Cooking videogame review. Seriously!

Recently I discovered that there are a lot of cooking video games for the Wii.  Order Up!, Cooking Mama: Cook Off, Cooking Mama World Kitchen, Hell's Kitchen, and Cake Mania: In the Mix!.  It's surprising enough to find out that there are any cooking games, let alone a whole genre.  

My first instinct was to buy them all and the write a detailed review of everything.  But, then I realized that my second instinct was that these games probably suck.  So I decided to buy just one.

I did a little research.  It all started with the first Cooking Mama game, which sold 1.6 million copies.  Pretty good, for a cooking game.  Those results spawned all of these other titles.  And, according to the reviews on gamespot.com, all the new ones are worse than the original, except Order Up!, which is supposed to be a little bit better.  Almost all of the games are $20, except Cooking Mama World Kitchen, which is currently going for $47 on Amazon.  That is the same price as Zelda, Twilight Princess, I might add.  These cooking game writers have some balls, you have to give them that.

I camped out all night outside of Best Buy, so I could be the first in line when they opened.  Turns out they don't even carry Order Up!  Jerks.  Well, even if these games aren't universally available yet, they are available.  I went home and ordered it from Amazon.

I really enjoyed this game, far more than I should have.  In Order Up! you aren't just a chef, you are a restaurateur.  You need to go to the market to buy spices and learn new recipes.  You can order from a special ingredients guy, and you must clean the rats out of the kitchen, wake up your helpers when they fall asleep.  You can even push the paperboy off his bike, and if you pick up all the papers, he'll pay you.  Just like in real life.

All that stuff is OK, but the real fun is in the cooking.  Now, don't expect to learn anything about cooking from this game.  After playing Zelda, you aren't truly skilled in the art of magical-flute mediated time-travel and rescuing princesses.  The same is true here.  In fact, the only aspect of the game that is really engaging is something you don't often encounter in your home kitchen, but is a huge factor in the restaurant kitchen (like I even have a clue), you need to time everything correctly.  Yes, that's it, the most fun aspect of the game is timing the dishes so they all get done at the same time, so none get cold while you finish the others.

That is an oversimplification, it actually is fun learning to maneuver the Wii remote to slice prime rib and chop up a chicken.  And its even fun adding spices to the dishes, and learning that the guy from Texas will give you a bigger tip if you put BBQ sauce on everything. 

Should you buy the game?  Well, maybe, if you are tired of killing terrorists, and see video games as more of a 30-minute diversion than an engrossing life experience.  You should probably like cooking, too.