Gardening Mama Review
Fun in the Sun! Mama’s dropped the frying pan and gone back to her roots
By Ben Salter
After slaving over a hot stove day and night Mama has left the kitchen for some much deserved fresh air. But that’s where the relaxation comes to a grinding halt as the next instalment in Mama’s series takes it up a notch. The
Cooking Mama games were all about light-hearted fun mini-games.
Gardening Mama takes this concept, moves it outdoors, and introduces live plants to care for that builds at a frantic pace as you progress. The series has kept the simplistic art style that it’s renowned for and sends Mama out for some fun in the sun.
Mama doesn’t have just one garden, she has a whole heap of them. She has a garden full of exotic flowers and others for a range of fruits and vegetables (that explains where all her interesting ingredients came from). When you first enter Mama’s Garden you’ll only have a handful of flowers to plant, but as you progress you’ll stumble across the fruit orchard, veggie patch, and the rose garden. The initial mini-games are all about setting up your garden. To get a flower growing first you must prepare the soil, open the seed packet, dig a whole, place the seed in and cover it up, water the plant and then wait. This is made up of a series of mini-games that last between 10-60 seconds each (most are around the 20 second mark). Once this is done it’s time for Mama to take a stroll around the area to find something else to plant. You control a giant Mama head with your stylus to move from garden to garden. This is rather disappointing as it would have been much nicer to actually control a character whilst walking around and between gardens rather than just a picture of her head.
Gardening Mama introduces something to worry about between mini-games. Beyond planting new crop Mama must care for what is already growing in her various gardens. If you don’t water plants often enough or they don’t get enough sun then they’ll begin to wilt and meet an untimely death. Once you’ve built up a substantial garden the pace becomes quite frantic as Mama rushes around trying to keep everything alive and well. While this sounds dull and quite frankly annoying it gives you some momentum and ensures that a rapid pace keeps Mama busy.
The mini-games are easy once you get the hang of them. All of them are controlled using the stylus and a select few attempt to incorporate the DS’s microphone. Most include an arrow that show you have to move your stylus on screen; however, some offer very little guidance and it quickly becomes a trial and error process to figure out what you’re actually meant to be doing. Each game has a timer, forcing a try to beat the clock aspect, complete with classic ‘you’re running out of time’ music that kicks in at the halfway mark. At the end of each mini-game Mama will rank your effort by awarding you either a gold, silver or bronze medal. If you fail you’ll get “Don’t worry, Mama will take care of it” with a very disappointed looking facial expression. Sorry Mama, we’ve failed you again.
Most of the games offer a light-hearted level of enjoyment. It’s kind of like WarioWare, but everything is focused on gardening and the mini-games link up to create something. Some even present a mild level of educational value. While going from touch screen to the real life garden bed is a massive jump the games do walk you through the steps of gardening. Mixed in between all this are some dull and repetitive games, such as constantly having to give plants a ridiculous amount of watering to stop their demise, or frustrating mini-games that just don’t work. One monstrosity has you attempt to dig a hole and fill it in with exactly the same amount of dirt. This supposably works by using the same speed of stylus movement, but it’s almost impossible to get right.
Did I forget to mention Mama is a God in her garden? She can blow away clouds to give her plants more sun and fight off a tornado (so maybe it’s not the best educational tool for prospective gardeners). All in all each mini-game is over and done with in a number of seconds and you’re off into the next step. Many of them are repeated, but if you’re just looking to kill a few minutes they remain enjoyable. The stylus controls are responsive and work well a majority of the time. Most of the games are based on flicking your stylus in a certain direction, or in sync with a time bar. If you stuff it up you’ll make a complete mess of the simplest of tasks, such as opening a packet of seeds and Mama will not be a happy chappy.
If you want to put down the shovel momentarily there’s a multiplayer mode and the chance to “Decorate the Garden! & Make It Fancy!” The former allows you to trade any items you earned for successfully completing mini-games with friends wirelessly. Up to four players can take part in single card player, and compete in a series of timed mini-games. You can used any of the before mentioned items in the latter, which includes garden gnomes and decorations, to make your garden look more appealing or slap a hat on Mama’s head.
The visuals are simple but adorable (if that’s your thing). The backgrounds are colourful and look great on the DS. You can count Mama’s facial expressions on one hand, and they haven’t really changed from Cooking Mama, but they easily sum up if you’ve done Mama proud, or failed her. Mama doesn’t say much, but when she does you’ll notice her weird accent hasn’t gone away. You’ll either love it or hate. Personally I hate it, it sounds like a poorly recorded mixtape, but hey that’s just me. The music has been recycled from past games. While it’s still catchy some new tunes would have been nice for series veterans considering they are the ones most likely to jump into Mama’s garden.
The Final Verdict
Gardening Mama takes Mama out of the kitchen and throws her into an even more frantic garden. The mini-games are relatively easy and some are even mildly educational, but at then end of the day most of them are still fun if you’ve got a few minutes to kill. Seeing your garden blossom makes Gardening Mama feel more rewarding than your average mini-game based title. Unfortunately some of the short games become repetitive and the multiplayer becomes stale quickly. It’s not as good as the Cooking Mama titles, but your plants constant need for attention lets you get into a better rhythm than in previous games. Worth a look if you’re a fan of the past games or interested in a bunch of gardening-themed mini-games. If you’re after something deeper then Gardening Mama isn’t for you.
Gameplay
6.0/10
Most of the mini-games are fun but the gameplay is quite shallow. Unfortunately everything starts to become repetitive after awhile so it’s definitely best played in short bursts.
Visuals
7.0/10
Presented in colourful 2D graphics Gardening Mama is intentionally visually simplistic, but that’s part of its charm.
Sound
6.5/10
The soundtrack is catchy but disappointingly has been reused from the previous game. Mama needs to invest in a better microphone.
Value
6.0/10
The games become repetitive after you’ve been playing for a while and there’s really nothing to pull you back once it feels like everything has been done before.
Overall
6.0/10
Submitted by ICC_06
12/06/2009
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