Import Worthy – Cooking Mama

Ever since CoffeeMan started posting the screenshots about Cooking Mama, the latest and craziest game on the DS’s already jaw-droppingly diverse game roster, I was definitely intrigued by its nonlinear gameplay. “Just what I need,” I remarked to myself, “more proof that the DS can take just about any menial task and transform it into a fun game that’ll have you poking with your stylus all night.”

Well, that’s why I got my hands on an advance copy of the Japanese version, and take my word for it – this is definitely a game you’ve never played before. Normally, I could just compare DS games to other games you may have played and liked – not with Cooking Mama. The game is so beyond compare, that it really is a gamble if you’ll like it or not.

First things first: I, in no way, speak Japanese. I’ve never been to Japan, I’ve never had an interest in speaking it, and heck, I don’t think I’ve ever actually eaten anything from Japan, somehow. I was somehow, for some reason, possessed into accepting a copy of the game popping into Japanese stores on March 23rd – and I’ve never had so much fun staring at Japanese characters.

Some games on the DS have been “import-friendly”, simply because they just have little to no Japanese text in them; imagine Band Brothers, Ouendan, or Electroplankton. They’re all pretty easy to poke around and find out what you need to do. So really, Cooking Mama could be a little bit of a problem for non-speakers of Japanese – there’s definitely a lot of crazy little squiggles flying at you everywhere. Some, holding within its enigmatic code, the actual instructions to the game.

However, if you’re really afraid of the amount of Japanese in the game, have no frets. The menus are just about as simple to get around as Jump Super Stars’ – a little confusing at first, but after you manage to poke around and see what each one goes to, you’ll associate what they mean in no time. Unfortunately, Cooking Mama isn’t just a game where you try to select a menu button.

When I picked up the actual playing of the cooking minigames (which are all sorted into certain cooking steps, like pouring water, or using stylus gestures to beat dough), I noticed a couple problems – most of the games were easy to figure out, right away, as a good deal of them have a Microgame-esque nature to them. Some of them, though, are completely lost on me sometimes, and I just have to play it all over again in order to actually get it right. Even then, there’s even some games that I haven’t even figured out how to beat in the first place, like this one Donkey Konga-like rhythm game, where it tells you what to do to the food you’re cooking.

No, Taito! I can’t understand when to add the eggs to the boiling water! Stop giving me failing scores!

On top of everything, this game is definitely a product of Japanese culture – and not like Katamari Damacy, where everything is just completely off the wall to begin with. The foods you make are distinctly Japanese – even the pizza. Who in their right mind puts whole tomatoes on pizza, except the Japanese? Half of the time, I wasn’t even aware of what the hell I was spending all this time preparing. That’s a problem.

There’s a number of serious issues I have with labeling the game truly “Import Worthy.” While it’s half of a cinch to drop into Cooking Mama’s crazy moon world, there’s some serious issues with actually understanding what it’s saying. At times, I felt like I was playing some kind of Japanese DDR, but all of the arrows were replaced by the actual Japanese spelling of what to do. I managed to guess successfully sometimes (using the pictures they gift to you, like, every once and a while), but on the whole, I felt like I was just waving my arms around like a moron.

Don’t get me wrong, folks – Cooking Mama is a truly amazingly fun game, and I’m hoping it pops into the Western world sometime soon. But unfortunately, this is a game for Japanese speakers right now. You can squeeze some fun out of it, but this is definitely a game that you’ve gotta experience in your native tongue. But this game is so up in the air, and completely new. If you don’t think you’ll like it, you’ll unfortunately have to go through a rather expensive process just to find out. That’s a problem, too.

Also, don’t import this if you’re a college student. If you don’t have any food around, this game’s not gonna make it any better for you.