Cooking Star

Perky personality Rachel Ray may have risen to the top of pop culture, but not without a few wince-worthy quirks. Whether it's her eyebrow-raising acronym for extra virgin olive oil or some of her gut-wrenching 30-minute meals, she's got a corner on the quick fix market.

Cooking Star makes a run on that same territory, delivering quick culinary action that has only a temporary appeal.

The game chronicles Penny's rise from novice prep cook to the ranks of culinary greatness. Like bubbly Rachel Ray, Penny's chipper attitude may annoy but her culinary aspirations make for delectable gameplay.

Story mode has you guiding Penny through a series of increasingly difficult recipes under the tutelage of Headmaster Desmond. Successfully prepared dishes earn you stars, which then unlock new levels and additional challenges.

Just like real cooking, the gameplay is completely hands on. Recipes boil down to a single mini-game, unlike the string of steps required in similar titles.

For example, preparing a hamburger involves tilting your handset to move the bottom bun while toppings descend from the top of the screen. A list of ingredients lines the left side, your job being to flick away undesired condiments as you make a towering burger with the selected toppings.

Other recipes have you rolling rice balls by tipping and tilting your handset, slicing tofu squares with diagonal swipes of the screen, and stirring ingredients to make chowder.

The mini-games are surprisingly entertaining. Tofu prep, in particular, is a blast: blocks of the bean curd fly through the air as you hurriedly slice it into little chunks for boiling on the stove.

There aren't, sadly, many recipes. Penny's repertoire is about as varied as a young bachelor who cooks mac and cheese every other night for dinner. Story mode provides little more than a handful of dishes that you're asked to prepare several times, the repetition supposed broken up by the task growing more difficult with each pass.

Today's Special mode randomly picks from the assorted recipes for a grab bag of one-off dishes, but it doesn't actually stand on its own as a distinct mode because all of the recipes are accessible in Story mode.

Should you complete all five stars for a recipe in Story mode, a related challenge unlocks yet even this is simply repackages the mini-games without truly offering variety.

Challenges, of which there are six, require you to make no mistakes in preparation. A single error and it's game over. It's challenging, but hardly compelling considering it regurgitates the gameplay found in the other two modes.

Recipes for real food, unlocked by completing tasks in Story mode and posting high challenge scores, serve as carrots to motivate continued play. Amazingly, there are more than triple the number of real recipes than those playable in mini-game form.

Wanting to play isn't the issue in Cooking Star, but rather it's avoiding boredom as a result of repetition. Instead of aiming to unlock and master everything in one or two sittings, this is a game best imbibed in short sessions. Sips ensure maximum enjoyment, whereas gulping it down will only highlight its lack of variety.