Hands On: Food Network: Cook Or Be Cooked

Another one of the Namco Bandai games I was able to try out was the upcoming Nintendo Wii licensed title Food Network: Cook Or Be Cooked. Developed in conjunction with the Food Network, the game is basically like a realistic Cooking Mama. However, it still has a little bit of whimsy in that Food Network hosts Susie Fogelson and Mory Thomas are in your kitchen, albeit in miniature form, so they sit on your shelf and when they try out the dishes you've prepared, the plate is twice their size. Weird.

The game will feature 30 recipes, which will get progressively more difficult as you go on, with multiple items being prepared all at the same time. The dish I was tasked with making was bacon and eggs, one of the simpler recipes. Much like Cooking Mama, you use the Wiimote and Nunchuck to perform actions in the kitchen like tilting the frying pan to evenly coat the surface with oil, cracking the eggs, adjusting the burners and flipping the bacon. Certain moves, such as cracking the eggs, need to be performed with just the right amount of finesse for a good score, and the real challenge comes in keeping things going at the same time. While cooking the bacon, I had to make sure to keep an eye on the eggs so they didn't burn. As a bonus, when things take a long time to cook, you can speed up time with a quick press of the directional button. Just don't get too impatient, because you might just need some of that time to finish another part of your recipe! Since it was clearly the first demo level and a simple recipe, obviously mini Susie and Mory thought my breakfast dish was delicious!

Although I didn't get to sample it, Cook Or Be Cooked will also feature two multiplayer modes. There's a "hot potato" mode where you can play cooperatively with 2-4 players, passing the Wiimote around and take turns trying not to screw anything up. There will also be a split-screen mode where you can make believe you're on Iron Chef competing against your friend.

On the one hand, I kind of enjoy the cartoony nature of Cooking Mama, but this is looking like an interesting alternative with similar gameplay. And in keeping with the realism, all of the recipes are completely real and edible if you make them in real life. So all 30 of them will be included in the manual if you have a hankering to try your skills in the real world! Food Network: Cook Or Be Cooked is currently slated for a November 3 release.