Hi!  It’s -B- here.
I’m just a casual girl gamer so don’t expect anything professional from me.

I recently finished playing a series of food/cooking games (specifically for the Nintendo DS) and wanted to share my journey through the cooking lessons, or other, with you.  It all started when I got my hands on the Wii game Order Up!  I had tried Cooking Mama before.  I didn’t like the game enough to play more than the first couple of recipes the one time I tried it, but I really liked Order Up!  I was drawn in by the unique and interesting characters with their kooky quirks and looks and the game’s humor.

The opening scene was amusing.  Dropped from an airplane and landing in a nice, cushy dumpster, I started off at the bottom of the restaurant business meaning I’m working as a minimum wage cook for somebody else.  At Burger Face, I learned the basics cooking burgers, of course, and making French fries using the appropriate motions and buttons with the Wii remote.  Soon after, I said goodbye to Burger Face and got my own little restaurant and continued to work my way to the top.  The key was to finish the orders in a timely fashion by learning to multi-task and giving tasks to the cooks I hired.  I let the other cooks peel the lettuce and slice the ingredients until I realized I didn’t have to grab each leaf and that the two flashing lines were a gauge telling me when I should cut!  Once I realized my mistake, I felt…silly for not getting it earlier.  By the way, are things like sugar a spice?  I guess so since it probably comes from something like sugar cane, which is a plant.  Anyway, after making Mexican, Italian, and fine dining food, you’re invited to compete in a competition.  The scenes during the event and the ending scene is outrageous and comical.  It was a pretty good way to end the game although I thought the game itself was a bit short.

I will now go over the Nintendo DS games as mini-reviews.  Enjoy.

After my experience with Order Up!, I was in a cooking craze and asked Gophn to get me some cooking games.  He got a hold of Nintendo DS games that I was inquiring about.  I decided to play the games in alphabetical order since I just wanted to try different cooking games and didn’t have a preference.

First one on the list was Burger Island.  I’m not sure if I remember correctly, but I think the main character had a shipwreck or something and therefore lost all of her possessions and money and ended up on the island.  A nice couple just happens to give her their burger joint to help her out, but it turns out there are some natives inhabiting the island and threatening the business.  It’s a good thing they’re into burgers and own secret ancient burger recipes that you can buy.  You spend your time cooking a wide variety of burgers and fries and making milkshakes to create a lucrative business and expand all around the island.  The game was repetitive, but a lot of games can get tedious like role playing games where you end up leveling up by killing the same monsters over and over and over.  Burger Island had a simple story, but I liked its humor and the graphics were good enough for me.

Burger Island in-game screenshots.

Then there was the series of Cake Mania (1, 2, and 3).  The colorful graphics stayed true and the same over the series.  In Cake Mania, I played Jill who just graduated from culinary school.  I returned home to my grandparents to find out they’re being put out of business by one of the big companies that put mom and pop stores, well, out of business.  It becomes my mission to make grandma’s homemade cakes a success again taking it one month at a time.  A few months of the year have a special theme and customers, but this game was totally repetitive and it was sometimes really challenging to make it through a few months.  Overall, I didn’t like this game too much, but for some reason I just had to perfect my technique and finish the game.  Cake Mania 2 and 3 are the same.  In Cake Mania 2, instead of helping grandma you’re helping your friends or the government.  The buttons on the oven and equipment got smaller making it harder to accurately select the right shape or color and you end up with quite a few incorrect orders.  It was interesting though in that your male friend is romantically interested in you and in one ending you actually return the feelings.  That actually leads to the sequel Cake Mania 3 in which you’re about to get married, some magical orb which you got from who knows where gets broken, your friends get lost in time, and you have to travel through time to get them back home.  Same baking deal, but you’re actually going to get married to the guy from the previous game.

A few screenshots from the Cake Mania series for the DS.

Diner Dash (1 and2) was next on the list.  The main character Flo is in the service industry and she’s a waitress at her very own brand new restaurant.  The game is simple enough with unimpressive graphics and yet it’s deceptively tricky to pass the more difficult levels.  I spent just as much time perfecting my technique in this game as in the Cake Mania series.  In Diner Dash Flo on the Go, Flo and her best friend Darla, a cook, go on a much needed vacation together, but Flo keeps losing her luggage and clothes so she works as a waitress to make money to replace them.  This happens repeatedly wherever they go from a cruise ship to a luxury train to an exotic island and into a space environment.  Flo is so lucky to have a supportive and understanding friend like Darla.  It doesn’t hurt that Darla can help her friend out by cooking the dishes.  In this sequel, everything fits on the screen so it doesn’t need to scroll left and right, which is nice, but that also means things are a bit smaller.

A few screenshots from the Diner Dash series for the DS.

Fast Food Panic was a good game.  I liked the way I had to cook the food or make sushi.  You can get into a panic since it can get pretty fast-paced, especially when you start to help your coworker manage the tables and dining area in addition to your own duties as a cook.  The loveable characters, a male cook and cute female waitress, seem to be set in an anime or something and the story is played out in a one of a kind style like in comics or manga.  I enjoyed this game and I thought it was unfortunate that it ended so early.  The bonus mini-games are fun though even though I could only play them so many times before I got bored.  I liked Finding the ingredients and Sauce decoration the most and I’d like to mention the Rhythm game and Delivery too.

Fast Food Panic in-game screenshots.

Gourmet Chef was a delight, the most realistic cooking game I played.  Drawn in an attractive style, the French cast in this game are amusing.  The sous chef is always eating the ingredients, the waitress has a crush on the head chef/owner, and his dad is the disapproving food critic who’s always scheming to take away a star from the restaurant.  The directions to make the food are practically what you would do in real life.  The only problem was that the game would add the next step after you finished a step so you couldn’t plan ahead.  The final presentation of the food looked pretty good to me though and I had my eye on some of the fancy deserts.

Gourmet Chef in-game screenshots.

Finally, Imagine Master Chef was the last on my list and the little girl Lisa was quite a cute.  The background starts out realistically enough.  Lisa’s dad is away on a long business trip and she promised him she’d make him a homemade meal when he comes home.  The only problem is she doesn’t know how to cook anything…yet anyway.  Then it turns into an anime story in which a being or sprite from the moon comes down to help Lisa learn how to cook by taking over the body of her stuffed bunny Hopper, does some magic spell so all of a sudden Lisa can talk with all of her stuffed animals who were given life, but had their own personalities that she gave them to start with…except for two who were special to begin with and were just pretending to be normal stuffed animals, and famous female chef Rachel Jones just happens to be at her house the next morning to start giving her cooking lessons.

The food is traditionally Japanese and easy to make.  In between lessons, I got to choose where I wanted to go and a scene would play out according to my choice.  A few were interesting like with the run in with Hopper’s dark counterpart or her crush on a boy.  In the end, she learned to cook for her father, Rachel Jones turned out to be the moon queen, goddess, mother, or whatever, and Lisa had to say goodbye to Hopper who had to return to the moon and duty.  Well, at least a little bit until Hopper came back shortly after deciding to stay with Lisa.  Oh well, all’s well that ends well.  Overall, I had a good run with the food games and it was all because of Order Up!  Well, see you around and I hope I can go to E3 and share with you whatever leaves an impression on me.

Imagine Master Chef in-game screenshots.

Hope you enjoy the mini-review on these pretty fun cooking/food games (with storylines, unlike Cooking Mama games).

Girl Power,
-B-

P.S. I wonder if this year’s E3 will show more of these kinds of games.

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