Saved Reviews for Cooking Mama: Cook Off for Nintendo Wii review
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It's not that Cook Off is a bad game--all Wii owners should at least rent it for a weekend, and some will fall in love enough to buy it outright--but it isn't a particularly great game either. It's the gaming equivalent of a local neighborhood eatery: the food's good and service is decent, but it certainly won't be the best meal you've ever had.
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When it comes to captivating casual gamers, control needs to be simple and intuitive, and the Cooking Mama franchise needs to evolve to do that. We could rant all day about what technically works and why 1:1 motion is important, but in the end it?s an issue of whether or not the game is fun, inviting, and entertaining. The overall consensus; it?s still a fun game, as long as you can ignore some of its faults? Cooking Mama: Cook Off can act as that first step towards an inevitable improvement. We love the series, but we simply can?t endorse this one. Here?s hoping for a sequel that truly innovates around the controller, rather than borrowing from DS control.
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The Wii control actually makes it much more fun, except the rolling up part where, if you wear the wrist strap, you have to quickly unspin it before the next step. Overall Cook Off is a great Wii game to have fun while waiting for the next upcoming Super Paper Mario, or Metroid Prime Corruption. You should definitely give the game a chance, and if you're not careful you might learn some cuisine as well.
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If you liked the DS version you will not be disappointed with this one! It's a lot of fun and you might even learn a new recipe or two!
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It's hard to figure out who to recommend Cooking Mama: Cook Off to outside of young girls or chronic party-gamers. It's a passable cooking simulator that's not without its own brand of charm, but which also lacks polish. However, if you're like me (or even if you're not), odds are you're wondering why you should spend $50 on a game that lets you cook virtual food when you could instead buy $50 of real food, do the cooking yourself (with far more precise recipes and actions, and a lot more potential for adventure), and have a grand old feast afterwards
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The Cooking Mama franchise is an excellent example of a 3rd Party publisher (Taito) embracing Nintendo's strategy of expanding the games market to non-gamers and casual gamers? I purchased the DS version for my wife as a gift, and she thought it was great. So, this mother's day, my daughter and I got our family's Mama a Wii, with Cooking Mama: Cook Off as the game we chose to launch with? Needless to say, cracking eggs and shaking the frying pan has never been more accurately recreated in a game before! This is a fantastic game to grab and highly recommended.
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Cooking Mama is visually very cute, with a pleasant effect coming from the combination of clean and bright cartoony settings with uncannily realistic-looking meats and vegetables. Fundamentally, though, it still feels like a DS game, and is largely unchanged except for the addition of the underwhelming competition and some frequently unresponsive and disappointing Wii remote controls? We're left with no other option than to risk the burning hell of Mama's eyes, and tell her to cook off.
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It's unfortunate that the developer of Cooking Mama: Cook Off didn't improve upon the original DS game's formula for the Wii release. Instead of actually tweaking or improving the game design, the developer left the same stagnant progression intact. While one might argue that the key focus of this version was to make the Wii controls work, the sad fact is that they don't--at least, not on a consistent basis. Nothing about Cook Off, save for the inclusion of basic multiplayer, is an improvement over what Cooking Mama offered on the DS. Perhaps if Cook Off were a budget-priced title, it might be worth a look simply for some of its cutesy charm and multiplayer competition; but at a full $50 price, Cooking Mama: Cook Off isn't worth it.
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