Cooking Mama: Cook Off
Developer: Office Create
Publisher: Majesco
Genre: Sim
Rating: E for Everyone
Number of Players: 1-2
Expected Release: 1st Quarter 2007
Cooking Mama: Cook Off Gallery

Awarded IGN's "Best Of E3" Award for 2006, Cooking Mama is a quirky cooking simulation game where the player is tasked with preparing and arranging different dishes under instruction of the title character "Mama", who is quick to pounce if you make a mistake in her kitchen. Released on the Nintendo DS only a few months ago, the Wii sequel offers many different ways to play. In "Let's Cook" mode the player is tasked with preparing a dish, each step of the recipe being a timed mini-game where speed, timing, and precision are graded. If this seems too simple a chore, don't be fooled. It's possible to chop too slowly, add ingredients too fast, burn meat, and even drop your food! According to the recipe a dish could be as simple as two quick mini-games of chopping and rolling or something as complex as ten mini-games requiring a greater range of actions. While making certain dishes Mama may also ask you if you'd like to try making the dish differently. If you accept, new mini-games and ingredients are given adding a twist to the play. The score of each mini-game is averaged together to give you a final rating that determines whether you're awarded a Bronze (60-79 points), Silver (80-99), or Gold (a perfect 100) medal. Success can also lead to the unlocking of new recipes. If you fail horribly then you have Mama's fury come down on your head in a fiery blaze of anime-style wrath.

These mini-games involve a wide range of actions such as slicing, frying, kneading, grating, mashing, tenderizing, mixing, peeling, carving, and rolling ingredients in addition to arranging the dishes on a plate. The DS version employs the stylus for these actions and the microphone is even used as a control for blowing on the food to cool it down! The sequel, Cooking Mama: Cook Off, is sure to utilize the special functionality of the Wii controller for these same actions. This time, however, allowing the player to physically act out the actions themselves to provide highly immersive gameplay akin to that of the WarioWare: Smooth Moves. You can see yourself frantically slicing the air in your room already, can't you? More work goes into Cabbage Meat Rolls than most people think!

In addition to the main game mode there is "Let's Combine," where the player can get creative and try to make magic in the kitchen by taking the recipes they've unlocked in the primary mode and combining them at their own risk. There is also "Use Skill" mode where the player can train by practicing their culinary skills with a timer and receive scoring. So have no fear if your peeling prowess is not so much. Practice makes perfect! In Cooking Mama: Cook Off, as if 200+ mini-games and 300+ real world recipes from 10 different countries (compared to the mere 76 recipes on the DS version) weren't enough, now you can go head-to-head with another player to add to the frenzy of the kitchen in a two-player mode where you do battle in kitchen competitions. You won't have to be an Iron Chef fan to get a kick out of this one. How could you and a buddy frantically kneading and dicing with Wii controllers in hand, scrambling to prepare a squid the fastest not be fun? Hopefully we won't have that answer for you when Cooking Mama hits shelves in Q1 of 2007.