I know I’m a little late to the whole Cooking Mama thing, but when I found the original DS title on Amazon for ten bucks, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a shot. After all, I’m no cook, but I am a fan of minigames and unlocking things. Unfortunately, while Cooking Mama has no shortage of either of these things, it’s just not as addicting as I had hoped it would be.

I started out by cooking boiled rice. Simple enough, right? Well yeah, but also pretty boring. After earning a silver medal on that recipe, I decided to try something a little harder: potato salad. It was here that I made an unfortunate discovery - not all of the minigames are fun, yet you’re required to do them sometimes more than once in one recipe. The game also doesn’t require you to pass a minigame to move on. In fact, you could fail an entire recipe and still get through it. Mama just fixes it for you.

At least unlocking new recipes isn’t difficult. However, when half of the recipes aren’t fun, this is kind of bittersweet. The game offers the (seemingly pointless) ability to mix recipes, along with minigames that require you to do a task over and over as it gets more challenging. Neither of these modes have much substance, nor do they unlock anything anywhere else in the game.

Overall, I’m glad I didn’t pay more than i did for this. it’s a fun time waster, and I’ve heard the sequel is much better. But I think in the future I’ll stay out of this kitchen.