A disappointing lack of continuity makes a fun and original game descend quickly into monotony.
Put simply, this game needs a plot or a storyline. It contains over 100 recipes, each of which is split into a number of minigames (although the same minigames are used over multiple recipes). Logically, the recipes make sense. Vegetables must be chopped and shrimps (prawns) peeled before anything is fried or boiled. The games are entertaining, and importantly, make very good use of the DS stylus; something many titles on the handheld simply fail to do. Chopping might consist of drawing a line with the stylus, or tapping it on the knife icon, and peeling involves moving the stylus back and forth. It works very well. Why doesn't the game as a whole work well?
The problem lies in the fact that nothing is tied together. In the process of making one recipe, you are faced with playing several individual minigames that don't link to one another, so instead of the cooking experience being a flowing, pleasant one, it is jarred with loading and menus. On a device that uses ROM cartridges, this is just inexcusable. Add this to the fact that the recipes don't link to one another in any way, and it's merely a case of working through each one for no apparent reason other than to have something to do. We're past all that. Today's games are rich, continuous experiences that we can enjoy from start to finish, but Taito seem to have forgotten this.
It would have been so simple to add a career mode, perhaps with different dishes to prepare for different customers in a fictional restaurant, or different kinds of challenge to overcome, but instead this potentially excellent game is spoiled by a few poor decisions concerning the interface. This is still an entertaining game, but serves to please for only a few minutes at a time, making it a good choice for travelling or the most casual of gamers, but for everyone else, Cooking Mama will be frustratingly unfocused.