A Review of "Cooking Mama 3: Shop and Chop" for the Nintendo DS

The third installment of the Cooking Mama series for the Nintendo DS is "Cooking Mama 3: Shop and Chop". "Cooking Mama 3: Shop and Chop" is published by Majesco and contains the familiar game play of the previous two versions. You use your stylus to chop, dice, mix, bake, and saute your way to the perfect dish. Like the previous version, the recipes in Cooking Mama 3 start out simple, with the techniques becoming more advanced as you become an accomplished cook. Soon, you can combine recipes to make new entrees to win awards and medals. The techniques and stylus strokes are more challenging with this latest version of the game.

There are new twists "Cooking Mama 3: Shop and Chop." The biggest change is that Mama now has a voice. In the previous versions of the game, she spoke to you via comic bubbles on the screen. There is a new background in the kitchen, and the awards have been redesigned.

The shopping game is the biggest addition to Cooking Mama 3. In the shopping game, you are given a list of ingredients, and it is your job to find everything on the list at the grocery store in the time allotted.

If you do any food shopping in real life you may be able to relate to all of the obstacles and frustrations that you run into while pushing your cart up and down aisle at the market. You run into these same frustrations while playing the shopping game in "Cooking Mama 3: Shop and Chop." You need to avoid employees, carts, and other customers, or else you are delayed in checking off all of the ingredients on your list. If you do bump into a customer or employee, you are required to play a side game that eats up precious time on the clock. The makers of the Cooking Mama Series, Majesco, have incorporated all of the fun of shopping at your local grocer into the game. There are five levels of difficulty on the shopping mode.

Like its predecessors, Cooking Mama 3 will entertain younger children for a period of time. The game-play is fairly repetitive, and kids approaching 10 years of age or more, may lose interest fairly quickly. But if you have spent any time in a real kitchen, you will know that real kitchen work is repetitive. You need to build in certain skills, and be able to use them to your advantage to speed up your prep time. So in a way, the game is following a model of what it is really like to work in the kitchen.

The game can be found at prices between $25 and $30 at most retail outlets that carry Nintendo DS games.