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Cooking Mama 3 (DS) Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along I started playing this game on Tuesday 26 September, 2023 // I stopped playing this game on: Monday 9 October, 2023
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.
October 9, 2023 07:44:55 PM
It turns out there IS a subtitle to the game - "Shop & Chop" - but it's not on the cover of the european version (which is what I have). I don't remember if the subtitle appears in-game or not. It would be interesting if it did not, since it would mean that in addition to localization work (translation to different languages) they also changed the identity of the game. As the subtitle would suggest, the shopping part is new to the series. There's a minigame where you have to navigate different shopping environments (grocery stores) picking up items from your list while avoiding patrons, etc. In this sense it's a completely new type of gameplay (compared to the regular cooking mini-games), harder in many ways (there's no instructions so it took me a bit to understand what I was supposed to do and why I was failing), and results in cosmetic stuff for the game (outfits).
October 9, 2023 07:34:33 PM
This is neither good nor bad but Cooking Mama 3 is basically Cooking Mama. It sounds stupid to state it like that but I say that in the context of Cooking Mama 2 that added a subtitle ("Dinner with friends"). I'm not sure what is new/old/refreshed for the series as a whole in this title, but I did enjoy playing some of the minigames (and failing at some too, lets be honest). But, playing with headphones on is a real delight - the audio work adds so much to the experience that despite the cartoon graphics and bright colors, you really do feel like you're cooking! Or at least some imaginary flavor of cooking that makes sense - perhaps more like TV cooking than real cooking if I'm being honest. As I've played more and more DS games recently I'm increasingly convinced that the DS really was the test tube in which all the touchscreen games that would come later with smartphones were built upon. There's a pretty strong legacy here of designers trying out different ways of handling the touchscreen that are both inventive, intuitive and naturalistic. The basic input vocabulary (swipe, tap, circle, etc.) was born here - and then augmented on smartphones with the addition of multitouch (pinch, the opposite of pinch).

Cooking Mama 3 (DS)