Don't let the simple (nearly generic) cover for this game fool you. This game is anything but generic! Nor is this a rip-off of Cooking Mama, which surprised me. Which one you'll end up preferring is strictly a matter of taste; if a prefer a game with a storyline (albeit a far-fetched one), this game is for you. If you'd prefer to stick entirely to the cooking, you might want to dust off the old copy of Cooking Mama again.
In Imagine: Master Chef, you play the role of a 12 year old girl named Lisa whose deepest wish is to fulfill her promise to her father that, by the time he comes home from his business trip, she'll be able to skillfully treat him to some home cooking. She confides this wish in her stuffed bunny Hopper, who she soon discovers has been possessed (but not in the bad, demonic sense) by a Moon Angel named Purianne, who intends to stay by her side and offer both encouragement and companionship the whole way. Hopper also uses her magic to bring the rest of Lisa's stuffed animals to life to keep her company as well. (I'm not sure whether to find it sweet, sad, or disturbing that a 12 year old girl is having to resort to her toys for companionship because nobody else will give her the time of day...)
Lisa's mother surprises her with cooking lessons from the world-renowned cook, Rachel Jones (is this supposed to represent Rachel Ray? I bet it is...). She guides you through each cooking lesson, giving specific instructions on how to perform each task at hand. The game was obviously designed for young children with a low tolerance for frustration, as there's no way to actually fail a level. You may get a lower score, but you can't fail. Isn't that half the fun of most games though, the frustration at losing a level and then the thrill you get when you finally pass it? I guess that's just the adult in me talking.
Speaking of the scoring for each dish, ev
en without being able to fail, it STILL manages to frustrate me! It seems to be incredibly difficult to get the top possible score each time. Even if you make the dish look exactly like the example, right down to the garnishes - did I mention you're also graded for your garnishes? - you still won't usually get the full 120 points. I don't quite understand how they calculate the results. You're graded on how well you cook the dish, how it tastes, and the garnishes. You can earn up to 4 stars in each category, and each star is worth 10 points. The top score you can achieve is a 120 (yeah, not even an even 100). I've only managed it a few times, and I think it was luck of the draw. The garnishes are what usually screw me up. At the end of each dish, Rachel announces that it's now time for what you've been waiting for: the serve up. To be honest, I DREAD it because of having to apply those damn garnishes, knowing that no matter how much care I put into it, chances are I'll still only get 3 out of 4 stars for it!
In between the cooking exercises, you'll be able to go on walks around town with Hopper and encounter all sorts of different people. Each one adds its own different dimension of drama to the game, and although none of this is even really necessary, it's still a nice diversion from the cooking so you don't completely burn out on it. Each person you meet will give you a gift at the end of your encounter, which will go towards being able to customize your kitchen by on more piece. Unfortunately, to unlock ALL of these pieces, you must play the game over...and over...and OVER again. It took me 5 times of playing the game, beginning to end, to unlock EVERYTHING. It's immensely frustrating in and of itself, as you have to sit through tons of endless dialogue just to get anywhere. If I could improve upon the game in any one way, creating a faster way to cycle through the dialogue (or skip it completely if you've already finished the game once) would be it. The fact that after the end credits roll each time, Hopper comes back and reminds you you've only unlocked so and so percent of the items doesn't help matters any. (I think she's mocking us on purpose.)
The dialogue, although very cutesy, feels incredibly forced in places. Not exactly like when video game makers take a game that was originally in Japanese and try to transcribe it into English, no no. It's just... I don't quite know how to put into words what I want to explain here. All the "hopping" jokes get old VERY fast ("This is no hopping matter!" "You don't have to be so hopping rude!" etc.). I started to have flashbacks to that old 1980's movie, Santa Claus: The Movie. (You know, the one with Dudley Moore as the elf...) All the painful jokes about needing "elf control" or "elf confidence" and whatnot came flooding back to me. I'm sure the writers felt very clever and witty for this, but....agh. It gets on your nerves after a while (especially when you're playing the game over and over to unlock it all).
I was, however, very pleased with the style of animation in this game! It has that distinctive Japanese cartoon feel to it without being anime, which I found refreshing. (Before you send me hate mail for it, no, I have nothing against anime! I'm actually quite a fan of several shows.) And for being so simplictic, the level of detail the artists used is astounding! Right down to the very color of the tomato seeds. It all looks so simplified at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it's quite impressive that the artists were able to get so much detail in while still maintaining that simplified style. And, of course, I was amused as anything that the dad in the game looks like a Japanese version of George Harrison. ;)
For the many hours of your time (oh yes, there WILL be hours! It logs how much playtime you've spent on the game as well, and I think I ended up with about 27 hours altogether) that you'll spend on this game, the music gets stuck in your head. Badly. HORRIBLY. As I laid in bed, trying to fall asleep, I realized that I couldn't get the songs - and even some of the sound effects - to stop playing on a loop track in my head. After 2 nights of this, I decided it was time to start playing the game with the sound off. You might want to take the same advice if you start to have this problem.
The gameplay itself, although simple, took me a little bit of time to get a feel for the controls for. I often seem to have this problem though, so that might just be me. Once I figured out I was doing, I realized how easy this game actually is. It's more of a game to use for relaxing than for an actual challenge, as there isn't much that's very challenging in this entire game.
When I first began to play, on the first dish in the game, you have to wash your hands before
beginning to cook, and you have to wash the dishes after you're done. Now, I groaned at having to do this - thinking this game is going to be almost as much of a hassle as real life cooking - but this is the only round in the whole game where you're required to perform these tasks. Now, for an educational game, I get mixed messages from this. On the one hand, I'm thankful I didn't have to do this before and after every dish. On the other, what kind of example is it to give kids that they only have to wash their hands and the dishes the first time they cook anything, and then never again? I'm glad that the reminder of taking such responsibility is included in the game at all, though.
Speaking of washing the dishes, this is one of the minigames in the game. Yes - Ubisoft has found a way to, at least try to anyway - make washing dishes fun. It's mostly just a race against the clock to see how many dishes you can wash in a set amount of time, but you'd be amazed how even this simple little minigame becomes quickly addictive when you're trying to beat your own score.
There's a cooking quiz minigame which, although it sounds like an easy enough concept, it's a little tricky. I've yet to score 100% yet, and this is with memorizing answers to questions I've gotten incorrect before! This minigame is educational in its approach, teaching little-known food/cooking tidbits.
The memory game Match is exactly what it sounds like. You get a bunch of face-down cards on a table, flip them over one by one, and have to match them up by memory. Simple enough concept for even a young child to play, and enough of a challenge to even keep adults playing it.
Darts sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. Even if you have good aim, it's hard
to make the dart necessarily go where you want it to because of these controls. I always end up with at least 3 or 4 darts missing the wheel entirely, and only get a couple hits on the higher points sections of the wheel. It's frustrating, and that creepy puppet doesn't make matters any better. (The frog's almost as bad.)
Puzzlit is harder than it would seem to be. You get about a dozen letter tiles, much like in Scrabble on each round. On the top screen, you'll either get the silhouette of a food or kitchen utensil, or a scrambled image of either that slowly becomes clearer. The quicker you get the word spelled out, the better. You only have a few seconds to get each one though, so be careful!
Lastly, we come to my personal favorite of the minigames: Stackem DX. You take stacks of dishes (you decide how many you can handle in a single trip) and carry them across the kitchen to the sink, where you unload, run back, and grab more. The aim is to get as many dishes to the sink as possible without dropping them, and the catch is that the more plates you carry at a time, the more your stack is going to wobble and threaten to fall, costing you points and precious time. It's a fast game, but I love it.
As an added bonus, you'll find that there are real life recipes for most (if not all) of the dishes featured in this game. Pretty nifty, as I do have to say, this game does tend to inspire one to want to try cooking firsthand!
I'm going to try and not give too much away here, but I will say that the ending of the game made me cry. It's sort of weak, sure, but the first few times playing the game all the way through, even after KNOWING what happens at the end, I wept like a baby. I'm such a sap. This game KNOWS how to tug at the heartstrings. One question though that I noticed was a fairly huge inconsistency with the storyline...All throughout the game, Hopper makes a huge deal out of never being able to show her TRUE self, for she won't be able to return home to the moon afterwards if she does. I will divulge that at the end of the game, she does briefly show herself - is this a self-sabotage? You never find out for sure if she goes back to the moon or not... The wording of the ending leaves it up to debate as to whether she eventually goes back, or if she stays on earth forever. It's all a matter of interpretation.
It also took me until the third playthrough of the game to realize that during the credits of the game, those aren't just any old dishes they're showing as backgrounds while the credits roll - those are the ones I made and decorated! (I'm so slow.) I got a litte bit of a kick out of that once I noticed it.
The game has a very definite heavy Japanese influence to most of the dishes, so a lot of them are made a little differently than what we here in America tend to be used to. Still, I wouldn't be opposed to trying most of them.
Here, to spark your interest (and possibly tease your tastebuds), I'll list off all the dishes that can be made in this game:
Main Dishes:
Sunny Side-Up Eggs
Salisbury Steak
Rice Omelet
Hotcakes
Curry Rice
Spaghetti Carbonara
Japanese Pancake
Macaroni Gratin
Meat and Potato Stew
Spicy Tofu
Cream Stew
Hamburger
Meatloaf
Fried Egg Ricebowl
Spicy Pancake
Japanese Meatloaf
Thin-Sliced Pork Cutlet
Keema Curry
Chicken Doria
Creamy Omelet
Spaghetti Neapolitan
Side Dishes:
Rice
Garlic Toast
Coleslaw
Garlic Toast Caesar Salad
Colorful Salad
Apple Snow
Potato Salad with Broccoli
Cauliflower Curry Salad
Steamed Rice
Egg Fried Rice
Buttered Rice
Fried Chicken
Pizza Margherita
Lotus & Shrimp Potstickers
Banana French Toast
Cabbage Roll with Sausage
Tofu, Chicken, and Egg
Baked Apple
Pumpkin and Pork Stir-Fry
Chicken Nuggets
Tofu and Onion Miso Soup
Consomme
Custard Pudding
Strawberry Yogurt Cream
Corn Soup
Milk Gelatin and Mango
Fried Apple Pie
Exotic Pumpkin Red-Bean Soup
Potstickers
Octopus Tomato Carpaccio
Minestrone
Potato Cream Soup
Cinnamon Lassi
Coffee
Green Tea
Herbal Tea
Tea
Milk
Oolong Tea
Wow, after typing all that up, I'm feeling rather hungry. See you next time! Oh, and:
I rate this game a 7 out of 10 little Hoppers.
I'm still in the market for a replacement stylus for my DS. (Any takers? hint hint?) If given one, sure, I'll use anything that's handed to me, but if it's something I have to purchase myself, oh, this suddenly becomes a whole new ballgame! Mostly because I had no idea there were so many different kinds and colors out there. Anyway, in my online travels searching for one, I can across this little beauty:
And this, boys and girls, is going to the top of my Christmas/birthday wishlist. Not only is it in my favorite color, but just LOOK at it! I hadn't bothered purchasing a proper case for my DS yet in the year and a half I've had it because all the ones I'd seen were bulky and looked stupid. THIS, on the other hand.... This is cute! This is chic! (Not to mention, the stylus matches SO well!) Given that 90% of the reason I even tote a purse around is to toss my DS in there? This adoreable little clutch might just be the sensible alternative! Thanks, Renchi! (Also available in pink, gold, silver, and pearl.)
My very first review here is dedicated to my 9-year-old sister, who's easily THE biggest Hannah Montana fan on the planet. We recently came into acquisition of the game by courtesy of one of our cousins. After a short not even 10 minutes' time, she dropped my last DS stylus down the couch. Smooth...
A couple of weeks passed before I found something that makes a suitable replacement (still waiting on a real one though), and I realized we still had this game in our possession. So I figured, what the heck, while we're still borrowing it, I'm gonna go ahead and try it out. I'd tried to win the game off Ebay for my sister (and subsequently, failed) for Christmas last year and remembered seeing the game synopsis, some screenshots and a few gameplay videos. I admit to listening to a little Hannah Montana on the side, so it seemed like an intriguing enough concept for a game to me!
Oh dear me. Where on EARTH do I start with this one? I do realize that the age range intended for this game is really primarily for the tween crowd, but honestly folks - there's a lot that could be improved upon in this game. (Maybe they've done that with the Wii "Hannah Montana" games.)
Anyway, let's start at the beginning here with the packaging. The cover on the box was no doubt designed by Disney to send little girls squealing in the middle of the store upon seeing Hannah's face smiling back at them, with the unspoken promise of letting them live out the life of a pop star vicariously by playing this game. After all, what little girl in this day and age doesn't have dreams of growing up to be a pop star?
Flip the box over, and you'll be greeted by another photo of Hannah, 3 screenshots of gameplay, and the following text:
IT'S A SUPER STAR SHOWDOWN!* Play as Hannah to win the Music Jam Online video competition
* Use the stylus to play guitar, bass and drums
* Play wirelessly with up to 3 friends to make your own band
What the box neglects to tell you is that 90% of the actual "gameplay" will consist of endless dialogue scenes which, unless you're a fan of games such as Phoenix Wright, you're probably going to tire of very quickly.
I pop the game in, and after sitting through 3 or 4 different logo screens, I literally cringe upon hearing the theme song. I suddenly begin having flashbacks back to webpages from 1994, before the days of MP3s, when the only songs you heard online were terrible MIDI renditions that you sometimes couldn't even distinguish what they were supposed to be. This game was made by Disney, right? Well then, they should also have the rights to the real versions of the songs, shouldn't they? And don't tell me that they can't fit the song files onto the cartridge - Elite Beat Agents is a perfect example of real music being used on DS. More games should adopt that.
Once I got past that part, my next thought went to the picture on the top screen above the main menu. Wow! Disney really outdid themselves, I thought to myself. Look how amazing the graphics are!
No. No, no. Even though they proved by having it there that they could have graphics this good, they don't. Which is a shame, because that would have been amazing. Granted, it probably would've taken them so many years to make, the Hannah craze would certainly be long over by then, and new Disney stars like Selena Gomez would be taking over the world, but I digress. I was just a little disappointed by getting my hopes up like that for nothing. Instead, we get graphics that look like this:
Disappointing, huh? But one point that I was very impressed by is all the excruciating detail they put into giving Miley's house the EXACT same layout as on the TV show. (I'm sure I'm not doing my reputation any favors here by admitting I watch it.) Anyway, I more or less noticed that they did this everywhere possible in Miley's world in this game. I give the makers MAJOR props for going through all that trouble. I guess they know full well that young girls are often so obsessed with whoever their current TV/movie obsession that they know every last detail backwards and forwards, that they'll balk and fuss over any tiny little inaccuracy. (If anyone knows this from firsthand experience, it's definitely me. Just...not with Hannah Montana.)
Something else that struck me right off the bat was the quality of the dialogue. Yes, I know, I complained about how much of it there is just earlier in this same review, but quality DOES triumph over quantity in this case. I think they may have even gotten the original screenwriters from the TV series to write the dialogue for this. I can almost hear all the characters saying each line inside my mind as I read it, and that, for me, has always been a major scoring point in anything based off some type of fandom; be it a band, a movie, a TV show, random celebrities... I've spent the better part of my life writing, reading, and reviewing fan fiction stories. I can usually tell within the first few exchanges of dialogue whether or not the writing is up to par. So, for this part, I'll definitely be giving a big fat 10! Now, if only the rest of this game were that good...
The navigation on this game isn't possible, but it definitely takes a little bit of time to learn the ropes. To move between rooms - or even parts of larger rooms - there's a sequence of stars on the floor of each area. By centering Miley/Hannah over one of them, you'll be able to enter that location. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. It often took me a few tries to get her centered just right to where the star would actually work. And of course, the times I didn't want them to, I'd barely touch a star while trying to walk around it, and end up sent to the location and have to go back through. For as many of these portals as there are in the game that you'll encounter, you'll find that this grows aggravating very quickly. It would also help a little bit, especially in larger areas like the business center, if there were an ability to run.
Another thing that will grow old really quickly is the same three or four songs looping over and over again repetitively throughout the entire game. The girl has had more hits than that, why couldn't they have included more of them in the game too? I don't know. But it's a surefire way to make even the biggest Hannah fan start rolling her eyes at the first few notes of any of these songs.
One more gripe before I move on, I swear. It really irks me that there is NO pause feature whatsoever in this whole game. What are you supposed to do if the phone rings in the middle of a photo shoot? Or you have to go to the bathroom? Or heck, both at the same time, and you CAN'T PAUSE THIS GAME??? AHHHHHHH!!! (Okay. I'm better now. I swear.)
So, where were we before that patented genuine LLP freak-out? Ah, yes. Photo shoots. The only thing I hate more in this game than the repetitiveness of the music. You have to match the poses and colored backgrounds with the backdrop that cruises along behind Hannah...but this becomes mind-numbingly boring after about 30 seconds. When I finished the first photo shoot in the game, I was practically begging for mercy because it felt as though the thing were never going to end. And then, just to have to do another one a minute later? I nearly wept. The photo sessions go on for SO long, the song isn't even long enough to cover the whole thing, and it starts over! "Who Says" is one of my favorite Hannah songs in real life, but after playing those levels, believe me, I think it'll be a while before I want to hear it again.
Tip: Make sure to invest in a pair of headphones before playing this game. The people around you will thank you for it.
This brings me to the part of the game where the instruments become involved. AKA, the entire reason I even picked the game up in the first place. You start out with the rhythm guitar and strum across the strings as you press the arrow keys in the corresponding sequence with what appears onscreen. It's no Guitar Hero, but it's got a certain charm to it. If they had made a video game based entirely just off of this mini-game alone when I was a pre-teen, it probably would've been my favorite game in the world.
Tip: If you're right handed, don't think you'll be cool for going into settings and switching the controls to left handed. I fell into the pitfall straight off the bat because I thought ha ha, I'll set it left handed and be like Paul McCartney. Idiot! All it will do is make it more difficult for yourself because of the direction you have to strum the strings in.
After mastering all three skill levels of rhythm guitar, you'll move on to bass. No, not the kind of bass that will make you feel like a big pimpin' black man when you play it, just... y'know, a regular old bass. (You can still wear your pimp hat while you play the level. I promise I won't tell.) Now, I made the mistake of not reading the instructions for how to play this before jumping in headfirst; figuring if I had such an easy time with the rhythm guitar, then bass should be even easier! But I was making the mistake of trying to strum across all of the strings at once. Yeah...don't do that. Only play the string that you're supposed to at a time here, just like playing a real bass. Before coming to this realization though, when I still thought you were supposed to be strumming all the way across, I found myself thinking dang, if the kids that play this ever try and pick up a real bass and play it like this, they're going to be awfully disappointed. It was around the time that I thought of that that I also thought to try playing just one string at a time, and a funny thing happened: my score suddenly started to skyrocket. Gee, I wonder why...
The lead guitar concept is the same of that as the bass, except with 2 more strings. Not real difficult. Pity that most of the notes from this "electric guitar" sound an awful lot like the sour notes the tiny pocket piano I used to have as a toddler made as the batteries would begin to go dead in it. But I digress... There's no substitute for the real thing here, folks. None at all. But for the preteen who keeps begging her parents for an electric guitar for her birthday/Christmas/Hanukkah/whenever so she can be a rock star... Maybe this will suffice. Maybe. (Probably not though.) I guess you could equate it to being one of those little girls who also wants a pony, and gets handed a horse simulator video game instead. Speaking of which, I've seen an AWFUL lot of those made for DS... Does this further go to prove my point that DS is aimed more for a female demographic, and PSP for the male demographic? Oh, I don't know.
I was incredibly let down by the drumming mini-game. It's difficult to master the timing that they want - even if you get it at the right time, often times the beats you're hitting don't match up with those in the song. Not to mention, you don't get little dots or light up spots or anything that appear on each drum and cymbal to tell you when to hit what, oh no. You get 4 flying pieces of a circle that come together on each one. Regardless of if I hit it just before the pieces meet or if I hit exactly when they do, it doesn't seem to matter, they still show up as wrong. But even if they were registering as being correct? I've always had this infantile fantasy of being a drummer. Barely tapping different points on a screen doesn't fulfill the desire to hold a stick in each hand and beat on things as hard as I can. It's NOTHING like drumming at all!
There's one more musical mini-game that I didn't see mentioned on any review sites about this game, and that's the voice coach game. Good in theory; not so good in execution. You're presented with a screen that looks much like a very primitive mixing board, and colored bubbles light up and drop, representing each note you need to sing. (If you go about it right, humming will suffice.) If you hit the right note, the paddle at the bottom of the screen will slide over to beneath the falling bubble and catch it. Be careful though - unless you get it just right...the pitch, the volume, length of holding the note, holding the microphone just far enough away from your mouth...it will register as incorrect and the paddle won't move to the right spot. It took me several tries to get a 100% on this. As long as you're not tone deaf, you should be able to get a pretty high score, even if imperfect, fairly easily.
The game is divided up into different Acts which you must complete. I think there's 4 total. And it took me until almost the end of the second Act to realize that those round purple things all over the place with the yellow centers aren't backpacks - they're the film gels I've been supposed to be keeping an eye out for this whole time! Boy, did I feel dumb. A tiny glitch (but one you can live with) is that if you walk through a film gel to pick it up, Miley/Hannah will keep walking for another second or two longer than you want her to. Not terrible, but it gets annoying nonetheless.
These film gels become important later on when you go to make Hannah's music videos. You choose her backdrops, songs, lighting effects, wardrobe, and stage moves for each frame of the video. Now, is it pitiful that this game was designed for little girls, I'm 23, and couldn't get anything higher than a D rating on my videos? I edited them every which way I could think of, and still, nothing worked. If I can't even get it, how's a little kid supposed to? Yeah, that's what I thought. Even when I got to the end of the game and had unlocked just about everything there is to unlock, I still was unable to score any higher than that. There's got to be a trick to pulling this off. There just has to.
In the second act, Miley's art class is holding a charity drive in which everyone has to donate art. Or posters. Or something along those lines, I couldn't quite exactly follow how exactly their project was going to help charity. Then again, rock stars do doodles all the time for charity and auction them off... Well, anyway, the students of this class are sent out to the local art supply store in the mall to buy multicolored assorted shapes. They looked suspiciously like tanagrams to me...which, perhaps it was just my school, but I haven't seen or heard mention of those things since first grade. Why exactly would high school students be needing them again?
The art you put together with these pieces is all fairly simplistic, as you can imagine. But don't be fooled. Even on the easiest level, it's still a little challenging to get everything lined up juuuust right and turned in the right directions. I played this game on the easy setting, and even that was difficult; at best, I couldn't produce more than 5 art pieces in any given level. I don't know what the average is, but to me, it didn't feel like very many.
There's some mini-games in this that really make me question whether or not the sequences were even originally intended for this game or not, or if they were thrown in last minute. Case in point: the ice skating mini-game. Since when is Miley an ice skater? I don't recall her ever being one. I even wondered for a moment if maybe Disney might have had an idea for a DS game based off of their made-for-TV movie "Ice Princess" but then they couldn't flesh it out into enough of a full game, so they cut their losses and crammed as much of it as possible into this minigame. The general concept is simple; on the bottom screen, you trace the shapes that appear, and as long as you manage to cover the entire area in time, Miley will execute that particular maneuver. If you miss even a little bit of it though, Miley will begin to wobble on the ice, and you only have a small timeframe in which to recover from this or she will fall and you'll lose the round. With the exception of the double squares pattern, I found this part to be very easy.
And then there's still other mini-games that make me question Disney's judgement altogether, like the one where you're basically breaking into Mr. Stewart's storage unit or lockers at school. It doesn't seem like a very wise concept to be teaching kids that this is a completely acceptable idea. Or maybe I'm just old fashioned. It just doesn't seem like a very wholesome skill to be teaching; lock-picking I mean.
I much prefer the pizza making mini-game myself. Sure, it's unrealistic in the fact that the toppings all get hurled across the screen and you have to both count out and catch the appropriate toppings that match the ones on each order ticket. And yet, it's still strangely alluring to me. Maybe it's my Italian heritage coming out and drawing me toward this one, but I liked it!
The RC car mini-game is very, very forgettable. Run of the mill in just about every sense of the word here, folks. Don't expect any surprises with it, or you'll be disappointed.
One last gripe I have about the gameplay: switching between Miley and Hannah SO dang frequently. OMG. There's situations where you're already dressed as Hannah, you have to undress as Miley to move ONE space, just to change back into Hannah. Not only is this incredibly aggravating, it left me feeling almost schizophrenic with the dual personalities. (Can we say "Sybil", anyone?)
I was only able to play this game for limited periods of a time at a time. I don't know if it was all the intense vibrant colors that permeate the entire game or the annoyingness of the music or what it is, but every time I've played it, I've ended up with a massive headache afterwards without fail. Has anyone else played this game who can tell me if it had the same effect on them?
I'm going to give this game a rating of 6 out of 10 little Hannahs. Not terrible, not great, but somewhere down the middle of the road. It's bound to keep little ones quiet during long car trips (unless, of course, they lack headphones or insist upon singing to the songs). A must-have for the avid Hannah Montana collector; a take it or leave it for the rest of the population.
Welcome, one and all, to LLP's Game Spot! Watch this space for game reviews, the occasional gamer news, and - whenever I run across any - assorted other odds and ends from all over the globe. Old games, new games, everything in between - doesn't matter, they'll be covered here. Stay tuned!
en without being able to fail, it STILL manages to frustrate me! It seems to be incredibly difficult to get the top possible score each time. Even if you make the dish look exactly like the example, right down to the garnishes - did I mention you're also graded for your garnishes? - you still won't usually get the full 120 points. I don't quite understand how they calculate the results. You're graded on how well you cook the dish, how it tastes, and the garnishes. You can earn up to 4 stars in each category, and each star is worth 10 points. The top score you can achieve is a 120 (yeah, not even an even 100). I've only managed it a few times, and I think it was luck of the draw. The garnishes are what usually screw me up. At the end of each dish, Rachel announces that it's now time for what you've been waiting for: the serve up. To be honest, I DREAD it because of having to apply those damn garnishes, knowing that no matter how much care I put into it, chances are I'll still only get 3 out of 4 stars for it!
beginning to cook, and you have to wash the dishes after you're done. Now, I groaned at having to do this - thinking this game is going to be almost as much of a hassle as real life cooking - but this is the only round in the whole game where you're required to perform these tasks. Now, for an educational game, I get mixed messages from this. On the one hand, I'm thankful I didn't have to do this before and after every dish. On the other, what kind of example is it to give kids that they only have to wash their hands and the dishes the first time they cook anything, and then never again? I'm glad that the reminder of taking such responsibility is included in the game at all, though.
The memory game Match is exactly what it sounds like. You get a bunch of face-down cards on a table, flip them over one by one, and have to match them up by memory. Simple enough concept for even a young child to play, and enough of a challenge to even keep adults playing it.
to make the dart necessarily go where you want it to because of these controls. I always end up with at least 3 or 4 darts missing the wheel entirely, and only get a couple hits on the higher points sections of the wheel. It's frustrating, and that creepy puppet doesn't make matters any better. (The frog's almost as bad.)
Puzzlit is harder than it would seem to be. You get about a dozen letter tiles, much like in Scrabble on each round. On the top screen, you'll either get the silhouette of a food or kitchen utensil, or a scrambled image of either that slowly becomes clearer. The quicker you get the word spelled out, the better. You only have a few seconds to get each one though, so be careful!
