DS Review: Science Papa

Now here's an interesting title! I know that pretty much anyone and everyone has played at least one of the Cooking Mama games, and just as the name would imply, it is similar in both style and gameplay to those games...just reverse the gender roles and place the game into a laboratory instead of a kitchen.

The premise is pretty simple: you're playing apprentice to the world's top scientist as he teaches you to conduct various experiements to achieve different results. For instance, your first mission is to create some soap for the bathroom. Sounds simple enough, but as you'll be quick to learn, there's many more steps to this process than you'd expect. So goes the entire game. As you earn more reputation and money, you'll be able to unlock and purchase newer and more innovative lab equipment to make your job easier, which in turn will unlock new experiments to carry out. All of these lead up to 5 world-renouned science competitions you must take part in and try to win the coveted Helix award.

Overall, the gameplay isn't too difficult - but is it ever in a Cooking Mama game? I forgot to check and see if this was made by the same company or if it was a knock-off, but either way, it succeeds in being similar without being a full out rip-off or anything. The graphics are pretty good as far as the style the game is in is concerned - the actual experiments are done in 3-D while the characters are 2-D. Somehow though, this works out. My only complaint is that most of the game's length is used up in repeating and re-repeating the same experiments over and over again to try and earn enough reputation and money. Why not have more original experiments that you only have to perform once or twice instead of the same dozen or so that you have to repeat about just as many times as there are projects, essentially? That part didn't make too much sense to me.

I am glad, however (at least for copycat children's sake) that they didn't use REAL methods of conducting these experiments. They all looked legit enough for someone who isn't all that into the science field, but for anyone with some real knowledge of chemistry, you could nitpick this all day.

Overall though, I think it's a pretty good game, and I'm going to rate it a 7 out of 10 science beakers.