Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic
By Christopher Healy,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Feels more like a game than a cooking sim, with nice menu.
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Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic
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What’s It About?
The series has had a winning recipe, so COOKING MAMA 4: KITCHEN MAGIC doesn't attempt to mess around much with that formula. You choose from recipes like pizza, pancakes, and squid-ink pasta, and the buoyant Cooking Mama leads you through the steps. You'll use your stylus to roll dough, stir broths, slice tomatoes, and the like. A new mode also lets you follow Mama around the house to do chores.
Is It Any Good?
Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic doesn't do much to improve the series or even build upon its previous successful entries. It's still fun to rapidly chop veggies or delicately pour out pasta water without dumping your spaghetti in the sink, but a lot of the new dishes here seem to contain steps that are pure video game, bearing no resemblance to real cooking. For instance, you might need to catch falling food in a basket or tap fast-moving dishes as they pass by on conveyor belts. It's simply not as novel or interesting as, say, wrapping rice in a banana leaf.
Also, the 3D capabilities of the 3DS are squandered. Every so often, something will fly around on the upper 3D screen, supposedly to distract you -- but you're focused only on the touchscreen while playing, so you barely notice the rare 3D effect. For newcomers, this addition to the series is fine. But veterans may not be impressed.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about how this cooking game differs from real-world cooking. Do you think kids learn from video games?
Does the game make kids interested in cooking? Preparing meals together can be a great way for parents and kids to spend time together.
The game has a very diverse, multicultural menu. Ask kids if there are any foods from the game that they'd be interested in trying for real.
Game Details
- Platform: Nintendo 3DS
- Subjects: Hobbies: cooking
- Skills: Health & Fitness: balanced diet, Self-Direction: time management, work to achieve goals, working efficiently, Thinking & Reasoning: part-whole relationships
- Available online?: Not available online
- Publisher: Majesco
- Release date: November 15, 2011
- Genre: Time Management
- Topics: Cooking and Baking
- ESRB rating: E for Alcohol Reference, Comic Mischief
- Last updated: August 29, 2016
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