Cooking Mama: Cook Off is like Warioware meets The Food Channel. Sound fun? Sound terrifying? It's a little of both. The game's premise is simple: cook things. Cooking Mama, an adorable, shiny-eyed chef who's ready to pass on her trade, walks players through recipes step by step. Each stage in the preparation process is a food-related mini-game. Chopping, stirring, breaking eggs: everything gets done with the Wii-mote, preferably super-fast. (So many splattered eggs!) At the end of each mini-game, Mama rates your performance from "Try harder" to "Wonderful. Better than Mama!" For more competitive cooking, go up against a friend in two-player mode, or try a computer chef.
Every time players complete a recipe, a new one opens up. There are some, um, international dishes to choose from, like pasta in squid's ink, or borsht. But often, even the familiar food doesn't make much sense. Since when is there ham in a quesadilla? Or ground beef in a pierogi? It's a vegetarian's nightmare. At least the cream puffs still make sense.