Review #1 by R. Hunter Gough

Capsule Review: Beat the crap out of animals, then cook 'em. Beat the crap out of your opponent, and steal his dishes. Pretty fun for about ten minutes.



Cooking Fighter involves running around a 2D, top-view screen, smacking everything you see with your knife. There are numerous characters to choose from (8?) with almost no difference between them. Some are faster than others, some have better reach or a stronger attack, but the differences are minimal and it mostly comes down to whether you feel more like being a fat bald guy with a cleaver or a little girl with a ladle.

Graphics

4

All the graphics are generally iconographic, and they do a pretty good job at that, but otherwise they tend to be a little stale. In the dreaded "Story Mode" you are treated to literal hours of static anime "cut-scenes" where characters babble back and forth without moving about how great their cooking skills are. The "supers" in this game (when you cook an animal to the maximum level) have their requisite "super" animations, but even these are small and uninspiring.

Music/FX

3

The music is exactly the same for every single round, and not very interesting music at that. The sound FX are comprised of staticky slashing sounds, and voices yelling the same thing regardless of what you cook. Granted, the voice is different for each character, but they could have at least had them call out the name of each dish instead of just saying one thing.

Gameplay

2

There are two buttons: attack and cook. You use the control pad to run around. When you hold down the cook button, you can rotate the controller in circles to make better dishes. That doesn't sound too hard, but for some reason it is. The characters are sluggish and unresponsive even to these simple controls, cooking will arbitrarily stop in the middle and give you an inferior dish, and you will probably be attacked by the animals as often as you attack them. Versus Computer mode is a special treat, as the computer opponents always ignore the animals completely and spend the entire match chasing and hitting you, thus stealing any dishes you try to make while not making any dishes themselves for you to steal. And, of course, there is the aforementioned "Story Mode", wherein you have time to cook and eat dinner, clip your toenails, read the newspaper and watch Friends all in the time it takes to plod through about five different static frames of people looking tense and eating and talking about their cooking skills. Then it finally gets to the match, your opponent chases you around and hits you until he wins, and you have to start the whole process over again.

Story

2

I have no idea what the story is, but it's really long and really boring.

Clueless American Playability

7

The controls are explained above in the gameplay section. Always select Vs. Player or Vs. Computer mode. NEVER select story mode. If you select the wrong option and a screen pops up with men eating noodles and discussing their cooking skills in Japanese, do yourself a favor and throw your Playstation across the room. Or just hit reset.

Overall

8

I keep this game with my other games just so new friends will say "Cooking Fighter?? What the hell's that?" and then be really entertained by it for about five minutes until they realize how lame it is and we move on to something else. Despite the kookiness of the concept, I would definitely not recommend making this game part of your permanent collection. Unless you're constantly seized with a burning desire to watch a little super-deformed ninja try and fail to make Eel Noodles.