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Review - Gardening Mama
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Gardening Mama
Let's face it, we all love Mama. When she first appeared a few years back showing us that cooking with a cartoon can be fun and enjoyable, her charm won us over and it was an instant addiction. It was a game anyone could really enjoy, and a game I had to try and pry away from my wife so I could take a stab at making things I would never make in our kitchen.
Now, Majesco Entertainment has taken Mama out of the kitchen, stripped her spatula away, and threw her in a garden with a watering can. And since I've been regulated to only watering our garden and nothing else, Gardening Mama gives me a chance to test out my green thumb on the Nintendo DS.
In Gardening Mama, players are given the tasks of growing veggies, fruit, and flowers. Just like in Cooking Mama, stylus actions such as tapping, sliding are used to complete a series of short mini-games where you will be graded on how well you did in the end. There is also the option to "practice" these mini games, in case you're like me and have no idea what you're doing.
But unlike any of the prior games, Gardening Mama now gives players an over-head type of map, where Mama can access different parts of the garden. As Time progresses and stages are beaten, other parts of the garden and types of things mama can plant and grow become unlocked. A new feature in Gardening Mama is the fact that anything Mama plants has to be watched over and maintained - this is probably the reason why I'm not allowed to care of our real-life garden. But luckily for Gardening Mama gamers, you can always replant your garden and try for a better score if things don't turn out too peachy.
As a bonus for those gamers who do a great job with the mini-games and gardens, you will be rewarded with clothes and accessories Mama can equip..err, I mean, wear, as well as ornaments and decorations to spruce up your garden. Oh yeah, it's all about customization. Who said Gardening Mama didn't have any RPG elements? Unfortunately none of these accessories will give you +1 to your gardening skill.
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The only issue I ran into while tending to my garden was that a mini-game required tending a certain amount of soil. In this mini-game, shorter stylus strokes resulted in less soil while longer stylus strokes yielded more soil, and it took many tries for me to get it right, as there was no guide or measure on how short or long the stylus strokes needed to be. Practice makes perfect though!
The whole casual mini-game mechanic behind Majesco Entertainment's Mama series is flat out intriguing, and throwing Mama on the box art almost always adds to the charm factor. Fans and gamers of the series will already have a basic idea of what to expect, and probably will be playing this game if they haven't already. But for anyone who hasn't played a Mama game (ok, who hasn't?), this definitely is a great place to start. Most of the mini-games were enjoyable and you could actually learn a thing or two about gardening. And for gamers like myself who have no green thumb at all, Gardening Mama is a great game to practice your gardening skills before you pick up that water can and hand shovel.
Overall Score: 8.5/10
I would like to thank Majesco Entertainment for the copy of Gardening Mama that was used in this review. As a thank you to those who have read this review as well as my other Nintendo DS and Sony PSP articles, I will be holding a give-a-way contest in the next week for a free copy of Gardening Mama. Be sure to check back for details, and thanks for reading!
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