-life Nestle Toll House recipes. But that's product placement for you. There is also a Toll House cookie recipe in the game. I wouldn't really care about this except that there is one very important element missing from the instruction booklet -- instruction on using the Wii remote with this game. That's not completely fair - there is one page dedicated to "Control Icons" that gives a general description of what to do with the remote when those icons appear on the screen. But it is completely inadequate and not even printed in color. In the game, icons appear on the screen that tell you two things 1) how to hold the wii remote - normal, vertical and two horizontal positions; 2) what motion to make with the remote in that position.

Sounds easy, right? Maybe I'll figure it out on my own, but I sure wish there were better descriptions in the instruction booklet or at least on the game site. I can't find any. With seven different motions and four positions, there are twenty eight possible actions to take which represent at least twenty eight different cooking skills. It's not clear how some of them differ or exactly what they require. "Move back and forth in vertical position" differs from "tilt in vertical position" how? Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this is that the actions that do work work pretty well. Breaking an egg requires tapping it not too gently and not too hard. Cool. Forming hamburger patties means tossing them back and forth in your hands. Go too slow and you'll drop the patty, too fast and it splats on the screen. You have to find the rhythm and once you do you feel like you've got the "knack".

So far, as the title to this review states, I'm just hoping I'll catch on and get used to the movements. But for me this takes a lot of fun out of discovering the game. Instead of getting better, I'm just getting frustrated. So many other Wii games do such a nice job of coaching the player through the controls that this feels like an insult. Would it have been so hard to use four pages of the instruction booklet to describe the controls and what actions they represent and maybe only one page on printing recipes I can find on any bag of Nestle chocolate morsels anyway?

I have always been fascinated with cooking so I thought I'd try one of these games out and I have to say it was a lot of fun. The game has many recipes for you try out and you may even learn how to make them yourself after playing it enough. The game makes perfect use of the Wii's motion controls and the controls function very well for most of the motions with the exception of a few that require you to get a feel for them. The game is also packed with mini-games that are amusing and also has a practice option that allows you to practice any part of a single recipe so if you are having problems with a certain part you can practice them until you get them down perfect. The game only opens a few recipes at first but you will earn more as you complete the ones you have, if you enjoy cooking then you will enjoy this game as it makes it fun and without the mess.

We had such high hopes for this game as we LOVE the DS version. My kids & I tried it as soon as we got it and we found it so hard to play. It's a very frustrating game & we gave up on it after a few times. Really wish we would have gotten another game instead.

I agree with the other low-rating reviews here. This was my first venture into the Cooking Mama series, so I'm guessing the first ones were good enough to merit this poor sequel. This must be much easier on DS where you're not relying on guessing the right motion! There is practically no instruction on what you are supposed to do in each step, and the manual is no help either. Does anyone know what the commentary says - I can't understand the 'Engrish!' "Thas okay, Mama hep you"??

Thankfully I rented it for the half hour I tried to play it. Short sequence times, easy to fail, annoying minigames, frustrating, ugh!

I played the first installment of Cooking Mama on the Nintendo DS platform and it was a very good collection of mini games and fit the platform well. This game however, was a huge disappointment. The graphics are terrible, the 'mini' games can sometimes go on for way too long, it's super cheesy and just not well done at all. We gave it a chance to get better and played for an hour or two, but it is really not worth the time.

I have to agree with what other people said, it is way to hard to control. I loved the DS version, this one was terrible though. The mini-games were pretty bad as well, just plain boring. The case that we recieved it in was very sticky for some reason, too. If you own a DS, then get it for DS. I don't recommend for Wii.

I bought the game for $20 at Wal*Mart. I think it is silly how she throws food around the kitchen and you have to catch it, etc. Too animated for me. I'm going to get Cooked or Be Cooked by the Food Network instead. It looks realistic and I like how you have to multi-task. I am a 31 year old adult so it might be better suited for children.

this game is really good game!!!!!!!! i can't believe that some people say that this game is HARD!!!!!!!!??????? itz not hard at all.well anyway it's just a fun game so i recommend buying this!