Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic
Apr. 20th, 2015 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroLearn to cook! It’s okay, Mama will help you!
…Again!
The forgiving nature of the later games continues to be present—I was getting 100% gold stars for performances that would have had Mama setting me on fire in the first game. Heck, it’s entirely possible to mess up a bunch of times and still get the “Bonus!” for finishing before the timer is half-gone. (The criteria for the Bonus seemed to be rather arbitrary: Some games seemed not to offer them at all, some if you finished quickly, and some only if you did perfectly. Nothing indicated this, of course.)
The flipside, of course, is some of the games are bizarre or seemingly impossible. The “tap the tray to keep it level” game at the end of the pancake recipe completely bewildered me. The “add and stir” game near the end of the curry recipe took me half a dozen tries in practice mode before I figured out what they actually wanted me to do. Mama’s instructions are not actually terribly helpful most of the time.
(For that matter, I have no idea what the exclamation point in the magnifying glass that appears by some steps/recipes signifies.)
The top screen and bottom screen coordination was clearly not optimized a) for playing with the 3D off or b) the 3DS XL in general. Things will come flying down from the top screen but take longer to reach the bottom than you think they should, and fly in at weird angles. Besides that (and in most of the recipes) the only benefit to 3D is seeing Mama fly out to congratulate you when you finish each step.
There are the full set of 60 recipes; a set of “let’s combine” games that let you add recipes to various bases; a set of “let’s help” clean-up games that you play for total points; and a set of multiplayer games that I wasn’t able to try out. There’s plenty to do; plus you can collect a zillion special items to decorate your kitchen and dress up Mama by getting Bonuses.
Overall: I don’t know, I think I may be getting tired of this series. The first few games and the spin-offs kept adding enough new things to keep each sequel interesting (even if some of them were frustrating), but I think they may be finally running out of ideas. This is a “more of the same” game if ever I played one. It’s fun to visit the magical land where hearts and stars fly out of your kitchen equipment and you’re “Even better than Mama!” but I think the bloom is finally off the rose.
…Again!
The forgiving nature of the later games continues to be present—I was getting 100% gold stars for performances that would have had Mama setting me on fire in the first game. Heck, it’s entirely possible to mess up a bunch of times and still get the “Bonus!” for finishing before the timer is half-gone. (The criteria for the Bonus seemed to be rather arbitrary: Some games seemed not to offer them at all, some if you finished quickly, and some only if you did perfectly. Nothing indicated this, of course.)
The flipside, of course, is some of the games are bizarre or seemingly impossible. The “tap the tray to keep it level” game at the end of the pancake recipe completely bewildered me. The “add and stir” game near the end of the curry recipe took me half a dozen tries in practice mode before I figured out what they actually wanted me to do. Mama’s instructions are not actually terribly helpful most of the time.
(For that matter, I have no idea what the exclamation point in the magnifying glass that appears by some steps/recipes signifies.)
The top screen and bottom screen coordination was clearly not optimized a) for playing with the 3D off or b) the 3DS XL in general. Things will come flying down from the top screen but take longer to reach the bottom than you think they should, and fly in at weird angles. Besides that (and in most of the recipes) the only benefit to 3D is seeing Mama fly out to congratulate you when you finish each step.
There are the full set of 60 recipes; a set of “let’s combine” games that let you add recipes to various bases; a set of “let’s help” clean-up games that you play for total points; and a set of multiplayer games that I wasn’t able to try out. There’s plenty to do; plus you can collect a zillion special items to decorate your kitchen and dress up Mama by getting Bonuses.
Overall: I don’t know, I think I may be getting tired of this series. The first few games and the spin-offs kept adding enough new things to keep each sequel interesting (even if some of them were frustrating), but I think they may be finally running out of ideas. This is a “more of the same” game if ever I played one. It’s fun to visit the magical land where hearts and stars fly out of your kitchen equipment and you’re “Even better than Mama!” but I think the bloom is finally off the rose.
