REVIEW: Cooking Guide

07 Aug 2008 at 12:37:16 by Paul Younger
Systems used to review this title: (DS)

Being the chef at home I elected to take a look at Nintendo's Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What To Eat?, their latest title to attract the non-gamer to the DS. Should we actually be reviewing this? It's not really a game, but nevertheless we were intrigued by the concept so we thought IncGamers should hunt down some tasty culinary delights.

Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What To Eat? is essentially a DS recipe book to help plan your meals, suggest recipes and generally expand your menu. The recipe book included with the game comes with around 250 recipes, which may seem a lot, but it all depends what's nestling in your kitchen cupboards, what you actually feel like eating and how much time you have to make it. Take those factors into account and the recipe list starts reducing quite rapidly.

Before we carry on I'll say now that I have been a vegetarian for over a decade so this title was one that particularly interested me, recipe books are generally pretty appalling for vegetarian meals unless you specifically buy a vegetarian cookbook, which I usually do. Intrigued by the recipes included, I was annoyed to find a total of 4 recipes that were considered to be vegetarian. I say considered because two of the four included fish. As far as I know, fish don't grow in fields. Considering this is supposed to be a recipe book put together by what we hope are experienced chefs, this is an inexcusable error.

Putting the vegetarianism aside, the recipe book is not too bad, covering a variety of international dishes, and the concept behind the 'game' is actually a reasonably good one. For example, check the cupboards, see what you have, then punch in some of the ingredients and the DS will come up with suggestions based on what's in the database. Perhaps your wanting to watch the calories, want to choose a recipe by difficulty or you're simply short of time, all these are options to select the recipes by and it works reasonably well.

The menu system is a little over complex and it can get confusing, but once you've played around with it and actually tried to find then follow a recipe through to conclusion, it all starts slipping into place. However, I do think this could have been simplified and made clearer.

For novice chefs there are also short video clips included which demonstrate some of the more useful kitchen skills. Having watched Big Brother and found it hilarious that some housemates can't even cook chips or toast, these tips may actually help the true novice.

Being a DS title, some quirky control method was inevitable and the developers have opted for the shout at the DS to navigate the step-by-step preparation and cooking process. This makes sense as it frees up your hands to actually cook, stir or chop. The downside is that using the microphone can be frustrating as it's unresponsive at the best of times, such is the technology behind the DS microphone.


Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What To Eat? is not a bad title but there is little here for experienced cooks. On the other hand, if you're wanting to learn from scratch or encourage your kids to learn then this could be for you. Vegetarians may as well give this the body swerve, perhaps they will release a vegetarian version. Here's to hoping.

Finally, to everyone at Nintendo, Fish are not vegetables!

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