benjipwns
Banned
I know this is going to be a buried thread quite quickly, but alas. (Especially as I realize before I post this, that the thread title reads like a call to arms of GAF in general and not the fans of the Wii 2008 GOTY.)
So I got ahold of some more of these Wii and PC cooking games over the last year or so if only for bits and pieces. Cooking Mama on the DS sold me on the potential, Cooking Mama's first Wii edition made me realize that series did not necessarily know how to do it and then from upon the heavens, sporting its own chef hat and a budget price came Order Up! And I know there's a good number of fans of this game on here. (And a couple Cooking Mama ones.)
Since then I've been looking for more as Order Up! 2 has not yet shown its face. (But a Move teaser has eons back.)
So a look at some I've taken a taste of since the Wii has hit. From worst to best.
Hell's Kitchen: The Game (Wii/PC) - To be fair, I only played a little of this on the Wii but there's a PC version and I bet they're exactly the same, the whole thing is point and click. On the Wii this is challenging because of terrible controls, on the PC in its 640x480 window I can't imagine it would be. You don't do anything physical, you click on customers, then tables, then ingredients and they're put together automatically then on pots and so on... And some of the Ramsay clips have background noise from the show so I assume they couldn't even get him to do voiceovers for it.
Cooking Mama - Cooking Mama 2: World Kitchen (Wii) - These are basically the same at the core, one ingredient on at a time for one dish facing only a weird time limit. The first game obviously was done before the Wii was properly thought out but the second is just weird. I have point and click controls, why am I trying to flail about for the right ingredients? Why when you created the most perfect egg cracking simulator in world history (seriously, the egg cracking in Cooking Mama was a "dear god" moment regarding motion controls...more on this below) would you replace it with a meter? That said, Cooking Mama 2 has the most absurd cutscenes of a casual game I've seen yet. And yes I started screwing up just to see them instead of Mama's mere verbal hatred of me as a failure to the family that the first game offered. I didn't play it that long, I beat the first, but the expression on the character while grating was too unsettling in the second.
Stand O' Food (PC) - I think this is only on PC, I actually like it, it's not really cooking but more working the front counter. It's low budget, it's not brilliant, but it can get hectic enough that I enjoy from time to time. I played it when I had GameTap, not sure where else it is available.
Youda Sushi Chef (PC) - Another casual game that was on GameTap I took a chance on because of its food related position. (And because of my low powered laptop when I'd be away from my desktop.) Loved this one, but it gets hard FAST as you have to remember recipes without any onscreen indicator of it with ones that are similar, while managing your supply (YOU WILL RUN OUT OF KEY INGREDIENTS and you have to wait for delivery) and carry out plus who can sit plus your cash flow. This is one of the better done casual PC titles I've seen. It gets brutal as you push on, you really do have to memorize those recipes exactly while paying attention to what you've got behind the counter or the entire service falls apart fast.
Food Network: Cook or Be Cooked (Wii) - This is the best well done, in terms of cooking, of any game I've played, but I cannot under any circumstances recommend it for purchase more than say $5. There are twelve dishes. Total. That's it. Multiplayer uses the same dishes. And that's all the game has. That said, you do them basically as you would in real life, which no other game has come close to. You do them in REAL TIME (although you have fast forward power) that means you can let the game sit on the lasagna in the oven for 45 minutes if you wanted to. And like Order Up!, you have to bring hot aspects of the dish to the finish at the same time. Cold ones, you can do whenever. It has some nice commentary, and if you watch Next Food Network Star, the one judge from there did a bunch of voiceover as did some other jerk.
A sequel to this with the content of the first Cooking Mama (in terms of number of dishes which was around 50ish) I'd be in on probably for a budget price. I'm not the world's best cook, but I am pretty sure you could replicate every single one of these dishes from the game (I assume they're old Food Network recipes) and it'd be interesting to have a game where you can PLAY the dish and then COOK the dish for real. (Like those DS recipe things with realistic gameplay.) And when I had five things going ready to come out within a minute of each other, that was some pretty great gameplay. Also it had the best egg-play since the first Cooking Mama.
Lastly, for the king, bolded:
Order Up! (Wii) - If you have a Wii and want to see what a truly great cooking game, the best ever, is like, here you go. If you want a chefs hat, buy it new if you can. It's easy, but fun. If you need it harder there are harder modes, if you need it even harder ignore your sous chefs. In the end, it's not the difficulty that perfects it, it's the gameplay, the charm and the testing sense of humor it has.
I tried a couple other crappy things like Cooking Academy (only one I remember the name of) and some other Italian Food based one (possibly for $30) on PC (before they decided to get unusable GameTap had a bunch of these), but making motions with a mouse to cook is totally not comparable to doing it on the Wii. (We won't even talk about real life.) Nor is moving the mouse a quarter of an inch to manage each thing on my burners.
I know nothing of Kinect (I imagine this would be disastrous if people were scanning knives to do cooking games) or Move based cooking games yet, and along with promotion of other Wii/DS/PC titles is what this thread is for.
Of course I expect many joke or mocking responses, as such a lengthy examined OP demands it, but you better make them good! Or else. I won't. Laugh. And you'll have to live with your shame.
On a final point, I also have Cook Wars which I haven't cracked, I was going to give it a try first but I finished Food Network in like two and a half hours and so I wanted to keep my thoughts on that fresh, as I was surprised by its depth even as it wound up coming up incredibly short. Plus I suspect some cooking fans may have been interested in something to take care of that Order Up fix. I heard on here before that the Iron Chef game was totally not the way to go, so I didn't try to look into that.
If as expected nobody cares about the OP, I'll update for anyone who searches in the future. Also, if requested, I'll add some boxart or something to make this look fancy and respectful rather than the mad ravings of a cooking-motion gaming lunatic.
I kid.
But not really.
So I got ahold of some more of these Wii and PC cooking games over the last year or so if only for bits and pieces. Cooking Mama on the DS sold me on the potential, Cooking Mama's first Wii edition made me realize that series did not necessarily know how to do it and then from upon the heavens, sporting its own chef hat and a budget price came Order Up! And I know there's a good number of fans of this game on here. (And a couple Cooking Mama ones.)
Since then I've been looking for more as Order Up! 2 has not yet shown its face. (But a Move teaser has eons back.)
So a look at some I've taken a taste of since the Wii has hit. From worst to best.
Hell's Kitchen: The Game (Wii/PC) - To be fair, I only played a little of this on the Wii but there's a PC version and I bet they're exactly the same, the whole thing is point and click. On the Wii this is challenging because of terrible controls, on the PC in its 640x480 window I can't imagine it would be. You don't do anything physical, you click on customers, then tables, then ingredients and they're put together automatically then on pots and so on... And some of the Ramsay clips have background noise from the show so I assume they couldn't even get him to do voiceovers for it.
Cooking Mama - Cooking Mama 2: World Kitchen (Wii) - These are basically the same at the core, one ingredient on at a time for one dish facing only a weird time limit. The first game obviously was done before the Wii was properly thought out but the second is just weird. I have point and click controls, why am I trying to flail about for the right ingredients? Why when you created the most perfect egg cracking simulator in world history (seriously, the egg cracking in Cooking Mama was a "dear god" moment regarding motion controls...more on this below) would you replace it with a meter? That said, Cooking Mama 2 has the most absurd cutscenes of a casual game I've seen yet. And yes I started screwing up just to see them instead of Mama's mere verbal hatred of me as a failure to the family that the first game offered. I didn't play it that long, I beat the first, but the expression on the character while grating was too unsettling in the second.
Stand O' Food (PC) - I think this is only on PC, I actually like it, it's not really cooking but more working the front counter. It's low budget, it's not brilliant, but it can get hectic enough that I enjoy from time to time. I played it when I had GameTap, not sure where else it is available.
Youda Sushi Chef (PC) - Another casual game that was on GameTap I took a chance on because of its food related position. (And because of my low powered laptop when I'd be away from my desktop.) Loved this one, but it gets hard FAST as you have to remember recipes without any onscreen indicator of it with ones that are similar, while managing your supply (YOU WILL RUN OUT OF KEY INGREDIENTS and you have to wait for delivery) and carry out plus who can sit plus your cash flow. This is one of the better done casual PC titles I've seen. It gets brutal as you push on, you really do have to memorize those recipes exactly while paying attention to what you've got behind the counter or the entire service falls apart fast.
Food Network: Cook or Be Cooked (Wii) - This is the best well done, in terms of cooking, of any game I've played, but I cannot under any circumstances recommend it for purchase more than say $5. There are twelve dishes. Total. That's it. Multiplayer uses the same dishes. And that's all the game has. That said, you do them basically as you would in real life, which no other game has come close to. You do them in REAL TIME (although you have fast forward power) that means you can let the game sit on the lasagna in the oven for 45 minutes if you wanted to. And like Order Up!, you have to bring hot aspects of the dish to the finish at the same time. Cold ones, you can do whenever. It has some nice commentary, and if you watch Next Food Network Star, the one judge from there did a bunch of voiceover as did some other jerk.
A sequel to this with the content of the first Cooking Mama (in terms of number of dishes which was around 50ish) I'd be in on probably for a budget price. I'm not the world's best cook, but I am pretty sure you could replicate every single one of these dishes from the game (I assume they're old Food Network recipes) and it'd be interesting to have a game where you can PLAY the dish and then COOK the dish for real. (Like those DS recipe things with realistic gameplay.) And when I had five things going ready to come out within a minute of each other, that was some pretty great gameplay. Also it had the best egg-play since the first Cooking Mama.
Lastly, for the king, bolded:
Order Up! (Wii) - If you have a Wii and want to see what a truly great cooking game, the best ever, is like, here you go. If you want a chefs hat, buy it new if you can. It's easy, but fun. If you need it harder there are harder modes, if you need it even harder ignore your sous chefs. In the end, it's not the difficulty that perfects it, it's the gameplay, the charm and the testing sense of humor it has.
I tried a couple other crappy things like Cooking Academy (only one I remember the name of) and some other Italian Food based one (possibly for $30) on PC (before they decided to get unusable GameTap had a bunch of these), but making motions with a mouse to cook is totally not comparable to doing it on the Wii. (We won't even talk about real life.) Nor is moving the mouse a quarter of an inch to manage each thing on my burners.
I know nothing of Kinect (I imagine this would be disastrous if people were scanning knives to do cooking games) or Move based cooking games yet, and along with promotion of other Wii/DS/PC titles is what this thread is for.
Of course I expect many joke or mocking responses, as such a lengthy examined OP demands it, but you better make them good! Or else. I won't. Laugh. And you'll have to live with your shame.
On a final point, I also have Cook Wars which I haven't cracked, I was going to give it a try first but I finished Food Network in like two and a half hours and so I wanted to keep my thoughts on that fresh, as I was surprised by its depth even as it wound up coming up incredibly short. Plus I suspect some cooking fans may have been interested in something to take care of that Order Up fix. I heard on here before that the Iron Chef game was totally not the way to go, so I didn't try to look into that.
If as expected nobody cares about the OP, I'll update for anyone who searches in the future. Also, if requested, I'll add some boxart or something to make this look fancy and respectful rather than the mad ravings of a cooking-motion gaming lunatic.
