Ever fantasize about opening a restaurant? Do you watch "Iron Chef" every week and imagine what you would do with those signature ingredients? Thanks to evolving forms of video game technology, a number of new games promise to take players a little closer to that dream of showing Gordon Ramsey that they can run his kitchen.
Since its debut in late 2006, the Wii video game console, with its motion-sensing technology and wireless remotes, gives gamers on-screen personas that can do everything from kill monsters to play tennis or the drums in a rock band.
And they can serve up a mean slice-and-dice virtual dinner, too.
While cooking games don't top the sales charts, some have become quite popular. David M. Riley of market researchers NPD Group says that as of earlier this month, the four "Cooking Mama" games, for Wii and Nintendo DS, have sold 3.2 million units.
Some of these games have created impressively vivid worlds, although it's not clear who the intended audience is. Adults may be smitten with graphics and novelty for 20 minutes or so, but anyone old enough to cook unsupervised will want to stick to the real kitchen.
Children, on the other hand, especially budding foodies, may like how in some of these games they can chop, stir, flip and slice just by moving a remote.
The limiting factor for virtual interactions with food is that there's no edible payoff at the end. Cookies don't shoot out of your television screen. That's probably why so many of these games are set in restaurants (or bakeries), where money, rather than food, is a logical reward.
Here's a rundown of some of the games that are out there:
In "Order Up!" (Wii; Zoo Games; rated E for everyone; $19.99) the player is a chef who starts in a classic American diner serving burgers and omelets and winds up in a fancy French restaurant. Each day the chef must prepare food, earn money, and use it to upgrade the restaurant, buy supplies and hire help. Customers come to the restaurant, a server puts in the order, and the chef/player must make all the food on the tickets and finish so each table can get its food at once.
For example, to make a burger, you drag the burger to the grill. Then, to prepare the lettuce, you move a head of romaine to the cutting board and tear off the leaves by holding down a button and making sharp motions to the right.
But don't forget to keep an eye on the burger, because when it's cooked on one side, you must flip it: Hold down a button and make a flipping motion with the remote.
Even in the simplest scenario, you'll be making at least two dishes at once. You need to multitask and think on your toes to finish everything to avoid burning or undercooking the food, which would detract from your score and the money you earn.
Other skills/hazards you'll have to use or avoid: Leave food cooking for too long and you'll start a fire that you'll have to put out with an extinguisher. Learn to adapt or season dishes to customers' tastes (such as "vegefying" meat-based dishes for vegetarians), which means you'll need to go to the market when you run out of a seasoning. Accidentally use a seasoning that a customer hates and he'll walk out without paying.
While the graphics and humor of "Order Up!" are targeted for kids, it's by far the most complex of the games I tried. The games that seemed more targeted for adults didn't follow through with complex storylines or more challenging game-play.
"Hell's Kitchen" (Wii; Ubisoft; Teen; $39.99) and "Iron Chef America Supreme Cuisine" (Wii; Destineer; Everyone; $39.99) were widely anticipated by fans of the shows. Both games seem to have focused more on graphics than creating new cooking challenges or even re-imagining the storyline of the show to work for a video game. In trying to appeal to players of all ages, the creators wound up with games ill-suited to players of any age.
"Iron Chef" does have impressive graphics, and the first time I played, it was fun to watch the virtual Chairman Mark Dacascos introduce the secret ingredient -- sweet potatoes, on one occasion.
But the game goes downhill from there and is annoyingly simple. Unlike "Order Up," there is little challenge of balancing time, work and profit. Primarily, the player chooses dishes from a list, then uses the Wii remote to execute a series of tasks. While you do work against a timer, once you've completed all the easy tasks, you simply plate your food by pointing and clicking. You can place garnishes wherever you like, but they have no effect on your score.
Once your dishes are complete, you're scored by the judges on taste, presentation and originality, despite having no way to exhibit originality and presentation being pre-determined. And clearly they can't grade you on taste! Even a graphic version of Alton Brown spewing random kitchen facts can't make this boring game worth playing.
"Hell's Kitchen" does add one fun, challenging element: The player must keep track of both the dining room and the kitchen. In the dining room, you point and click to have the server seat customers, take orders and clear plates.
You can switch at will between the kitchen and dining room view, and you must time each action so that no one is waiting too long at any point in the meal.
If you've watched "Hell's Kitchen" on TV, you know that much of the tension of the show comes from the frustrated customers waiting for their food, and the video game re-creates that well as the shadowy customers look around for waiters, wave their menus, and eventually get so angry flames spout from the table.
The biggest flaw in this game is that it doesn't make use of the Wii's motion-sensing capabilities. You "prep" ingredients by clicking on them. You cook them by dragging them to a pot, and when they're done cooking (a timer tells you how long they'll take and when they're done) you simply drag them to the plating station. Between the tiny pictures of ingredients that are difficult to see and the lack of any cooking activities, this game seemed disconnected from the food. Since you are faced with the same challenge each "day" the restaurant opens, it quickly gets repetitive.
The games that are clearly targeted at younger children have their own problems. "Cake Mania: In the Mix!" (Wii; Majesco; Everyone; $19.99) also fails to take advantage of Wii technology. This game is set in a bakery. Jill, the baker, must frantically prepare cakes for an ever-growing line of customers.
The player must direct Jill to bake the right cake and decorate it correctly before her customers run out of patience and leave. Jill needs to meet her baking goals each month to proceed to the next level, and if she makes the wrong cake, or a customer leaves in frustration, the cake goes in the trash and its cost is deducted from her total.
The game is fast enough that it can be challenging, but rather than having the player mix and pour ingredients or frost the cake, this game also relies on point-and-click interactions. But given the focus on fun shapes, bright colors and whimsical characters, there does seem to be a match between the level of complexity and the target audience.
"Cooking Mama: World Kitchen" (Wii; Majesco; Everyone; $29.99) is meant for the same audience as Cake Mania, and it's the only one of the games I tried that is actually about cooking.
A spin-off of the still immensely popular game "Cooking Mama," "Cooking Mama: World Kitchen" is a series of mini-games in which the player selects a recipe and performs culinary tasks to complete it. You can either cook with Mama, cook alone or cook with a friend. The food is an ecletic mix of typical American and Japanese dishes. First you might select chocolate chip cookies (Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies, to be specific) and then you might prepare some marinated sea bream.
These cooking tasks are surprisingly detailed and accurate -- to make sushi, you clean squid, filet tuna and remove scallops from their shells; to make mochi (a Japanese rice cake), you pound cooked glutenous rice with a wooden mallet by making a sharp downward motion with the Wii remote. If you're not careful, you'll accidentally hit "Mama" with the wooden mallet. She will cry out in pain and your completion of the task will be delayed.
While there are a limited number of actions used throughout, and there's no overall storyline to give the game that extra dose of tension, the vast number of ingredients and recipes, the exposure to Japanese food and the intricate anime-style graphics all help keep the game interesting and fun. And this game should be especially appealing to parents in that it exposes kids to new and interesting foods and cooking techniques.
Video games are criticized for absorbing kids in a virtual world when they could be doing something in the real world.
That criticism applies here, but only partly. Sure, kids could have just as much fun messing around in their own kitchens -- and if kids like food video games, hopefully they get a chance to do the real thing.
But real cooking involves using real food that costs money. It involves making a mess and cleaning it up; it requires supervision and extended periods of free time, depending on the project. Virtual cooking could certainly be a reasonable substitute some of the time.
First Published: April 30, 2009, 8:00 a.m.