Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

What’s Cooking? Jamie Oliver strikes a unique balance between a traditional cookbook and an interactive cooking simulator, delivering two distinct but complementary experiences. In the Cookbook mode, you’ll find 100 step-by-step recipes narrated by Jamie Oliver himself. Voice recognition allows you to call out “Next step” or “Repeat that” without touching the screen, so you can keep your hands free for chopping, stirring, and seasoning.

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The Cooking Game side of things is equally diverse. Tutorials teach you the basics—from perfect knife skills to mastering the whisk—before you step into the Test Kitchen, where you follow Jamie’s recipes under a virtual stove hood. The Cooking Challenge mode adds a playful twist by racing against the clock to prepare ingredients, making you feel the heat of a real kitchen. Finally, Creative Cooking lets you mix and match unlocked ingredients, naming and saving your concoctions for sharing via DS Wireless Communication.

Filtering and organization features in the Cookbook further enrich the gameplay loop. You can sort by dietary restrictions, cooking time, or main ingredient, ensuring you find the perfect recipe for any occasion. The built-in shopping list generator auto-populates based on your chosen dishes, and you can even add custom items via the touchscreen keyboard or handwriting recognition. It’s intuitive, helpful, and surprisingly addictive for a cooking game.

Overall, the gameplay shines through its variety and accessibility. Whether you’re a novice home cook looking for clear guidance or a seasoned foodie eager to test your speed and creativity, the dual-nature design caters to all levels. The interactivity of voice commands, timers, and mini-challenges keeps you engaged long after the novelty of the first recipe wears off.

Graphics

Visually, What’s Cooking? Jamie Oliver opts for a clean, colorful presentation that emphasizes clarity over photorealism. Recipe photos are crisp and mouth-watering, giving you a dependable reference for how your dish should look. Menus and interfaces are bright and well-organized, with easily tappable icons designed for the DS’s resolution.

The 2D kitchen environments in the Cooking Game are warmly detailed, with pots, pans, and utensils rendered in a cartoonish but charming style. Animations—like chopping vegetables or flipping pancakes—are fluid enough to convey a sense of motion without taxing the handheld’s hardware. Timers and progress bars pop up unobtrusively, keeping your focus on the action.

Handwriting recognition and virtual keyboard screens are straightforward, though the stylus occasionally requires a steady hand to register letters accurately. Still, the touchscreen integration feels natural when adding shopping list items or naming your own recipes in Creative Cooking mode. Color-coding ingredients and step markers further enhance usability, ensuring you never lose your place.

While the graphics won’t compete with home-console culinary titles, they excel within the DS ecosystem. The game’s vibrant aesthetic and practical design choices help turn what could be a dry recipe collection into an inviting digital kitchen. If nothing else, you’ll appreciate how easy it is to navigate and how delicious everything looks.

Story

As a cooking-focused title, What’s Cooking? Jamie Oliver doesn’t follow a traditional narrative arc. Instead, your “story” unfolds through your culinary progression—from learning basic techniques in the Tutorials to crafting your very own dishes in Creative Cooking mode. Jamie Oliver plays the role of mentor, offering voice tips, safety reminders, and personal anecdotes that give the game a warm, authentic feel.

Each recipe is accompanied by Jamie’s own commentary, explaining ingredient choices or suggesting creative twists. This injects personality into what might otherwise be a dry, instruction-only experience. The voice recognition doesn’t just confirm your steps; it helps build a rapport as Jamie cheers you on or gently corrects you if you miss an instruction.

The Cooking Challenge mode adds its own dramatic tension, simulating the stress of a busy kitchen. It’s less about storyline and more about crafting your own narrative—will you rise to the occasion under the ticking clock, or will that omelette flop? Every session feels like a mini-journey, complete with high stakes and the satisfaction of plating a completed dish.

Ultimately, your story in What’s Cooking? is authored by your ambitions in the kitchen. Whether you’re following Jamie’s path to prepare a classic roast or blazing your own trail by combining ingredients in Creative Cooking mode, the game frames each cooking session as a chapter in your personal culinary adventure.

Overall Experience

What’s Cooking? Jamie Oliver succeeds as both a practical kitchen aid and an entertaining cooking game. The dual gameplay modes give it a broader appeal: aspiring chefs get a hands-on learning tool, while gamers find a fun, bite-sized challenge in time trials and creative experiments. This versatility makes it a great gift for families, casual gamers, or anyone who enjoys food-centered activities.

The voice recognition feature is a real highlight, reducing screen taps and allowing a more immersive, hands-free cooking experience. The built-in timer and shopping list functionalities extend the game’s usefulness beyond the DS, making it feel like a genuine kitchen companion. Even after you’ve mastered all 100 recipes, the Creative Cooking and recipe-sharing modes encourage you to keep mixing things up.

Of course, some limitations exist. Graphics are serviceable rather than stunning, and the lack of a story-driven campaign might disappoint gamers seeking a more traditional progression. But these are minor quibbles in a package that delivers on its promise: to teach, challenge, and inspire you in the kitchen.

In the end, What’s Cooking? Jamie Oliver offers a distinctive blend of education and entertainment. It’s easy to recommend to anyone who likes to cook or wants to learn, and its thoughtful features ensure you’ll return to it long after the credits… well, there aren’t any credits, but you get the idea. For a DS title, it’s a fresh, flavorful addition to your library.

Retro Replay Score

5.6/10