Game Reviews

Pocket Chef

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Pocket Chef
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Didn't cooking used to be something of a chore? Arguments were rife in our house as to whose turn it was to open the beans and peel the spuds. But the kitchen's no longer a place of toil; celebrities fight to stir the sauce of eccentric TV chefs, the book shop shelves bulge with self-congratulatory autobiographies with a few recipes at the back, and even we pocket gamers have succumbed to the allure of culinary duties.

After the unequivocal success of Cooking Mama mobile, it's only been a matter of time as to when the clones attacked. And, as leather-faced Barry Norman used to say, why not? (That's apocryphal – ed). It's a new genre that's proven its mettle almost immediately, and to see developers exploring the concept is something we certainly encourage.

Pocket Chef Westernises the distinctly Japanese gameplay of Cooking Mama quite considerably - trading wanton for burgers, tofu for chicken nuggets and sushi for snorkers. While Cooking Mama certainly wasn't found wanting, it's surprising how much a more familiar recipe really opens up the gameplay, and with the sheer number of recipes on offer Pocket Chef ought to make a budding James Martin out of the staunchest water burner.

Each of the 50-plus recipes follows the ingredients from cold and raw to hot and served, with a decent variety in the type of challenge required at each stage. These combine rhythm tests, timing and button mashing in equal and often combined quantities.

Chopping ingredients is simple – you do it by moving the knife just the right amount with '6' and '4', then slamming it down with '5'. You stir by building a fast and steady rhythm with '4' and '6', while flipping burgers entails moving the spatula between them at just the right moment before hitting '5' to turn it over. Despite almost most every action being some form of variation on these incredibly simple themes, Pocket Chef rarely seems to repeat itself too often.

All controls are immediately accessible and physically suited to the actions. But the general simplicity of the fast food recipes does tend to reduce the challenges to a time crunch. These slightly shallow gameplay depths suffer more than they might have in the genre's progenitor, if only because the novelty Cooking Mama enjoyed hasn't carried over to Pocket Chef.

It also does away with the quirky manga graphics. Although this really shouldn't make any difference, it does steal some of the ambient fun of the gaming kitchen scenario. Of course, this is still something of a new genre so perhaps Pocket Chef is simply bridging the gap between a cartoon kitchen and the more realistic cooking environment that's bound to come along the moment it occurs to Gordon Ramsay's agent.

Acting as more of a reduced clone than an evolution or expansion of the new cooking game genre, Pocket Chef offers enjoyable gameplay and plenty of levels, but no particularly unique flavours.

Pocket Chef

If you've devoured every last morsel of Cooking Mama, Pocket Chef makes an ideal dessert
Score
Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.