Cooking Mama 3 is like a Mexican fast food chain that manages to create a 30 item menu out of six ingredients, only it’s completely out of hot sauce and therefore, pizzazz.

Whether you’re combing food into one dubious concoction, playing standalone minigames for record times, or preparing meals for “Grandma,” every square inch of the game feels recycled. Failure of one of these games means restarting Let’s Shop, but you’re better off going back to cooking mode if your DS stays on at all. You’ll quickly shake rattles to calm crying babies and franticly grab bags of snacks from an enthusiastic vendor. Its newest feature is a grocery shopping mode which has players struggling to steer Mama via finicky touchscreen controls, dodging multiple minigame-distributing customers like Pokémon Trainers in a dungeon. Cooking Mama 3 fails to innovate notably on its past DS games, with its “new” recipes not feeling very fresh. How many times is dicing onions and straining pasta expected to be entertaining? Tackling more than a couple dishes in one sitting feels like a grind. Shop & Chop boasts 80 “new” recipes, but the actual food preparation and cooking process is alarmingly similar to past games. This added element of the cooking process is the hook of the newest Cooking Mama title, but you’ll be better off ordering take out. She’s a regular gal who needs to go the grocery store like every other Joe. Despite popular belief, Cooking Mama is not a magical sorceress that can conjure up food at her whim.

Ds games cooking mama 3