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Ready Steady Cook DS

Format:
DS

Genre:
Minigames

Buy/Support:
Support Josie, click to buy via us...

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Other GamePeople columnists have reviewed this from their perspective - huh?:
Domestic Gamer (Wii)

Ready Steady Cook had the potential to be much better than its Wii predecessor, but sadly still falls rather flat on all fronts.

Following on from the release of the Ready Steady Cook game for the Nintendo Wii, there is now a DS version for those of you whole like to keep your gaming a bit more to yourself.

The game follows the same popular format as the BBC TV show, which has been running for 15 years now. As with the Wii game, everything you'd expect from Ready Steady Cook is there, from the Red Tomatoes to the Green peppers, a shopping bag containing all your ingredients and a chef who assists you with getting the dish together in the allotted time (just no Fern or Ainslie sadly). Games are timed with the Ready Steady Cook music playing in the background to spur you on.

You have a choice of bags with various ingredients in them you can also choose a difficulty level. Having played this on the Wii previously - I went for easy. The main reason being that I remember the Wii game was the incredibly fiddly and I had great difficulty actually achieving any of the cooking tasks I was given. Trying to do an intricate vegetable peeling job with a waggley, wavy Wii-mote is really hard. So, I thought, great, the DS version will mean the cooking tasks will be much more achievable – wrong!

How could they have still made this game impossible second time round? It all looks quite straight forward to begin with. Choose the ingredients from the larder shelf, crack some eggs into a bowl (this one was actually much easier), then de-seed a pepper. Now I remember this from last time, no matter how many times I waggled my wii-mote around I couldn't de-seed the pepper and I still couldn't do it even with my DS stylus.

There was a zigzag arrow on the pepper which I dutifully followed with my stylus to no avail. Frustrated – yes! Another thing to note is that the game really doesn't give you much of a chance to do the tasks. You can loose it with just one wrong tap and your chef is shaking her head and saying 'don't worry I'll fix it' and it's over without you even having a chance to work out how to put the oven on, let alone put your dish inside.

Now there is a training section, so I suggest if you are serious about getting to grips with this game you go there first and try and master some of the basic tasks. If you can do that you are in with a fighting chance of getting somewhere with the game.

The one thing this version of the game does offer is a recipe section. So if you do find you have got to the end of a cooking task and you really like the look of your finished dish, you can go and look it up in the recipe section. This is where the portability and 'notebook' style of the DS does bring a nice new element to the game. Having said that, if you are looking for a DS recipe tool, I can think of much, much better ones for you to spend your pennies on.

Written by Josie Campbell

You can support Josie by buying Ready Steady Cook



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Josie Campbell writes the Domestic Gamer column.

"As quite a domesticated mum of three I love the thought that Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS lite and PSP games can have a practical role around the home and enriching everyday life but also fun to chill out and unwind with too. Here are my Domestic Gamer review, join me to read about all sorts of games, from cooking, health, and family ones too."

Here are the games I've been playing recently:

• Just Dance 3
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• Wii U
• Home