Do you buy pink games? By pink games, I mean games that are overtly designed to appeal to women, often featuring stereotypically female themes like fashion, beauty, childcare, cooking, anything cute or romantic...sound familiar? No surprise -- the casual game industry is full of pink games. I admit, I like and buy these pink games too...but I can tell you, there are lots of female hard core gamers who are upset by this trend, claiming that its sexism on the part of the mostly male developers. Since casual games is a 2.4 billion dollar industry, you can make up your own mind about the place for pink in gaming.
Where was I heading with this? Oh yeah, cooking games. After playing Cooking Mama on the Wii, I've been hungry for more culinary inspired games, but I've played the waitress genre to death. Happily, there are 2 new cooking inspired games out this past month.
Family Restaurant has you playing as Jenny, a budding chef trying to save the family business. If you like fast paced games, this is a good pick. You get customer orders, and then have to recreate the dishes that they want. For example, putting together sundaes in the right way, cooking pizza or fries, etc. Sometimes you get to create your own recipes, and name them too. It's a time management game, because you have to use your time budgeting skills to accomplish the tasks, but its much more complex than just a waitress title. My only complaint is that it gets very tough once you beat the first few levels.
Hot Dish is another unique game. If you want a more realistic cooking sim, this is your best bet. You have to manage an Italian kitchen, and try to gain stars from critics by creating perfect dishes. You prepare foods by stirring, chopping, and mincing at the right times. It gets hard to do when you are preparing 2 or 3 dishes at the same time. It's got some quirks so it isn't perfect, but on the whole its really good and original and fun to play.
Funny, but all these cooking games have me wanting to get creative in the *real* kitchen! Anyone fancy some pumpkin pie?
Lisa
