Mama’s been busy these days. After two DS titles (including the fresh, genre-breaking original), a hilarious/terrifying PETA parody-attack, and a newly announced gardening sim (coming next spring), she’s been all over the place. In fact, I think Mama’s starting to get a little tired.

One begins to get this impression after playing Cooking Mama: World Kitchen at length. All the fun, cooking-related minigame gameplay is still there from previous games, and developer Cooking Mama Limited has certainly tweaked the title’s structure and elements of the gameplay, but things have started to get just a bit stale in Majesco’s prized kitchen.

The game will certainly be familiar to Mama vets – you “cook” recipes by running through a series of food preparation minigames. You slice veggies, knead dough, frost pastries, tenderize meats, and so on, all by emulating those motions with the Wii remote. It’s as fun and intuitive as ever, and mastering recipes may actually increase your cooking knowledge, as everything is based on the real life processes. This game can (and likely, will) cause gamers to rustle around their actual kitchens after playing – sometimes with surprisingly tasty results.

One big difference in World Kitchen is the fact that you don’t play as the titular Mama – you play as her apprentice, a boy or girl that you get to customize at the outset. Mama is still there for you, however, as she provides gentle, engrish-powered guidance throughout the game. She also saves your butt during regular gameplay, in a new twist on the formula. If you mess up during the course of a step, Mama may (or may not...) rush to your rescue, prompting a lightning quick WarioWare-esque minigame.

You can actually go back and play any of these quickie challenges by checking out your “event album” as you progress through the game. You can also look at pictures of your little chef in action (via your album), but that’s not exactly as exciting as twirling your Wii-mote wildly in order to get Mama to snatch your wayward peeler, MLB catcher-style.