I recently took a trip to North Carolina, and i live in New York, so the drive one way is about eight hours minimum. any time i have to travel for more than an hour or so, I bring along my trusty 3DS. while I still have my consoles from my childhood (not to flex but our family Wii is still in pristine condition and we like to play from time to time :3), I bought a secondhand 3DS XL (the best 3DS model imho) off ebay about a year ago to mod. I loaded it with a bunch of my long-time favorites, like RF4 ofc, a couple of Harvest Moons, a couple of Pokemons… and of course, a couple of Cooking Mama entries.
Specifically, I got Cooking Mama 2 and 5, the former being a childhood favorite, and the latter being the most recent one on the DS/3DS systems so I was curious if it was any good. safe to say, I played very little of 5 so far- it’s shiny and cute and 3D and all, but… just ok.
I hadn’t played much Cooking Mama since my first installation- I was playing a lot more Pokemon and Tomodachi Life whenever I’d start up my 3DS, but during this trip to NC, I started Cooking Mama 2 on a whim, and I was hooked the entire time, quickly becoming familiar with the nostalgic graphics, recipes and unlockable items that I used to love. this blog entry isn’t a thorough review per se, but just to reflect on the game and my feelings now.
Cooking Mama 2 is the second entry in the franchise and on the DS, and builds upon the first entry greatly. it has the standard cooking mode, Cook with Mama, and a new mode called Let’s Cook! where you can cook for a friend, from Mama and her family, to other new friends like Natasha, David and Kate. It also has the contest mode where you perform a single step, like peeling a vegetable or cracking an egg, as many times as you can within a limited amount of time; and a decorating mode where you can change the appearance of tools you use, Mama’s outfit, etc. There’s also a diary where you can decorate entries of saved dishes you’ve made with the cosmetic sticker items you unlock with the new gift system. it’s a lot of new stuff coming from the OG Cooking Mama, but simultaneously, they all fit together cohesively to create a really customizable experience.
the standard cooking mode is pretty much the same as in Cooking Mama- Mama takes you through the steps of each recipe, even if you fail a few on the way, and presents you with a score at the end. New in this game is the bonus system- if you finish a step before the timer reaches the halfway point, or if you perform a step really well (like the pounding mochi step, if you get in a good rhythm and avoid accidentally pounding your hand instead of the mochi), you get a bonus. After you get a score for the recipe, your newly earned bonuses are added to your bonus counter, in the form of stars. When you get 5 bonuses/stars, you can redeem them for a present- the cosmetic items you use to decorate your diary with. They’re very silly and cute, from stickers of dogs and flowers to comically anime-looking eyes and mouths. I don’t really look at the diary, but ofc i bonusmaxx and get more upset than i should when i pick a bonus present and it poofs in a cloud of smoke, being a rare dud lol. it’s also really easy to rack up a bonus of bonuses from a single recipe, depending on the amount of steps and how easy they are- i’ve gotten so many bonuses from a single recipe sometimes to get 2 presents and still have a few bonuses left to count towards the next one.
there’s quite a few new recipes and types of steps in 2. I don’t know how much more diverse 2 is compared to 1, but it has a bunch of fun recipes from cultures around the world that all look really yummy! there’s also some fun steps that feel tailored to specific recipes, like mixing fruit juices with some ice in a shaker for the Cinderella recipe, gently pushing tokoroten out into a dish for Tokoroten, and stamping hot rice crackers with an image of Mama for Rice Crackers.
another interesting thing about some steps is being able to choose between two tools: a whisk vs chopsticks to stir ingredients in a bowl, a regular knife vs a sashimi knife to cut a slab of fish, etc. It’s a small thing, and only sometimes makes a difference (i think?), but something fun to note. actually- maybe it ALWAYS makes a difference? i’m not sure. i’ll talk about it later in more detail but 2 can be surprisingly punishing sometimes compared to 1. once i picked the whisk over the chopsticks, and after stirring for a few seconds, the whisk suddenly flew off screen and the batter splattered all over the screen and i failed the step instantly i was like ??????? lol. safe to say, i chose the chopsticks the next time i had the choice, and stirred slower, and it went well, so I’ve stuck with the chopsticks ever since. the knife choice definitely makes a difference- always pick the nonstandard knife is my rule of thumb. it’s usually larger, and cuts a lot faster than the standard knife. “well it can’t make that much of a difference,” you say, but i disagree! sometimes you’re presented with a huge slab of meat, or a fillet, or even a tomato. pick the large knife and you’ll be done before the timer’s even a fourth of the way through, bonus in the bag. i also distinctly remember a memory from childhood where i had to cut a long sausage for pepperoni slices for Pizza, chose the standard knife like the stupid idiot i was, and i was literally sawing through the thing, not even close to done when the timer was up…
(girl who is way too heated about a minor mechanic in a Cooking Mama DS game.) anyway- the other cooking mode, and arguably the main feature of 2, is Cooking with Friends. You first pick someone to cook for, instead of cooking with Mama, and make a recipe from start to finish, with no pause between steps, for them. Each person has a set list of recipes to pick from. I kind of hate this mode LMAO. it’s VERY unforgiving- if you mess a step up completely, you fail the entire recipe, and get a sad-looking shattered iron (?) medal on the recipes screen until you attempt it again and hopefully do a better job. it’s far more humiliating than the bronze medal screen you get for a single step in Let’s Cook where Mama regards you with her flame eyes (which i found scary when i was little- and still a little scary in a different way now, a way that reminds me of my own mom when she gets mad with me lolol).
sometimes you mess a step up so far deep into the recipe that you’re like “well i’m never mf trying this recipe again in this mode -_-”: I was doing flawlessly in the Kimchi recipe, until the step where you weigh the kimchi barrel down with rocks of varying sizes, trying to hit the desired weight. you don’t get numbers at all- just guesstimating and the meter that fills incrementally as you stack rocks. I was placing rocks, putting all the biggest ones on it except for one, and then started piling on the smaller ones, until the meter was almost to the desired weight but not quite, and all i had was that last large rock. i had no choice but to put that last rock on, and of course it overshot the weight meter, and the lid of the barrel cracked and kimchi splattered out and i failed the whole step and the whole recipe and i was like ok i’m never doing this ever again. </3
so maybe i have a ton of cracked iron medals in that mode. #sueme. so maybe im pissed about all those medals. #sueme. so maybe i play the safer, nicer Cook with Mama mode a lot more. #dontcare. it’s a little funny that a Cooking Mama game can be genuinely difficult at times, and I hate it, but also i have to respect it. at the end of the day, it’s a silly and lighthearted game that takes very little investment, and is perfect for picking up to play through a few recipes for an hour or two on a car ride!
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