Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop
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Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop
Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop is better suited for young children due to the incredibly easy mini-games and lack of variety.
Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop is by no means a broken game. It just wholly lacks any soul or incentive to be better than any previous game in the series. With shoddy systems, repetitive gameplay, annoying sound design and better iterations of the game elsewhere, dessert diversity wasn't enough to keep me interested.
There is a certain type of person who is going to enjoy this, and Cooking Mama: Sweet Shot has the good fortune to arrive at a time when I write for Destructoid, a man whose basic enjoyment of video gaming is such a low bar to hurdle that it can essentially get a pass other writers probably wouldn't give it. I like the game, warts and all. Objectively, you should be able to tell for yourself it shows nary a whisper of growth or innovation since the series' debut. Subjectively, I'm somehow that giggling schoolgirl once more, fawning over a cake I just mini-gamed into existence.
Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop simply adds another title to the Cooking Mama formula without really making an effort to improve on an already rather lackluster series. The gameplay involves little more than simply swiping and tapping as you're told and how well you manage to do that has no actual impact on your experience within the game.
Summary: Cooking Mama Sweet Shop is the same game we've played for years now. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the franchise is starting to get as stale as a month-old fortune cookie. That said, it's still the accessible cooking game we've come to expect, and it does have a couple features worth checking out if you're interesting in a new cooking game.
While I doubt I'll play much more of Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop in the future, I can't say it's because the game is bad.
'Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop' holds up as a title in this particular series, but doesn't leave much for the seasoned gamer. The customization and mini-game constructs seem better suited for younger players who might be learning the basics
To summarize, 'Sweet Shop' is a great addition to the franchise that has a few areas needing improvement. Shop customization and 'World Challenge' are great additions, however, the multiplayer is lacking. Overall, it should be a great addition for fans of the Cooking Mama series or a nice introduction for younger gamers.
