Cooking Mama: Cook Off throws you into the kitchen for a frantic and often frustrating culinary competition. With its focus on motion controls, you'll be chopping, stirring, and flipping ingredients using your Wii Remote. While the concept is cute and some mini-games can be enjoyable, the controls are frequently imprecise, turning simple tasks into battles against the game itself. If you're looking for a relaxing cooking experience, Cooking Mama: Cook Off is likely to leave you with a burnt dish and a headache.

There's something that's just so much fun about chopping up ingredients, stirring soup, etc. with the Wiimote. It's a repetitive game, but I got hooked on it. There were many times I laughed at my mistakes, like when I aggressively dumped a bowl of rice into the sink and when I put a hot dog into a bun with half of the hot dog sticking completely out of one side.

Some of the things Mama says are hard to understand, and I would have appreciated subtitles. I also did not like the extra mode where you compete with a character and try to make food quicker and more precisely than they do. Lots of just waiting for them to finish what they're doing. I laughed at how many times "American Friend" repeatedly smashed eggs on the side of a bowl.

I'm going to hear "Wonderful! Better than Mama!" in my head every time I prepare food for the rest of my life.