Cake Mania DS

Chances are you’ve played the online incarnation of Cake Mania in the past. Its cheery, quick paced gameplay is perfectly suited for wasting 10 minutes before your next high powered meeting. It smacks of the brand of gaming that would suit Nintendo’s devilishly clever DS down to the ground. With the DS seemingly in the grasp of every man, woman, and child you see wandering the streets, a simple, cheery game like this sounds like a perfect fit. Its budget price also seems to point towards it becoming yet another DS essential.

As Jill, you’re tasked with building up and maintaining a nice little cake shop. People seem to be hugely fond of artery clogging deserts in Cake Mania’s sweet little world, and you’re never at a loss for customers eager to stuff their fat faces. You’ll spend the majority of your time slaving away over a hot oven and crafting some special toppings for certain customers. Well, when we say craft, we mean prod a few touch screen buttons to select a certain shape and colour.

That’s the biggest problem with Cake Mania. Despite the budget price, the meagre money you’d shell out to pick this up should still make you expect something with at least a little depth. Every cake, no matter how complicated, descends into a handful of button prods and pokes while watching the timer slowly tick along. A little depth has been artificially added by the inclusion of certain customers who demand speedy service and will pay accordingly for such. Other than that, the levels differ in no great manner.

The budget price shows in the visuals too, which are colourful but grainy and downright ugly at points. Considering you’ll be staring at the same screen displaying your shop for 99% of the game, this lack of visual clarity is grating. Equally as irritating are the simply shockingly lowly standards shown by the music that tinkles along in the background. You’ll be prodding your volume control right down the very bottom aolmost as soon as you load up this shockingly bad title.

No matter how obsessed you are with your DS, this isn’t a desert based Cooking Mama. Leave this bland food stuff on the shelf, and pick one of the more tasty DS delicacies.