My Fave Cooking M@sters

Only missing Miki though. So yeah, as you can see, today's idol includes (the ever hot & stacked) Azusa, Chihaya and Makoto.

Been sorta busy lately w/ NCAA basketball going on (damn, Ohio St. that was fucking close) and drinking myself crazy yesterday (hope ppl drank a lot of green beer ^^). Finally saw 300 recently and damn that was an awesome movie. Total guy film which my girl didn't mind watching with me ^^. Just wanna mention that two scenes really stood out for me. I was surprised about how evenly paced the story was (and the amount of story was surprising for an action movie).

Gonna talk about some gaming in which is related to this post's title. Some of you may or may not know that Cooking Mama Wii comes out in a couple of days. If you think that game on the DS was totally original then think again as there were a couple cooking games before it. I've been re-playing this pretty old and obscure PSX game that not many have heard about. I got this game not long after I got my first PS2 during my crazy PSone game rush (bought about 100+ psx games in 2000) as i skipped the 32-bit/64-bit era. This game is called Ore no Ryori and it's probably still THE BEST COOKING GAME i've played. i'll see if my opinion changes when i try cooking mama wii, though it doesn't seem like it'll overthrow OnR. So yeah, I remember picking this game up for like 5 or 6 bucks in the bargain bin and what a gem it is. The game takes full use of the dual analogs on the PSone controllers as w/out it, you can't play it. The game basically has you doing a ton of different food for customers in a restaurant like french fries, spaghetti, tempura, gyouza, udon, pancakes, pouring beer etc. So like real food and beverages, you need to know the correct way and recipe to make this all work and this is where the beauty of the dual analogs come in. Like for cutting things, you move the left analog left a bit to move, say, a vegetable. u then use the right analog to cut, by pressing down. So the motion is "left down left down", however you are rated on how well you cut the vegetable. If pieces are not (approximately) evenly cut, you'll get a low score for cutting. These score determines the final product of the food and if the customer is happy or not. It will also lower your status bar (which means game over when it reaches zero). Not only do you have to do a good job making the food, you also got to watch for your customers (as they have a timer bar & certain customers are critics) and micro manage on things they order. Say 3 customers come in at the same time and 2 want ramens while the other wants an ice cream. ramens take few steps to make, and it would save time to accept both ramen orders instead of one. While the ramen is in the step of boiling the noodles, you should then go ahead w/ the ice cream order. It's things like these that make things hectic (especially on the later stages) and fun. After doing a good job w/ the customers, you're then pit in a iron-chef style competition against one of the frog enemies (if ya want to know, basically, these frogs basically want food domination in your world and it's up to you to beat them). Food isn't the only thing one needs to worry about as there are events where customers may eat and run, u then have to chase 'em down. another even involves calling the police for a drunkard, so a rotating telephone comes up and you need one analog to dial while the other analog pushes the correct number. I highly recommend this game if you like cooking games or enjoyed Cooking Mama.

Curry House Coco Ichibanya was another fun cooking game worth mentioning on the PS2. The game is based on a restaurant in Japan and as you can tell from the name, they focus on curry dishes. The game is essentially like OnR in which you prepare food and need to micro manage w/ the customers. However, unlike OnR this game is focuses more on the perfection of making curry dishes since it lacks the variety of foods. OnR only had curry rice and it took like 3-4 steps. Still, the game is great fun, but still can't beat OnR.

Getting off the cooking scene, i just wanted to make a note on the Kenichi PS2 fighting game from Capcom in which i picked up on friday. While the graphics are good for an anime fighter (sweet original anime intro too), it's simply too shallow like most anime fighters. U can't duck or jump in the game. you auto-guard high and low attacks when you don't press a thing (sorta like Tekken, but tekken only blocks highs/mids and you can still press back to block). The counter button is like DOA but most of the counter moves look crappy and don't deal much damage. Every one basically has the same moves (ie. qcf + light, qcf + strong, qcb + light, qcb + strong) and super moves (qcf ,qcf + strong). It's pretty pathetic. Speaking of super moves, the qcf x 2 + strong is hard to peform unless you use one of your power up gauges. It's still do-able w/out using the gauge though. So yeah, there goes a knock on controls. Combos are basically like tekken where you dial'em in or button mash and you'll sort of get something. If you're a fan of the Kenichi manga and anime, you'll obviously dig. However, for anime fans, the game's story mode will spoil ya since it skips a lot & goes way past the current episodes (ep.22 is only about halfway through the game's story mode). The mini games are fun for like the first 2-3 times and will get bored quickly after. In the end, can't recommend this game at all for any fighting game fans.

So, i'll end on a happy note w/ my two fave girls from the recently released Resort Boin game, Mika & Kanae. Happo's work is too awesome.

Where the fuck is my fave gal Touko from Boin? While Nao & Mitsugu are hawt (moreso for Nao), why didn't Touko return!!!!!

I'll finish up on iM@S soon and hopefully have something good.