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7.9 excellent
Today's user-requested review comes from Janey W. of Tallahassee, Florida. Janey writes, "Why don't you review Cooking Academy it's awesome!"
Cooking Academy, from Fugazo, is a game that actually can teach you how to cook. A little. I didn't know anything about it before clicking on Big Fish Games' ridiculous and annoying new download manager (sidenote: if you hate that game manager, try downloading the Game Socks version of Cooking Academy, which is just a nice, normal download). I assumed it was another time management game where you mouse back and forth between ovens and customers until you complete a level. Boy was I wrong!
Gameplay involves cooking a specific recipe from (nearly) scratch until completion. That means chopping vegetables, mixing ingredients, kneading dough, setting the oven temperature, seasoning the food, and sometimes even arranging the result properly on a plate. Everything you'd have to do to cook the item in your own kitchen. Granted, you'll rarely be mixing up your own dough - the game does start you off with just a few already-mixed ingredients to lower the number of steps needed to complete a recipe.
For each step in the food's preparation, your instructor gives you a grade between 0 and 100. Quickly complete your task and you'll even get bonus points, which can raise your score above 100 points. At the end the instructor will sample your dish and give you a letter grade. Get a perfect score or higher (thanks to bonus points) and you'll get a big fat A+.
You may think that quality is more important than speed, but that's not how real restaurants work.
Back when I was a cook at a haunted restaurant in Roscoe Village, waitresses used to write orders down on paper and bring them to the kitchen for me to cook. However, as you can guess that was a really outdated and old-fashioned way of running a restaurant. So management bought a fancy computer system. Using it, waitresses could input their tables' orders out in the dining room and the orders would print out on a little miniature printer in the kitchen.
Sometimes that little printer stopped working, and I wouldn't know there were lots of meals to be cooked. (I was the only cook at the time.) Waitresses would be rushing around and I just stood there blinking. Then suddenly I'd feel a horrifying shiver cross my spine, as if a goose walked over my grave. I'd smack the printer and suddenly it would begin printing. And printing, and printing. Until the paper reached the floor. A waitress would rush in and ask where her order was because table five has been waiting for twenty-five minutes. And there wouldn't be enough space on the stove for all my pots and pans! What a nightmare! Thank goodness it's over.
Cooking Academy isn't a hard game, but you'll know whether you're going to excel at the academy or not by the time you've finished a few of headmistress Carmen Paccio's freshman appetizer courses. A lot of the game depends on being able to quickly move the mouse onscreen, tracing lines where your knife will cut or your hands will knead or fold. Don't even bother trying to play using a laptop touchpad, because a fist will come out of your computer screen and punch you in the jaw. By the way, did anyone else but me notice that whenever Mrs. Paccio is onscreen, there's a weird line crossing her neck? I saw a movie about that once and it didn't end well.
As games go, there's not much sport to Cooking Academy, but it's a great and somewhat educational game for anyone interested in learning how to cook. You do actually learn a thing or to, and not just from the trivia your instructors hand out about each recipe.
But I must be an honest reviewer and tell you that the ingame music is pretty terrible. The twangy tune would be great for in-between sets at a square dance, but I think a prestigious cooking academy like Cooking Academy can do better. I guarantee you'll turn the background music off before you manage to get an A+ on every recipe and exam.
Finally, Janey W. writes, "Why doesn't the cat on your sight have a tail. Cats don't chase their tails because there not stupid like dogs." Ha ha. Well Janey, as a cat owner I've seen cats chase their tails plenty of times, and I don't know if that makes dogs stupid, anyway. After all, some people pronounce "robot" as "robut" or even "robit." But you wouldn't call them stupid, would you?