Posted: Saturday 30th August 2008

Reviewed by Andrew Jones and Samantha McGowan

Nintendo's latest brainwave is Cooking Guide, which, rather than being a conventional video game, is a huge database of ingredients, recipes, photographs and information about world cuisine and how to make it happen in your kitchen. With numerous instructional videos that tell you everything you need to know about how to create a particular dish, Cooking Guide is absolutely packed with useful features that make it a very exciting new addition to the DS' catalogue.

The game, as it were, is a must for anyone who is new to cooking, as each aspect of a recipe is explained to you down to the tiniest detail. For instance if a recipe requires you to chop an onion, an option will appear to trigger an instructional video that shows you how to do exactly that. Also, all the recipes are given a difficulty classification so that those of us that are more skilled in the culinary arts can choose to make a more "challenging" recipe than a beginner, meaning that Cooking Guide holds appeal for people whatever their level of skill.

All aspects of the cookery process are made easier by the various elements of the program, from the initial choice of recipe to its eventual completion. You are able to tailor the database to your own tastes, so for instance if you have an allergy you can change the settings to remove a particular item and eliminate any recipes including this ingredient when searching. The search function is a very well realised aspect of the program, as you are able to search for dishes not only by difficulty but also by cooking time, calorific content and specific phrases such as 'spicy' or 'creamy'. However, the most interesting way to decide on a dish is via the country of origin, where you are able to drag your cursor over a map of the world, and select national dishes accordingly. The program contains information about the various dishes from each country in order to help you make your choice.

Next you will need to go and pick up the ingredients and here is where Cooking Guide cleverly doubles as a shopping list that you can use to check off items as you pick them up, complete with a calculator to help you keep track of how much you're spending along the way. For lovers of more exotic foods there is one section of the program with the heading Substitute Ingredients in which you can find 'Ingredients available in Europe that can be used as substitute ingredients when cooking Asian dishes', which makes it all the more easier to source the stuff you need to make the weird and wonderful range of dishes contained in the guide. You can also add personal notes to recipes you have prepared before such as 'add less salt' just like you might do in a real cookery book.

The Cooking Guide may well be a little bit of a breakthrough for Nintendo, who are increasingly proving themselves to be ahead of the pack when it comes to developing the next generation of video gaming with projects like this and Wii fit. This kind of instructional, multimedia platform has been touched upon before in websites such as Videojug, but the way the DS lends itself to this kind of interface is a revelation. Its voice-activation software, for instance, means that navigating through a recipe can be done easily even when your hands are covered in flour or holding utensils. The portable aspect of the DS is utiilised in a variety for ways too. Because of the fact that it can be taken with you on your weekly shop, should you enter a specific item into the A-Z section of the database you will instantly get information about the ingredient in question and a list of recipes that it can be included in, a feature that would surely come in handy when you are not sure what to make.

Getting a concept as new as this right first time is a tall order for any one, even Nintendo, and it is true that this idea, good as it may be, could struggle to capture the imagination of the typical video game target audience of teenage boys. Instead Cooking Guide belongs to a new breed of entertainment software (that Nintendo are pioneering) that can be used in a constructive way by the whole family. In addition to this, if they are able to effectively market such a new idea to specific groups such as students and young people inexperienced but interested in cooking, who this game could prove invaluable for, then they will surely be on to yet another winner.