Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine Reviews

With the success of the Cooking Mama series, one would imagine that it would have only been a matter of time before other cooking-related games sprung up. With Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine, an element of competition is added in to the concept of preparing dishes. While the game is fun to play for a little bit, a few flaws bog it down...And on top of that, there’s really not much to do here.

The concept of the game is simple: Make food quickly while trying to prepare them as perfectly as possible so that when the judges taste your cuisine, they vote you the winner over the other chef. The game does a pretty good job of capturing the feel of the television show, even including that Alton Brown fellow feeding your brain with interesting tidbits as you prepare dishes...Though, after you’ve heard the same tidbit five times, it does start to become a little more irritating than it is charming.



The gameplay is alright. Since it’s Iron Chef, you’re creating several dishes at once, which is neat and all...But it’s confusing. Instead of having an idea what you’re making like in Cooking Mama, generally, all you know is that you’re chopping up beef or slicing zucchini with no real knowledge of what dish you’re doing it for. So, rather than feel like you know what you’re doing, you feel more like a zombie, just simply doing the tasks the screen tells you to do. For the most part, the controls are pretty good. Sometimes the motion controls don’t work properly, and you’ll struggle to get a job done, but generally, the controls work fine.

There are two big flaws within the game, however. First is the difficulty...Or lack there of. There is only one difficulty level...And on that difficulty level, the only way you’ll lose is if you have a stroke while playing the game. There is an option for two-player mode, which can give you some challenge if you compete against a friend...But otherwise, this game lacks any challenge at all. Secondly, there isn’t much to do in the game. Once you’ve beaten the ‘story mode’ and done all of the recipes, you’re basically done...And it doesn’t take very long for that to happen. There is very little replay value here. Had the challenge of the game been bumped up a bit, maybe there’d be some replay value in doing a quick battle here and there...But since you’ll destroy the computer regardless, there’s really no reason to play the game again once you’re done.



Graphically, the game looks alright. However, it feels as if they really slacked off in the animation department. Most of the non-cooking-sequence animations are just still photos that change every few seconds...It’s sort of a head scratcher as to why it was done this way. It really makes the game’s presentation seem cheap from a visual standpoint. The audio makes up for this, however. The voice acting is very well done and really adds to the overall feel and personality of the game.

Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine is a decent attempt at simulating the television series...But one that ultimately falls short of being good. Diehard fans of the Cooking Mama games may find more enjoyment here, but everyone else will likely grow tired of the game pretty quickly. The superb voice acting and decent controls and gameplay can’t save the game from the fatal flaws of no difficulty and no replay value. There really isn’t much to do here, and when you’re done, you’re done. Maybe if they’d let this game simmer a bit more in development and added a few more flavorful features, it’d be better...But as it stands, this game is a boring dish that’ll have you wishing that you’d ordered what that guy at the table next to you had gotten instead.