Ready to become a Master Chef?

It's been quite a while since I last reviewed any games. Truth is, I'd been playing less. Guess I was more caught up in other stuff, notably catching up on awesome series, cheap movies and piled-up animes as well as trying to increase the size of my brain in Facebook amongst the other gazillion available applications. Also not to forget rooting for Manchester United in its quest for double glory... :P

A check at my favourite games website and in my absence, many interesting games had popped up since like mushrooms after the rain (okay, maybe after countless days of rain). Thus it's back to some game-playing and I find myself signing up at the Cooking Academy ;)

That's chef de supremo who is gonna grade you at the end of the day

As a student of a prestigious culinary school, I must cook my way through over 50 different recipes ranging from a variety of appetizers, breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and desserts. All these together with mastering the essential skills of cooking and food preparations such as chopping, peeling, kneading, frying, sauteeing, just to name a few. Like any courses, there're bound to be exams at the end of the day to ensure that that coveted culinary degree and trophies displayed proudly on the shelves are truly well-deserved :P

The mouse is used for all the cooking tasks, from grating cheese to stirring gravies to grilling kebabs. All you need to do is to move the mouse around to perform the actions, for example move your mouse in pre-determined motions to knead/stir, sideway motions to grate cheese, and clicking the mouse repeatedly to chop up ingredients. Other assignments involve the use of the mouse to crack eggs at the side of a bowl, clicking at the correct ingredients during mixing, pouring mixture into bowls, etc. (Be sure not to crack too hard nor pour too fast or you might just find yourself having to start all over.)

There's also the stove boiling task, whereby you will need to perform the correct actions as they pass through a bar at the bottom of the screen. Such actions include adjusting the cooking temperatures, adding ingredients, stirring the pot and covering it up. There's the butter-spreading task where you will need to spread the butter evenly over the saucepan, while in the pancake-flipping task, you flip pancakes and make sure you catch them as they fall.

Some tasks require more precision and might need a lil' more practice before you can master them like the egg yolk-separating task where you'll need to separate out the egg-white by pouring the egg from one egg shell to the other; the squeezing tasks which you've better becareful not to over-squeezed (or under-squeezed!); the frying/grilling tasks where you'll need to ensure they turn golden-brown first before they are ready to get off the pan/grill; and also the sauteeing tasks whereby you'll need to make sure you put the ingredients in the right orders and at the right timings because you don't want to risk turning one ingredient into carbon while the other is still too raw. And the most difficult task of all, cutting shapes in the dough while making gingerbreadmen. You'll need to be very careful not to overlap or cut over the edge, and there's no indication to show that you are about to do so - Let's just say it took me more that 3 tries to pass that exam with flying colors.....*sheesh. Well, just have to try and try again.

Despite all that, most of the tasks are pretty easy to beat and one should not have any problems passing the courses and exams. If you don't get straight A's at the first attempt freight not, there's always a second, a third, a fourth..you get the drift. And the cool factor is one can actually learn a thing or two about real cooking here. There are interesting facts about each recipe at the start, and the ingredients used are fairly accurate though the proportions are probably not. Furthermore the recipes themselves are kinda interesting, covering common dishes (omelettes, spaghetti and gyoza (or fried wanton)) to exotic ones (creme brulee and bruschetta). Oh, and my favourite sushi is in there too :D

My verdict is if you are looking for some hassle-free cooking fun that is relatively easy, just sign up at Cooking Academy. But if you are geared up for more challenging cooking tasks, Hot Dish and Cooking Quest are two other games worth trying out. Ahh, now only if actual cooking is just as easy as a few mouse clicks with no cleaning up after......

Proud to say... I've GRADUATED! lol

My Rating: