Customer Reviews

What's Cooking? With Jamie Oliver

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

 

 

Let's face it: you wouldn't buy this "game" as a game because (a) there's no element of competition except against a clock and (b) there's only so much game designers can do to mimic cooking techniques with a stylus.

You would buy this game because it's Jamie Oliver on the cover, and Jamie Oliver is famous for encouraging people to cook food well. In short, you're buying this "game" because of Jamie's recipes.

There are 100 of them included here, which is okay for a bargain cookbook but a bit slender for $30. So the features need to make it up in order to be worth it. The fact that you get to prepare the recipe in the "test kitchen" means you get a dress rehearsal, of sorts, before trying it out for real, and that does count for something if you're just learning to cook.

There's also that "shopping list" mode which lets you get a grocery list for whichever recipe you plan to cook. Some gamer critics say taking a DS into the supermarket will make you look like a geek, but given that Jamie Oliver's normal cookbooks are the size and weight of two laptops, toting a DS when shopping is preferable to lugging one of those cookbooks around.

What we have here, then, is a basic cooking tutor on Nintendo DS, whose selling point is that the recipes included have Jamie Oliver vouching for their palatability when prepared right. Best advice: wait a few months for the price to come down a bit, if you're a JO fan.

As for good cooking games as "games," you'd probably have more fun with "Cooking Mama."

What's Cooking? With Jamie Oliver

I like this game for so many reasons!

1. Jamie Oliver's giving you direction and instructions that are simple and easy to follow.
2. Recipes are created using real ingredients, unlike Cooking Mama
3. Not only is this a cooking tool, there are also really fun and cool games
4. Equally as entertaining to my 9 yo who feels like he's actually cooking. So if he burns the eggs, its only in the game, not in my kitchen and he can keep starting over until he gets it right (and so can I).

Awesome!

I love this game. I spent hours trying to make the brownies because I couldn't get the egg cracked or forgot to grease the pan. Once I got the hang of it, I was thrilled to get my rating. It was funny because I was thinking I could have gone into my own kitchen and made real brownies in less time. Within days, I had unlocked all the kitchens. Now I get to unlock additional recipes.

Great game!

This product is less of a game and more of a hand-held cookbook. I started out in the Test Kitchen where you can practice making recipes. Each time you finish a recipe successfully, something is unlocked like a new kitchen, a new recipe or new items for your kitchen such as new ingredients, bowls, dishes, etc.

First, I unlocked every kitchen in only one day, and all 25 recipes in only two days! That's right, 25 recipes only that can be cooked in the test kitchen! Despite the fact that Jamie Oliver keeps telling you to try to make harder recipes, no new recipes are unlocked after the initial 25!

Can you make these 25 recipes in your own kitchen? Technically, I guess you could, but the test kitchen recipes do not use measurements, but instead use a meter so you know when you've added enough ingredients in the game. How does that equate to measurements in real life? It doesn't. I guess you could wing it!

In the "Interactive Cookbook", there are a little over 100 recipes, but these can not be made in the test kitchen. You'll have to make them for real if you want to test them out.

In "Get Stuck In" mode, you can experiment with your own recipes and even save it in the "Interactive Cookbook". HOWEVER, early on in the game you probably won't be able to prepare many dishes because not all the ingredients you will need for a recipe are unlocked yet!

How do you unlock more ingredients? You do the recipes in the "Test Kitchen" OVER and OVER and OVER, while one or two ingredients get unlocked each time. That's right, you have to keep doing the same 25 recipes in "Test Kitchen" in order to unlock ingredients to be used to create your own recipes.

Creating your own recipes sounds good in theory, but the recipes are created according to your actions. So if you slice an onion and then chop that onion, they are considered two separate actions which are listed on separate screens. It took me 12 screens to add meat to a bowl, chop some garlic add salt and pepper, etc. And I can't figure out how to tell the cookbook I want to chop 3 cloves of garlic, not 1.375 oz of garlic!

Sooooo, it's very hard to enter a CONCISE and accurate recipe into the cookbook, and I as yet have not figured out how to EDIT a recipe! Or delete it for that matter!

The mobile shopping list seems okay, but personally I won't be bringing my DS to the supermarket.

I gave the "fun" of this game 3 stars because making the recipes in the "Test Kitchen" IS fun, there just aren't enough recipes.

I am wondering what will happen after I unlock ALL the ingredients and kitchen items. My guess is, NOTHING!

If you think paying $30 for 100 of Jamie Oliver's recipes is worth it, go for it. Otherwise, this is a pass.

I bought this for my 8-9 year old daughter. She is really into cooking. She complains that the game has to walk you through the shopping lists and kitchen areas when you first start the game. I've asked her if she has enjoyed the games so far, she says she still hasn't got past all the things you have to learn first before playing. I do love Jamie Oliver and his back-to-basics cooking, but just haven't found the time yet to help my daughter navigate through this ds game.

We tried some of his recipes, older interface not much multimedia there. They came out better than what we expected. Has some good recipes.But as a game, not that great. Things like pretend that you are cutting a banana.....Mix things in a bowel etc.

Not a bad purchase its doing its part in the kitchen, but dont over expect things. They could do better so lets get them to do it.