I think I'd rather be in the real kitchen getting my hands dirty than play Cooking Mama: Cook Off again.
The Wii remote is used to imitate real movements such as chopping, slicing, grinding, stirring and kneading. To chop something, you will be moving the Wii-mote quickly up and down; to grind meat, you use it as the grinder handle and move it in circles; to stir, you do exactly what you would do if you were holding a spoon.
The ingredients are fully 3D rendered and look realistic enough, but with a cartoony twist. The realism comes from the actions you perform on the ingredient itself. Whether you gut and prepare a fish, slice a large piece of meat, dice some vegetables or peel a carrot, season your food with salt and pepper, shake a frying pan to stir your food so it won't burn… the movement you have to do is indicated on the screen. The game offers five modes to play in. Practice is for you to get used to the controls of a particular recipe and play single preparation steps or the whole thing. Make It means you have to go through all the steps in order to finish the recipe and awards you with a medal at the end, like an average calculated according to your individual scores for each step of the recipe. Challenge mode is like Make It but without the little breaks in between preparation stages.
In Friends and Food of the World you get to cook recipes from ten countries in a cooking "duel" against the virtual friend from the country of the recipe you chose. They're nearly perfect in their cooking, so you better have some serious control of your Wii-mote and know your recipes before you play this mode. If you win, you get a new kitchen utensil. If you lose, you usually get something to decorate your kitchen with.
The two-player mode in Cooking Mama: Cook Off is the best thing about the game. In Friends and Food you go head to head with a real friend and have your cook-off against each other. Both "Friends" modes are played in a horizontal split-screen mode, but this is actually the strongest point in the game since you're playing against someone who is not perfect, unlike your nearly impossible to defeat AI friends of the world.
Although at first I was really excited about the game and how it would be so much fun with the Wii-mote, my enthusiasm winded down considerably after about ten recipes. The controls were strangely temperamental, sometimes even unresponsive, especially when stirring and kneading. What I thought was supposed to be a really fun experience became frustrating and annoying a bit too fast. Breaking virtual eggs, shaping make-believe meatballs or making cartoony puddings could have been a much better and fun experience. I think I'd rather be in the real kitchen getting my hands dirty than play Cooking Mama: Cook Off again. At least I know that in there I can do better than Mama.
Review text part of Grrlgamer.com. Full text and screens at http://www.grrlgamer.com/review.php?g=cookingmamacookoff