GoNintendo Review - Cooking Mama: Cookstar (written by NintenDaan)

Ingredients:

- 1 Nintendo Switch system
- 1 Cooking Mama: Cookstar game
- a strong desire to waste your time

Cooking Mama: Cookstar is pretty undercooked, unfortunately. Never mind the discussions about blockchain DRM or the game magically disappearing from stores. In general, Cookstar is pretty raw through and through. Cookstar doesn't provide anything in the way of appetizing gameplay, making for an experience that's not much fun.

In Cooking Mama: Cookstar, players follow the guidance of Mama as they try their hand at a variety of recipes. The amount of dishes to make is actually quite surprising, and provides hours of content. Every recipe consists of multiple steps, with each requiring a certain motion input or button press. When playing on a television, Cookstar forces you to play with a singular Joy-Con due to the motion controls. Those controls don't feel quite right, and you're never given feedback on what you might be doing wrong while using them. Sadly, the game is even more depressing in handheld mode. All you do is perform simple button inputs over and over again, making for a rather tedious experience.

Cooking actions in general don't take long to perform, but they do ask you to repeat the same inputs multiple times. Each step of a recipe is presented the same way, with little in the way of variety for inputs. This leads to a rather boring gameplay loop that only grows more stale as time moves on.

Once you complete a dish, you're asked to make an Instagram post, complete with filters and different backgrounds. As always, Mama will spout phrases during this portion of gameplay as well. You might hear her exclaim, ''Pics or it didn't happen'' along with other limited phrases during the process. In the end, you are prompted to share your photo creation via real-life Twitter via the Switch's share feature.

The ultimate goal for each recipe is to get a three-star rating. If you pull this off, you'll get access to a Cookstar version of the recipe, which simply removes the button prompts. With the later recipes, the game refuses to give out three stars if you make even the slightest error. As mentioned earlier, Cookstar doesn't do a good job of explaining why you've failed a recipe, which makes getting three stars quite a chore. There were plenty of moments where I thought I nailed it, but the motion controls got in the way of my victory.

If you feel like suffering with a friend, there's a separate challenge mode that offers both co-op and versus cooking tasks. Be prepared to tackle such exciting mini-games as...cleaning dishes, which is honestly one of the better tasks in the lackluster collection. As you might have guessed, the same problems from the single player mode are present here as well, which makes it double difficult to enjoy.

The presentation isn't anything to write home about either. The 3D models are rudimentary, and the textures are surprisingly splotchy, which makes the game look like it's barely been updated since the last installment. It's pretty clear the team hasn't made a very minimal attempt at sprucing things up. The entire visual experience is extremely straightforward and pretty dull. That said, Mama herself still has that same charm from previous games when it comes to voice acting. The stilted line delivery is back once again, making things so bad they're good. Finally, some of the game's music is pulled from YouTube uploads of the older games, which only drives the point home of how barebones this experience is.

Let's go over the final recipe for Cooking Mama: Cookstar, shall we? Take a boring gameplay loop and mix generously with sour control options, then pour it into a basic pan. Sprinkle in some Mama voice acting and a sizable recipe book for a bit of flavor. That's all it takes to create a gaming experience that tastes like the worst of the dollar menu, but comes with a 3-star price tag. Hopefully your next gaming meal comes with a lot more flavor, and doesn't leave such a bad taste in your mouth.