Magic happens in the kitchen, so that would make Cooking Mama, Sorcerer Mama. At least, I think it does.
“Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic” is a part of the “Cooking Mama” series of games developed by Cooking Mama Limited, released in 2011 for the Nintendo 3DS. The "Cooking Mama" series began in 2006 on the Nintendo DS,
I’ve never played a Cooking Mama game before, so I have no expectations going into it, other than cooking... And a mama.
How does a non-mama cook?
"Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic” is about making recipes and doing each step to make them. Each step is a minigame and is on a time limit, so being fast and accurate is important.
The player will get a bronze, silver, or gold medal for each minigame and as their final grade depending on their score. A gold medal as a final grade means making no mistakes during the minigames.
Everything is done with the 3DS stylus, no buttons are useable in the game. Trust me, I tried. The touch controls themselves work well and are responsive, although I do wish the menus were navigable with buttons.
There are also gyro controls but only one minigame requires them, which THANK GOODNESS! Gyro controls aren't good most of the time. Gyro controls can be used in other minigames, but they're optional.
There are multiple modes to play, such as "Let's cook!" that has the player cooking steak, snowballs, and even preparing cereal, which by the definition of cooking, DOES count as cooking. Some recipes are based on different culture, such as soba from Japanese culture, adding exquisite variety.
Each completed recipe unlocks the next one until there are no more to unlock. One minor annoyance is that most of the time you won't know the number of minigames a recipe has unless you look at the steps in Practice Mode. Sometimes it’s only four steps, but other times it’s around 10 which eats up a decent amount of time.
In ‘Let’s Combine!’ the player places one recipe on top of a base recipe (ex. Pizza). It’s fine for what it is but there’s not much to it. The results of some combined recipes are funny, but the novelty wears off quickly.
Then there's "Let's Help!" where Cooking Mama tasks the player with chore minigames like cleaning windows, picking up garbage, etc.. The chore minigames are obtained by doing recipes.
The highest score possible for each chore minigame in "Let's Help!" is 9999. Each one has a time limit, but if a point threshold is met, the timer will loop unless the score is 9999.
Honestly, trying to get 9999 is genuinely challenging and fun, these were my favourite parts of the game. They can be chaotic and downright tiring at times, but they give me a sense of urgency that nothing else in this game has by making me use my reflexes to act fast.
There’s also “Let’s Play Together,” but uh… I couldn’t find anyone to play with.
The incentive to beat the game is getting trophies, however there’s no congratulations for getting them. In fact, the one I got was so tiny, I didn’t notice it until writing this review. It’s a crummy reward.
“Let’s Cook!” and “Let’s Combine!” suffer from a severe problem though: The same minigames repeat too much.
It makes sense why it’s repetitive since a lot of recipes involve steps like cutting ingredients and putting food in an oven. It can even be satisfying learning minigames the more they’re done as you progress with other recipes.
However, these steps are basic. There aren’t enough unique steps to balance things out, so these minigames just end up being boring
For me, it's like cooking in real life. I don’t mind cooking, but it’s not something I’m fond of. Maybe this is fun for people that find cooking fun, but I’m not one of those people.
Who is Cooking Mama?
Since we don’t have a story, it only makes sense to talk about the focal point of the game, Cooking Mama. Cooking Mama is our adorable instructor for the game.
Cooking Mama assists the player by acting as visual indicator for the player's performance during minigames through her expressions.
Cooking Mama will either congratulate or scold the player depending their performance. However, her lines are identical each time, such as when she says “wow, even better than Mama'' when receiving a gold medal for a recipe minigame. Every time.
Cooking Mama's voice is adorable, but her dialogue starts to feel like sarcasm with how repeated it is and stops being encouraging. "Wow, even better than Mama" is forever drilled into my brain.
Variety in voice lines would've gone a long way. Without that variety, Cooking Mama ends up being an annoyance that hinders the entire experience.
Another thing about Cooking Mama, on the positive side, is that she’s completely two-dimensional in a game with lots of 3D. I’d say this does her more favours since the 3D in the game can be mediocre. It’s not bad, but it’s also nothing special.
Cooking Mama’s sprite looks nice and is well-animated. However, when the sprite gets close to the screen, which is every time the player gets a gold medal, the resolution of the sprite looks blurry and jagged instead of being upscaled to be cleaner.
If the player completes certain conditions during a recipe minigame, like completing it before half of the time is over, they'll get a bonus star. A second bonus star can be achieved if the player completes the minigame as quickly and accurately as possible, although not all steps have two bonus stars to get.
Up to three bonus stars will unlock gifts. The gifts range from cosmetics and costumes for Cooking Mama herself or customization options for the kitchen like the walls and floor.
The cosmetic are adorable, with additions such as Cooking Mama wearing glasses or the dress. Customizing the kitchen is cool but hard to notice during actual gameplay. The unlock order is unorthodox though, as I got the last costume, the dress, early. It's not a big deal, but it's still strange.
Finally, Cooking Mama, please get better music. There are two plain songs for the recipe minigame in the “Let’s Cook!” mode… TWO! There are 60 recipes! There isn’t a single song I like in the soundtrack they all suffer from either being boring or overplayed.
Cooking Mama seems like an adorable mom but needs less .jpeg, better music taste, and more compliment variety.
Overall (D)
The best way to describe “Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic” is monotonous. It’s a decent time-waster that can be cute. There is fun to be had, especially in the “Let’s Help!” mode. The controls work well too, and the cosmetics are great.
However, the voice lines, music, and minigames are repeated too much, making the game lack variety. Along with some other problems like “Let’s Combine!” not adding much to the table. Although, I don’t think this means the game is bad. I think it’s better to call it simple. Its simplicity is something I just can’t get appreciate though.
For what it is, it’s harmless but I’d only recommend it to people that have fun with cooking or want to get into it.
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