Women Belong in the Kitchen

Toys for girls and games for girls seem to have similar ideas. There are a lot of baby dolls, plastic kitchen sets princesses and even adult women are the target audience for infomercials about cooking or cleaning products.

This is where Cooking Mama comes in. There are 4 cooking Mama games for the DS, 2 for the Wii and one for the iPod/iPad. There is also, Crafting Mama, Gardening Mama, Camping Mama, and Baby Sitting Mama.
How can there be so many different games about the same thing? I own Cooking Mama (1 and 2) for the DS and for the Wii, and besides one being easier because you have a stylus and not a controller there isn't a difference between the games at all. It's really addicting too. There was a time in my life where I would just continue playing the same recipe over and over again because I wanted to get a gold coin and here mama say "Great! Even Better than Mama" in broken English.

Mama herself isn't really a character, she is just a place holder. You know nothing about her besides the fact that she cooks, gardens, crafts, camps (which is weird) and takes care of children.
She sounds like a girl scout. I was a scout when I was a little girl, and really was in it for the cookies, but I remember doing all these things in girl scouts.
I went on One camping trip, made gods eyes, and learned about babies.
If Mama isn't a replacement scout she is a replacement of your own mother, who is working now and doesn't have the time to teach you how to cook and garden.

So the game play, the DS version is a lot easier like I said before because you have a stylus. This is another one of the games where you do a specific task over and over again.This game isn't bad...Per say..It's just repetitive. Because I cannot show you the crazy arm movements you have do to while playing the Wii version, I will talk about the DS version.
It's not too hard to screw up in this game. Like I said before it's repetitive, the cooking involves a lot of tracing lines with your stylus and tapping the screen. Sometimes, you can feel like your doing a movement correctly and the game penalizes you for it, but it doesn't make you repeat the same thing over and over again if you keep failing. For example, I messed up on separating the yoke from an egg, and instead of starting that section of cooking over mama stops me and says "Don't worry Mama will fix it". This is both good and bad. It's good because your going to be able to try again, if you redo the recipe or preform it in another, but it's bad because you have to restart everything in the recipe to get a perfect score.
It fixes this also by adding a practice mode for every recipe, so you can practice without being penalized, and you can even skip over the easy steps like chopping.
For a game about cooking (and baking, which should be it's own separate game) I wish these recipes were real. There are no measurements or timing for cooking in this game. It's just "Add Eggs" "Chop Onions" and then presto you have an Omelet. If this game's purpose is to teach me how to cook, then give me some concrete instructions.
In Cooking Mama 2, they step a few things up from the original cooking Mama. For one, you can now change Mama's outfit, and get upgrades for you cooking utensils, that don't mean anything but they are gold. Also, you cook with other "friends" when you link up with real player and try to finish faster than the other player, but also trying to not screw up the cooking. There is also a "lets cook" option in the game where you cook for your other family members, in this part of the game you are not given instruction between each section of cooking and have to complete the recipe in one swoop without messing up. If you mess up Mama will not fix it. I guess this is the best way to test your knowledge of how to play the game, because all of this dishes in the "lets cook" section you have completed in the normal cooking mama mode.
This game is another casual one, because it's just a pick up and play. There is no real skill and anyone can get the hang of it with practice. It's also not a short game, there are 80 different things to make in the main cooking game that rage from ridiculously easy (making Ramen: add hot water) to hard (Escargot: Snails..Yuck). You get to feel like a real Cook without having any skill at all.

So, because it's cooking this game is for girls. So then a game like Hell's Kitchen is for boys because it's back by a real life Chef? Why can't Mama be a Chef? Why is she basically a house wife? She has children (I think) and there is a character named Papa, who is in casual business attire. If this game was backed by a female chef like Rachel Ray, or Giada De Lurentiis and actually helped you learn to cook. Maybe girls would be wants to actually go to school to be a chef or a baker.
What's next for Mama? Cleaning Mama or Pleasing Your Husband Mama? Probably not the latter, but this game is totally harmless. I don't hate it, I just wish I wouldn't get bored of it after a play through.

Before I end this I do want to talk about Peta's response to Cooking Mama. It's a flash game entitles Mama Kills Animals. OMG this is the most overblown thing EVER!!! It was released around Thanksgiving and it turns a harmless character into a blood thirsty lady holding a butchers knife as she defeathers a turkey and rips out its insides, with her bare hands.
Then when you finish the game, you get to play Mama Loves Animals where you make a turkey out of Tofu!
Play it yourself...http://features.peta.org/CookingMama/
That was painful. Only because I find Peta to extreme. I'm all for Animal rights and such, but please don't turn my beloved characters into animals hating murders.

With that!
May the Stars Guide You*
Hoshi