The DS has become known as a home for quirky titles - many consider this as wonderful while others consider it horrendous. How you feel about each faction will determine the amount of fun you can have with Majesco's kitchen simulator, Cooking Mama. Controlled exclusively with the touch screen, Cooking Mama has you whipping up 76 different real world dishes by completing a recipe of mini-games. But while Cooking Mama serves up niche gameplay with Japanese flavor and a smile, a distinct lack of substance leaves the finished product lacking in taste.

Cooking Mama is one of those games where "what you see is what you get." The entire game has you choosing then cooking any of the 76 various dishes, with the overwhelming majority of them being Asian in origin. Once you select the dish you want to make, a recipe will be brought up, showing each of the steps that need to be completed. Each step is represented as a touch screen mini-game, which has more than 200 variations, each of which is graded on a medal scale - bronze for failing, silver for mediocrity and gold for perfection. Using a simple but sweet approach made popular by the WarioWare series, you will touch the screen to fill a measuring cup then pour it into a mixing bowl. Dice a carrot by tapping repeatedly on the digital knife, mix ingredients into boiling water in a timed mini-game that makes use of the stylus and microphone and even set the timer by punching in numbers on a digital timer. About the only step you won't find is clean up and shopping, which actually is a bit of a shame because if ever there was a game that could make shopping and cleaning up fun, this would have been it!

Once you complete a recipe, the cooking mama will give your dish an overall score between 1 and 100 before handing out a final score medal, using a bronze through gold system. Score at least a bronze and you will unlock the next dish. This final score medal system is Cooking Mama's hottest feature and the basis for the game's staying power - attempting to achieve a gold medal for every dish will keep many a gamer coming back for more, although the lack of any change in difficulty or recipe steps for each dish may make this more monotonous than challenging.

That is Cooking Mama in a nutshell, with combining dishes and skill exercises as the only extra 'modes' to be found on top of the main game. It is this lack of extras that damages the game's lasting appeal, as the lack of any type of story mode, cooking competition mode or any reason to be cooking other than just for the sake of it hurts its allure past playing through the recipes more than once, unless you're really keen to go for gold. But that could be the point of the barebones package - to keep the cutting board uncluttered so as to not turn off casual gamers who are drawn to straightforward gameplay.

Cooking Mama's presentation is much like the gameplay, relying on modest charm instead of system-pushing effects. Graphically, the game has a crisp, bright feel with the random 3D ingredients thrown in. Unfortunately, the lack of complex animation and textures limits that appeal, taking out any sense of realism that the anime graphics could have, and should have, created. The sound department follows the same route, with a handful of upbeat though repetitive ditties and cute, computerized sound effects that sound more cooked up than natural. If it wasn't for the need for the DS, you might confuse this game for a child's plastic kitchen play set.

Despite being very simplistic, Cooking Mama still serves up a decent meal. The gameplay is absolutely charming and the friendly presentation, while lacking depth, is very inviting. If only there was more substance to the package - this game just cries for a Top Chef tribute starring Cooking Mama - then I would have been able to recommend this game with high regard to the more hardcore gamers out there. As it is, this is exactly the kind of title that Nintendo likes to see on the DS - one that will draw in people who don't normally consider themselves gamers.

Reviewed by Tony Peters for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).