DS Review: Cake Mania 2

by Jenni Lada on July 4, 2008 at 11:27 am

Cake Mania 2 was recently released for the Nintendo DS, and it is basically an update of the original Cake Mania. Once again, players are thrown into a bakery and must make custom cakes for demanding customers. If you’re a casual game or puzzle fan, you’ll probably be salivating at the chance to make cakes at a frantic pace.

There are some twists this time around. In the story mode, Jill’s dream of revitalizing her grandparent’s bakery has fizzled, and she wants to move onto better things. Coincidentally enough, she receives two requests – her friend from college wants help with a city bakery and her ex-boyfriend wants help with a bakery at his undersea amusement park. So players get to decide Jill’s fate – will she work for love or for fame.

Once again, the bakery starts out barren. Each challenge has two goals, bakery goal and superstar, where Jill must make a certain amount of money before the month ends. That money can then be used to buy new bakery accoutrements or upgrade existing equipment.

There’s also a new Endless mode, where players can just bake cakes endlessly. Since the first Cake Mania DS game pretty much ended after you beat the story mode, this is a welcome addition to casual players and fans of the game.

Despite being a casual game, Cake Mania 2 is definitely not for beginners. In fact, you’lll probably have to have played a bit of the first Cake Mania to figure out some of the more intricate cake combinations. Cake Mania 2 will not hold your hand and help you in the kitchen – it will leave the stove on hot, and allow you to figure out that fire burns.

This is demonstrated in two ways. First, is through lack of tutorials. You make one cake with the help of the game, and it’s a simple one too. After that, you’re thrown into work. The first assignment isn’t too bad initially, but after you buy three ovens, you’ll start getting requests for 2 layer cakes with decorations, without any explanation how to make one.

Then there are the chapter descriptions. They will occasionally hint at a helpful product for the coming level (like the TV). This is nice, except it comes up after the utensil buying section. So you’ll find out right before the level starts that the upcoming customers can be appeased with a TV, and you won’t have one.

Cake Mania 2 really does improve over the first DS Cake Mania game. It is more challenging, attempts a deeper story with the ability to guide Jill the baker’s fate and provides the Endless cake mode where you can bake as much as you want. On the other hand, it betrays its casual gaming fans and roots by offering little in the way of explanations or tutorials and jacking up the difficulty level.