Pixar movies are the perfect model
for licensed video games. For one, they’re already cartoony and simply designed
from the start; and two, they have great characters and stories to accompany
them into the world of video games. So how could this magical transformation not
work, you ask? Let’s just say the lure of quick money can rush a licensed game
out of the oven so fast that, to continue the cooking analogy, you get a game
that is medium rare.
Pixar’s Ratatouille was the most
critically acclaimed animated feature last year, and one of the most praised
movies of all time. So it’s really a shame that the DS game is so poorly made
and shamelessly ripping off Cooking Mama. Ratatouille’s Feeding Frenzy features
a lackluster set of seven mini-games, ranging from decent games like Flip the
Fish to just plain horrible Soup De Jour. All of the games can be played through
in 30 minutes or less; however, the Story Mode will take much longer – depending
on your sanity. In the Story Mode, you will cook your way through progressing
levels of difficulty in order to impress the food critics who are there to judge
the food – similar to the movie plot.
There are seven mini-games that are
the meat of this title. Flip the Fish has you cooking fish on three different
skillets on the touch screen. As the fish finish cooking, you flip up to the
top, where waiters are walking by to collect them. Food Fling is a food
color-sorting game, where you fling the food with the stylus as it falls to the
bottom. Slice and Dice is straight out of the book of Cooking Mama, where
players trace lines to cut food into pieces. While this is one of the more
complex games, and one where you actually feel like you’re cooking, the
touch-screen controls just aren’t that responsive and are often unclear as to
whether you are supposed tap or slide, or go both ways. Cooking with Remy is
similarly a stronger game, as you stir the soup or stir fry with your stylus to
keep the temperature down, but it becomes tedious and lasts for too long,
especially in the higher levels. Dinner Rush has you "designing" where the food
should be on a plate, and is also one of the stronger games, but it too becomes
tedious. All you do is trace the outlines of where food should be, and because
you don’t really get to design it (the game shows you where to trace), the fun
deflates out of the game pretty quickly. Mollusk Madness has you throwing cheese
at snails walking across the walls. As their "slime" builds up you can poke a
bottle of soap to clean it off (…Yeh, I know). Soup De Jour is a pattern game
where you turn the food in this soup to match up falling food pieces – you then
poke it with a fork to clear what you’ve matched.
All of these games inherently suffer
from the same problem: they never make the player feeling like he is cooking.
While a couple of the games are better at this than others, they’re just not fun
to play and become excruciatingly tedious towards the end. On top of that,
within 30 minutes of the Story Mode, you’re already playing the same games
again, with a slightly different twist. The critics in the game rate you
according to how well you do, but there’s no reason to care because there is no
multiplayer or Wi-Fi rankings. As you play more you can unlock movie stills –
yay! If only the food critics could have rated this game before it got released.
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Gameplay:
6.0
The games use the
touch screen almost exclusively, but the games are poorly designed and you never
really feel like you’re cooking.
Graphics:
6.0
While it is mostly a 2-D game, with only a few 3-D food models, the art
style is pleasant to look at and is a complementary, low-poly design to the
movie’s rich world.
Sound:
7.0
The music provides a decent jazz background for a stylus wielding chef to go
wild! Well, kind of.
Difficulty: Medium
The game is extremely easy, but it becomes so tedious and confusing, and
when the controls hardly respond, it is difficult.
Concept:
6.0
The concept of having a cooking game based on the Pixar hit is a great idea,
and one sure to appeal to the casual crowd. However, it never lives up to that
ideal.
Overall:
5.0
This game really is an insult to one of the most beautiful animated movies
ever made. While a few of the games are fun to play for a minute, or to try out,
never would I recommend a purchase of this game – even to the most hardcore Brad
Bird fans.
